Content covering the intersection between technology and culture.

The Neuroscience of McGriddles

Sometimes you crave a McGriddle but rationally know you shouldn’t be having one. Don’t worry though. This is natural. Well, your craving is. Not the McGriddle. It just manipulates your nature. Deep down you want to be fat. You like being fat. You’re only human. Its, to paraphrase, “a side effect of human evolution” that you crave the McGriddle and even if it didn’t make you fat,...

Review: Fable 2

Role playing games have a long and celebrated history. They often elicit strong attachment from their players and can become thoroughly engrossing as players learn to identify with their avatar and develop a personal attachment to this alternate personification of themselves. The problem is that as deep as these games can be they can also be somewhat complicated and forbidding. Not all players want to study...

The Currency of Currency

Maxim (of all media outlets) has an entertaining piece listing seven currencies from video games which are worth more than the real world U.S. Dollar. This list is surely incomplete as an exhaustive one would probably be in the thousands of items. They even go so far as to outline their rational for comparing fantasy currencies to real world currencies. This is as much a commentary on the economies of video games as...

Comparing Oranges and Architecutre

Michelle Kaufmann’s blog has a writeup on a little idea regarding architecture, performance rating, and you. It introduces an idea about labeling paralleling the reasons for which we standardize nutrition information labels on food then applying those reasons for labeling architecture in order to communicate specific performance issues. This idea definitely has legs and could be elaborated on much more than...

The Royal Mint gets with the program

They’ve just unveiled their new designs over at the royal mint – the result of a big competition. The winning designs are by Matthew Dent from London England. The resulting coinage doesn’t look too bad though they may look dated before long. They should have been producing coins like this twenty or thirty years ago. Should coinage look timeless? What of tradition – is it over rated? Never the...
Page 2 of 612345...Last »