> jim rossignol

The Art bloke from Alien Hominid has his own new Flash game. And it’s a little worrying.

“On Tuesday Muslims across the world are celebrating Eid al-Adha, the Islamic day of sacrifice. Every Muslim who is rich enough is supposed to donate an animal to be slaughtered, and the meat is donated to the poor. Sourcing the ideal beast can be time-consuming, but in Indonesia help is at hand. There is now an easy alternative – you can buy an animal at your nearest ATM machine.”

And: “So far almost 4,000 goats have been sold this way.”

Automated Religion: For your 21st Century beliefs.

“It’s very, very dangerous to lose contact with living nature,” he said, listing to the right in a green armchair that looked out over frost-dusted fields and snow-laced trees. A glass pitcher held a bouquet of roses on the coffee table before him. “In the big cities, there are people who have never seen living nature, all things are products of humans,” he said. “The bigger the town, the less they see and understand nature.” And, yes, he said, LSD, which he calls his “problem child,” could help reconnect people to the universe.

Rounding a century, Mr. Hofmann is physically reduced but mentally clear. He is prone to digressions, ambling with pleasure through memories of his boyhood, but his bright eyes flash with the recollection of a mystical experience he had on a forest path more than 90 years ago in the hills above Baden, Switzerland. The experience left him longing for a similar glimpse of what he calls “a miraculous, powerful, unfathomable reality.”

The buildings category was looking neglected, but fortunately Kieron stumbled upon BLDGBLOG, which links me to this: “speculative architectural designs of Alexander Brodsky and Ilya Utkin, which included this insane kind of bio-architectural hedge-bridge. Houses growing atop houses.”

…amongst other wonders. (I’m allowed to say amongst on my own blog, right?)

With the kind permission of the editor of PC GAMER UK, Mark Donald, I am reproducing the text from my account of a trip to South Korea in April 2005. It’s an in-depth look at the Korean gaming culture, charting both its wonders and its problems as I encountered them.

Sex, Fame and PC Baangs: How the Orient plays host to PC gaming’s strangest culture.

Seoul, South Korea. To a fanfare of Asian nu-metal and the sound of a thousand screaming fans, a young Korean man enters a dazzling arena. Like an American wrestler at the heart of a glitter-glazed Royal Rumble, he strides down a ramp towards the stage. Adorned in what appears to be a space suit and a large white cape, he heads out to meet his opponent on the stadium’s ziggurat focus. Amid a blaze of flashbulbs and indoor fireworks he climbs the steps, and is exulted by the thronging crowd. Only twenty years old, and with no less than half a dozen TV cameras tracking his progress, this bizarre figure seems to be unfazed by his predicament. Diligently he waves to the crowd. Continue reading

Amusing faux-advertisment-as-advertisment video from 1st Avenue Machine: http://www.1st-ave-machine.com/video/1stavepro.htm (Fairly large, annoyingly embedded Quicktime.)

Intelligent discourse and news site 3QuarksDaily has published a round-up list of their past year of original essay writing, with seventeen essays on a wide range of philosophical, cultural and scientific topics written by the volunteer staff. Some of them even mention the Naughties buzz-topic of videogame economics, and that Rockstar game.

This chap has been making model railways with scenery based on the neglected freight districts of New Jersey.

“The LED lights mounted in the pavement change colour in a 10-minute cycle from blue, to red, to green with every shade in between,” said Isabel Watson, of the council’s economic development department. “The theory is that anything that gives you a positive feeling at night will reduce aggression and anti-social behaviour.”