Yeah, reposting a funny picture found in another blog is uncool, but I couldn’t resist, considering that Wikipedia is one of my favorite sites. Original credits to the Language Log. Apparently this is a photo taken of a menu of real restaurant in Beijing. Read the end of the post for a link to a “Wikipedia” brand of bread in China. I guess there’s nothing that the Chinese won’t copy.
Four articles this month, though I have to admit that they’re more about technology than general science. The first and potentially most exciting of these is the news of Intel’s demonstration of technology to transmit power wirelessly. Personally I’ve always wondered when we would get around to accomplishing this. After all, in science-fiction shows like Star Trek, you never see long trails of wiring all over the place. Now that wireless transmission of data is easy, power cords are number one source of ugliness and mess with tech gadgets.
Anyone who’s watched Christopher Nolan’s The Prestige would also know that Nikola Tesla achieved this late in the 19th century. However, as the article explains, the trick isn’t in simply transmitting it, it’s in doing it safely and efficiently. The article talks about installing the system in airports and offices, but if it becomes cheap enough I can’t imagine why ordinary home users won’t want to be able to do away with pesky electrical wires as well. Still, our current troubles with neighbors stealing bandwidth from wireless networks are bad enough, just think about how troublesome it would be if your neighbors could steal your electricity supply as well!
Continue reading Recent Interesting Science Articles (August 2008)
My wife and I have been in Kota Kinabalu for three months now, so I thought that it’s time for a quick update. Notably, the inclusion of Spidey, our dog, into our lives. We bought her at the Gaya Street Sunday market about two months ago. At that time, the seller told her that she was two months old and lied to us that she was actually a male puppy, presumably because most buyers would be more hesitant to buy a female puppy. Yeah, that means both my wife and I did a terrible job of checking up on the puppy’s actual gender. So much for being dog lovers huh?
After we got her home and got to know her a little, we couldn’t bear to give her back so we decided to keep her anyway. We’d actually picked the name “Spidey” for her when we thought she was a male puppy, but we decided to keep that name as well. As you can see from the above photograph taken just a day after we first bought her, she looked so tiny, with her body only slightly longer than the length of a hand. She was also very timid and somewhat lethargic on the first day. My wife said that she’d heard that some sellers keep their puppies tranquillized while selling them so they wouldn’t look too naughty or difficult to handle to potential buyers.
For a game that got into the news so often for all the wrong reasons, beginning with the torrid Jade Raymond affair, to complaints about the unfamiliar controls to the early leak of the PC version and Ubisoft’s subsequent decision to sue the source of the leak for a ridiculous sum of damages, Assassin’s Creed turned out for me to a surprisingly good game. After all, the basic premise of the game sounds fantastic: play as a member of the Hashahin, the original brotherhood of assassins from which the English word “assassin” is itself derived, in the sand-box environment of the Holy Land while the Crusades are raging. There is plenty to be impressed with by this game, so it’s all the more disappointing that it gets so many basic elements so wrong.
First the good stuff. Most of the player’s time is spent controlling Altair, who starts out as an accomplished but somewhat cocky member of the brotherhood. The brotherhood’s aim, as stated by its leader Al Mualim, is to achieve peace in the Holy Land, and as such Altair is sent to assassinate critical targets from both sides of the war, Saracen and Crusader, in order to put an end to the fighting. And I’m not joking when I say that Altair is an accomplished assassin. He can navigate the environment so well, leaping from rooftop to rooftop, clambering up walls and barrelling through crowds that he’d put Lara Croft to shame. He can walk up to a target and effortlessly kill someone so quietly with a hidden blade that someone standing ten paces away won’t even notice. All of these feats are easy to accomplish with the controls, even if they are a bit esoteric and take some effort to learn. Some critics have complained that the near-automatic execution of the parkour-style moves, since Altair will always perform the move most appropriate to the context and the environment, sacrifices actual gameplay for cool visuals. I heartily applaud it however. If I’m supposed to be controlling a skilled assassin, I don’t want to fight the controls to do the cool moves, I want to just be able to tell Altair what I want to do, and he’ll do it.
