We’ve been a bit behind in our hyperlink colletions and thoughts of ridiculousness lately, and for that I apologize — who would have thought that the seemingly simple task of collecting stupid things and linking to them would be such a difficult task? Anyway, I’ve been thinking about many many things as of late, you know, because I’m fucking smart and that’s what I do — think.
- TUAW Back to School Addition – Tuaw.com has collected a slew of applications to help those of us that are in school — although they seem to be mistaken by the uncanny fact that NOT ONE FUCKING RESPECTABLE UNIVERSITY WOULD LET YOU USE WIKIPEDIA AS A SOURCE IN A MILLION YEARS. So yeah, use at your own risk dipshits, and enjoy that plagarism site gag of a F on your acedemic record.
- Brainy Gamer on narrative — The Brainy Gamer has compiled a number of different looks at what exactly defines narrative within a video game world — it’s interesting, especially since rarely do games succeed. The question of course still lies in whether or not people want to be completely immersed into a story or not, I for one, am all for it, and almost miss the days of playing games for story alone, hours at a time (and have my fingers crossed that Far Cry 2 and Fallout 3 will do just that), but with games like Rock Band and Wii Sports selling the most copies, it seems that the majority of folks aren’t really looking for immersion, but rather escape.
- Freelance DNC reporter? — Sounds normal enought right? Get some young kid out there who wants to make a name for themself and get into political journalism… but how do journalistic integrity and A QUESTION MARK SUIT go together? I hope this is a fucking joke.
- Gizmodo explaines the touchscreen – It’s one of those strange and magical devices that, when packed with pixie juice and fairy dust, respond to the touch of a finger. Whoa.
- Radiolab is bad-ass get with it – For the uninitiated, Radiolab is a sort of This American Life for science-ophiles. Yeah, that might sound sort of stupid or heady, and it is (heady that is), but the presentation is abnormally outstanding and worthy of a listen. In honor of the 5th Season beginning soon, I figured I’d toss you links to my five favorites from the last four.
- “Emergence” — Takes a look at the theory of Emergence. Partially dealing with Steven Johnson’s mediocre book of the same name (mediocre in the way that it starts strong, gets super boring, unrelated and repetative and then ends on “meh” note. It’s great that the Wired writer makes it easy to read, but at the same time it ends up being simplified too much, and would have worked better as a feature article. But the parts about Simcity are pretty sweet). Um, I lost my train of thought… anyway, Emergence deals with the intelligence of groups, something that if you went to college in the 20th century you’ve already been taught not to belive in (“group think” exercise about the Cuban Missile Crisis anyone?). Nevermind, just listen to it.
- “Pop Music” — This episode deals with figuring out how and why song’s get stuck in your head. Seems simple enough, right? That is, until you get to musical hallucinations and Elvis songs from Afghanistan.
- “Time” — A number of different takes and looks at how we deal with and analyze time, this episode seems to go hand in hand with “Beyond Time” and coupled together they will blow your mind and likely send you to the fetal position as you try to wrap your brain around the concepts here.
- “Musical Language” — Musical language hops from pyschology professor’s to “Rite of Spring” to perfect pitch in an all inclusive pass to figuring out what it is that makes human’s like music.
- “War of the Worlds” — This episode examine’s the media’s uncanny ability to create panic–it’s actually remarkably frightening.