Links and write-ups about beautiful things from around the web!
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Fandom in Academia
Digging through academic journals from various fields I’ve found one element that they all seem to share: the occasional linking of an author’s specialized field with some element from the über-specialized world of current fan culture / pop culture. The links are often tenuous, but sometimes there’s a real gem hiding amongst the serious papers. Sometimes the research is dubious enough to appear on an academic humor blog like NCBI ROFL, but usually the research lacks the clout or audacity needed to garner an Ig Nobel Prize. For example, here are two papers from this week’s publication listings (I’ll add more if I find them this week):
- Harry Potter’s Headaches, published in Headache: The Journal of Head and Face Pain – an attempt to categorize the titular boy wizard’s symptoms using the “Muggle” International Classification of Headache Disorders, 2nd edition (ICHD-II). I’m pretty sure they’re having a good time with this one, thankfully. (Via NCBI ROFL)
- Harry Potter and the (Re)Order of the Artists: Are We Muggles or Goblins? (.PDF), published in the Oregon Law Review. A 32-page analysis of the property rights and droit moral issues presented in Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, in particular regards to the sword that Harry promises to Griphook the goblin. Literature does act as a good gateway to thinking about legal and ethical problems, so I won’t knock this one. (Via the Tarlton Law Library’s Current Copyright Legal Literature)
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A Meditation on Sierra AGI vs. Lucasfilm Games
From a short essay by elTee on Mixnmojo considering “The Secret of Monkey Island” as a satire of and rebuke to Sierra’s adventure games, a major shift in the genre that would signal the end of the (strangely death-obsessed) Quest series:
Did any of you ever play Police Quest? It was an interesting game because it actually expected you to act like a real police officer. I didn’t realise that cops had to perform a 360-degree vehicle check every morning (duh) and so when I drove away, I got a flat tyre outside of the station. If that were LucasFilm Games’ The Secret of The Death Angel, I’d probably be able to get out of the car and change the tyre, but not so in Police Quest with its grimly predictable ‘game over’. But in a weird way, it was more annoying when I finally managed to get that first day at work under my belt and it was time to get changed and head home. There’s a locker room, and I realise I have no idea which one of the lockers is mine – and then I further realise that the game isn’t going to help me out because of the logic that… the character knows which locker it is.
The Secret of Monkey Island throws that kind of crap out from the opening line. Guybrush doesn’t know shit, and that puts him and us on a level playing field. It’s subtle and incredibly liberating.
Very true. You could learn a lot about storytelling and game writing, good and bad, by studying the early adventure games.
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デカリス Giant Tetris from Sega Via Arcade
デカリス [Giant] Tetris, from Sega.
(Via Arcade Heroes)
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Ergotopography
“The art of writing symbols that say where you’re working from.” The original was WFH, Working From Home. Following that pattern, then, you might get:
WF(O<-<)
Working from a bathWFgl___/
Working from a boat (with an outboard motor)WF§-__/
Working from a boat (with a more serious motor)“WF ”
Working from spaceWF=====
Working in a linear accelerator…
(Via New Scientist and Language Log, which has an interesting discussion of trying to work out what the best neologism for these ASCII art variations should be)
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Cho Chabudai Gaeshi — Flip the Table
Taito’s new Cho Chabudai Gaeshi, a game based on a literal interpretation of the Japanese idiom “flip the table” (chabudai gaeshi). It gladdens my heart to see new weird games being made for the arcade. At least it’s easier to relate to than Boong-Ga Boong-Ga.
As one commenter on Kotaku notes, “If they localized this in the US it’d have to be called ‘F*ck This’”
(Via Offworld)
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Computational Legal Studies
A blog featuring infographics pertaining to legal and political science research.
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Heres a Toast to Alan Turing Born in Harsher
here’s a toast to Alan Turing
born in harsher, darker times
who thought outside the container
and loved outside the lines
and so the code-breaker was broken
and we’re sorry
yes now the s-word has been spoken
the official conscience woken
– very carefully scripted but at least it’s not encrypted –
and the story does suggest
a part 2 to the Turing Test:
1. can machines behave like humans?
2. can we?Alan Turing by poet Matt Harvey, on the occasion of British prime minister Gordon Brown’s official posthumous apology to the mathematician and computer theorist. Originally read/published on the BBC Radio 4 broadcast Saturday Live, 12/9/2009.
(Via Language Log, from a mostly unrelated post on the language of homophobia in Jamaican culture, which is itself worth reading – depressing, but worthwhile)
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Laser Cave Prototype
Interactive Audio Visual installation for
Mekanism’s “After School Special” art show
location: gray area foundation for the arts http://www.gaffta.org/concept/construction : suryummy
visuals : suryummy
audio : suryummy, herbie hancock, various manipulated retro logos
software : VDMXThis is like a model of the world I wanted to live in when I was a kid, somewhere between Tron’s MCP mainframe world, Cybertron, and Marble Madness.
(Via Make)
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The Stanford Frankencamera to Help Further the
To help further the field of computational photography, a team at Stanford is working on a homebrewed, open source digital camera that they can sell at-cost to other academics in the field. Right now it’s pretty big and clunky-looking, but a camera that can be extended with the latest image processing techniques coming out of the labs would be very sexy indeed. There’s a recent press release that’s worth reading about the team, along with a video and an animation or two to explain the project.
Those that want to tinker with their existing store-bought cameras might want to check out the firmware hacks that are floating around out there, like the excellent CHDK software (GPL’ed, I think) that runs on most modern Canon digital point-and-shoot and dSLR cameras. With a little bit of elbow grease and some free tools you can add a lot of professional(ish) features and scripting support to your low-end camera.
(Via John Nack)
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Miha’s Sub-pixel Typography
Typophile user Miha is doing some awesome sub-pixel typography experimentation for making tiny text sharper (at least on LCD screens with RGB ordering – sorry CRT holdouts!). It’s this kind of hand-rendering and tailoring that makes this work craft, in the best sense of the word. Drawing out a legible, full alphabet with an x-height of 3 pixels? Impressive.