I was amused to read Prince Charles’ rather hot-blooded diatribe against genetically modified crops earlier. Given how stupid his entire argument is, it isn’t very surprising how much criticism he has been getting over it. I don’t really feel like going into detail over it, so I’ll content myself with these two points:
Finally, I giggled at Prince Charles’ attack on intensive agriculture by large corporations. Maybe he thinks that everyone should grow their own food in their own backyard or something? It’s one thing for a rich royal to boast about his own organic farm, try selling that idea to densely populated and still relatively poor Asia.
It was vaguely man-shaped but in no way human. It stood at least three meters tall. Even when it was at rest, the silvered surface of the thing seemed to shift and flow like mercury suspended in midair. The reddish glow from the crosses etched into the tunnel walls reflected from sharp surfaces and glinted on the curved metal blades protruding from the thing’s forehead, four wrists, oddly jointed elbows, knees, armored back, and thorax. It flowed between the kneeling Bikura, and when it extended four long arms, hands extended but fingers clicking into place like chrome scalpels, I was absurdly reminded of His Holiness on Pacem offering a benediction to the faithful.
I had no doubt that I was looking at the legendary Shrike.
– Dan Simmons in Hyperion
As an avid fan of science-fiction, I’ve read just about all of the classics of the genre. Dan Simmons’ Hyperion is one of the exceptions, so it was with some pleasure that I came across a copy of it while browsing at a bookstore at Warisan Square here in Kota Kinabalu. I’ve already had some familiarity with the plot, having read one or two of Simmons’ short stories based on the same setting in various anthologies, but this was the first time that I’ve actually read the book, and I have to say that it deserves every bit of the many accolades it has been given.
I recently learned that the President of the Consumer’s Association of Penang wrote a letter that was published in The Star calling for Malaysia to follow Thailand and ban the Grand Theft Auto games. Anyway, I sent off an e-mail in reply. Here’s the full text, though I doubt that the CAP will care much about what I write.
To: S.M. MOHAMED IDRIS,
President,
Consumers Association of Penang.I have writing in response to your letter published in The Star on the 8th August 2008 calling for a ban on a video game you call “Grand Theft Auto”. I disagree with your letter in its entirety and take issue especially with the implicit stance that it is necessary, even desirable, for a government to restrict the freedoms of its adult citizens for their own purpoted good. However, I realize that I am not going to win any arguments against you on this matter, and so I shall concentrate on the factual errors in your letter.
- You write that the said game has been banned in Thailand. To the best of my knowledge, the game has not in fact been banned by the government of Thailand, instead its distributor has voluntarily withdrawn it from being sold.
- You refer to the incident in Thailand as a copycat crime. After reading a report of the incident published in Thailand (http://www.bangkokpost.net/040808_News/04Aug2008_news002.php), it is evident that it is not a copycat crime. That article contains errors as well, referring to the game in question as an online game when it is not, but it is nevertheless clear that the game is merely being used by the criminal as an excuse to rob taxis for money. Apparently he mentioned needing the money to play GTA every day, which makes no sense because GTA is not an online game which requires an ongoing subscription to play.
- You write that violent video games have previously been linked to expressions of violence and aggression in young people. You have not cited specific research papers in support of this point but I concede that it is true that many research papers have noted correlation between real-world aggression and video game playing. However, correlation does not equal causation and the correlation may exist simply because people who are already aggressive naturally gravitate towards violent video games. Read this Wikipedia article for an overview (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Video_game_controversy).
- You write as if officially banning the game in Malaysia would have any effect at all. It would not, since the vast majority of games in Malaysia are pirated. Ironically, by writing about this in a local newspaper you have just raised the game’s profile and ensured that many more people will be inclined to check out a pirated copy of it.
- By citing by the game’s undue influence on young people, you imply that young people are the target audience. The game carries a Mature rating by the ESRB in the United States. If no equivalent ratings system exists in Malaysia, then that is a failing that should be rectified, but this is does not amount to justification for banning the game entirely. In fact, like many other non-gamers, you seem to labour under the misconception that games are for the young and hence must be regulated in that manner. This is not true. For example, in the U.S., the average gamer is aged 35 (http://www.theesa.com/facts/index.asp). As an adult gamer, and being proud of it, I resent your suggestion that you have the right to determine what is or is not good for me.
Respectfully,
Wan Kong Yew