China’s (Controlled) Virtual World – Newsweek: International Editions – MSNBC.com
Just briefly noting, haven’t even had the chance to read it yet (been a busy day!).
Edit:looks like it’s part of a broader look at virtual worlds, focusing (of course) on Second Life — the international editions even have it as the cover story.
Ok, a challenge. Next Sunday do a poem on Ice Creme Cones, and do it without any insinuations of death, love, or nature.
No insinuations? Fat chance.
Pistachio
Pistachio piled high, a green the shade of leaves in shade;
Scintilla sparkles, specular sliding off the cone.
A spritz of soda, carbon captured, bubbles bursting;
Antiseptic odor effervescing from the glass.
Waterstains on spoons, overlapping nebulae. Straws. Scoops.
Color buckets, congealed craters, rough gorges. Crème.
Here there is no death except in melting. There is no love,
But for the sharing of banana splits, there is no nature
Save for green the shade of leaves in shade, the nuts,
The flavor on the tongue, purchased by my grandpa.
We chrome, we swirl, we pile double-high, we watch
As scoops sizzle on the hot cement, fallen from their perch.
Found it in the mailbox at 9pm, after waiting for it to be dropped at the door all day. Just finished it (it’s 1am).
A worthy end.
Whoof, a huge backlog to get through here, and I have already added more to the finished stack that I want to mention. So brief reviews this time.
Made to Stick: Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die was really, really good. The book is basically about what makes concepts memorable when you present them. The authors outline a very simple formula that lines up well with the various book I have read on cognitive psych (in fact, the bibliography shares a large number of books with A Theory of Fun). Highly recommended — this is one of the best general popsci/business books I have read in quite a while.
Or more specifically, the South Park episode “Make Love, Not Warcraft” is up for an Emmy.
Quite a lot of the humor in this episode didn’t work unless you had some sense of what a virtual world was — and not just what Hollywood thought it was (Lawnmower Man, Disclosure, I am thinking of you!) but what they actually work like.
So the fact that the episode is seen as being that worthy is some sort of cultural metric for general awareness and understanding of virtual worlds and MMOs — at least among the Academy voting membership.
