It’s no Day of the Tentacle (which I would love to see get remade!). If you don’t know the history of Lucasarts and SCUMM then read up.

Otherwise check out Kotaku’s awesome rendition of LOST as a SCUMM game.

Ah SCUMM, a gaming revolution for its time.

Marketing has been around… well as long as there has been something to sell. Ads are a great look into what a society was up to at that point in time and the current reigning morales (if you don’t believe me check out the ads that have been discovered in Pompey).

Here’s another great collection of ads from yesteryear.

It’s kind of mind boggling. The darling punk rocker of the 1970′s (and hot to boot). She made some of my favorite music. To be a youth in England in the 1970′s… the clubs must have ruled.

It started getting big in 1978.

By 1983 she had really found her voice and was tearing it up. The Beatles couldn’t do it this good.

Her pop 1991 release Kiss Them For Me… her voice is just awesome.

Released with the second Batman movie. Can you resist her purrrrrrrrrr?

Indeed, for he’s been dead for a century.

And then this happened:

Twain, the pen name of Samuel Clemens, left behind 5,000 unedited pages of memoirs when he died in 1910, together with handwritten notes saying that he did not want them to hit bookshops for at least a century, but in November, the University of California, Berkeley, where the manuscript is in a vault, will release the first volume of Mark Twain’s three-volume autobiography.

I’m seriously excited to read this!

If you’ve never dived into Twain before other than the things you may have been handed in school, I heartily recommend you take another look at this works. His social commentary was bold, cutting and hilarious at the same time – and as mentioned in the article may have been the reason he wanted to wait 100 years before the publication of his autobiography. The people of that generation probably couldn’t have handled it.

It’s going to be a long six months…

This is it. I’m a little sad as this show, while it had its ups and downs, was one of the cleverest on the air.  I think it’ll rank up there like Twin Peaks in the pantheon of good, compelling television. All good story lines must come to an end. I don’t know how they’ll manage to end it on a note that will make it feel as mysterious and exciting as its been. Good luck Lost writers, don’t disappoint.

Here’s my prediction for the end:

The smoke monster heads to Pacific Northwest, and take on the name of Bob, possessing townsfolk and murdering pretty girls.  Hot on its heels trying to stop this monster will be an by FBI agent named Cooper.

Truly epic in my opinion.

Back in January I posted about Andrew Wakefield and the official ruling that he was a fraud.

He’s since been peddling away in Texas like nothing has happened, like his research hasn’t been debunked, like his papers haven’t been rejected, and like he isn’t the laughing stock of the medical community for his bogus and outrageous claims.

It appears Wakefield is going to appear on CBS with Matt Lauer. Orac has a great break down of it on his blog.

Want to get a better understanding of it all? Check out this awesome graphic novel of the whole story.

Regardless, I’d like to take this moment to thank England for sending its loonies to us. First the Puritans and now this. THANKS A LOT.

What we see isn’t always what is really there. That’s why I find optical illusions so interesting. It proves a point in a neat way – don’t always trust what you see (or believe it).

30th anniversary of Pac Man!

Watch how your brain flips the box perspective as the camera moves.

up up down down left right left right b a start

Nike’s awesome new ad for the World Cup.

I don’t know why I’ve always been drawn to soccer over every other sport. This one definitely pulled all those emotions back out.

Today is draw Mohamed day. This came about from a mix of ideas and events that have taken place the world over. This event has garnered a lot of eyeballs and comments all over the internet, both smart and derogatory.

Reaction can be boiled down into roughly three categories.

1) Outright censhorshop of the whole thing.  In places like Pakistan YouTube and Facebook are being blocked in a bid to “promote religious harmony and respect”.

2) Smart comebacks. Most notably:

Muslim students’ reaction? Add boxing gloves and re-label the drawings “Muhammad Ali.”

3) Whine incessantly about how horrible it is for people to be disrespectful like this.

First, some perspective.

In 2006, 50 people were killed in protests over the Dutch cartoons. Embassies were attacked, and lives were made forfeit – all over drawings of  Mohammad. In Islam it is considered a grave sin to make idols, most especially of their prophet Mohammad.

Of all three scenarios I find those barking about people being disrespectful the most ludicrous. These selfsame individuals go on that all ideas, most especially religious ones, should be respected.

Are these people daft?

Do you really believe that all ideas have equal merit or weight? What kind of illogical, irrational and screwed up world this would be if all ideas were respected.

Nothing would ever get done. Society would never advance. Life as we know it would come to a grinding halt.

Every day your mind processes ideas, weighs their value and tosses out the trash so you can get things done. You (hopefully) make choices based on the value, merit, efficiency, and efficacy of ideas and respect those ideas that improve your life and well being.

By what inane law in this universe should religion, much less any idea or philosophy, be given a special pass or consideration that would allow it to bypass those tests of worth?

It boggles the god damn mind.

Yes, Draw Mohammad day is about disrespect - disrespecting the idea that people should die over cartoon drawings.  Disrespecting the notion that people should live in fear of not following the beliefs of a religion that they couldn’t give two shits about. Disrespecting the concept that because Islam is a religion it should be given special shelter from critique. Fuck that lot, one and all.

If one’s base reaction is violence and the threat of death over a drawing, or in some cases what has become the reality of acting on that impulse, then there is no force on earth that should grant you respect or tolerance.

Your idea is crap, your notion is shit, your belief is worthless if it cannot be defended rationally or debated logically.

As such I present JPS er, I present Mohammad under a starry sky.

I drink your milkshake, I drink it up.

Maryland is a confusing state. Solidly Democratic to a fault (to the point of almost eliminating any opposing view points, even within their own party), a large cross section of immigrant and ‘been here a while’s, and a sharp divide of city and rural life.

The rural side of things grabs the headlines today. What I thought had exploded onto the blogosphere today, was rather more of a slow rollout of shock at the actions of many students and parents in Rising Sun a town near the Pennsylvania and Delaware border.

The short recap: A Student of Rising Sun High School, Chad Skyler,  decides to start a non-religious student club after seeing blatantly religious student club at school. For his efforts he gets threatened and cajoled by peers and their parents.

Real classy shit.

You can read the extended versions here, here, and finally here (though I’m loathe to link in to a Facebook page).

The only thing I can really add here is I find it interesting that I had to hear about it from bloggers in the midwest. Not a peep from local papers or the state-wide paper, the Baltimore Sun. Reverse the variables in this story and I would be very surprised if it wasn’t front page news. And this is why people get a bellyful of the hypocritical stances pumped into people’s heads by the fervently religious.

This is a good life lesson for Chad -  People are pricks and they’ll use their lack of critical thinking or logic to drag you down to their level, especially when it comes to matters of religion. Good luck, kid.