January 2005

Video Gamaes

Water Cooler Games is a site about video games with an agenda. It is about games that go beyond entertainment. Water Cooler Games explores the emerging field of games want to do more than simply being fun: they want to make a point, share knowledge, change opinions. This includes new genres such as advergaming, newsgaming, political games, simulations and edutainment. If you think that video games have a strong potential for communication, persuasion and education, come and join our discussion by the Water Cooler. You can navigate the website thru right and left columns, middle of right columm is categories of games.

Politics as unusual
December 13, 2004   Console & PC Games,   Political Games

Last week, China banned the seemingly prosaic game Soccer Manager 2005 because it depicted Taiwan, Hong Kong, Macau, and Tibet as countries, and thus "harmed China's sovereignty and territorial integrity," according to a Chinese news service.

This week, South Korea’s media rating board announced that it will not approve Tom Clancy's Ghost Recon 2. The game apparently features commando missions in a war-torn 2007 North Korea, implying a very near-term military conflict in the region.

What’s interesting about these examples is that they undeniably affirm the fact that games function politically, even games (e.g. Soccer Manager) that we would generally not consider political at all. It’s disappointing that game publishers continue to hide behind their desks when confronted with this fact. According to the Gamespot article, Ghost Recon publisher Ubisoft made this statement in defense of the game .....

Song Parodies

CyberParodies are funny song parodies that you listen to free on the internet. Be sure to listen to Double Diet, a parody of "Picture" - hit song by Kid Rock and Sheryl Crow.

Double Diet

I live on burgers, Cheetos, and ice cream
Got nothing but lard in my blood stream
Guess my sweet tooth was something more than a phase
Been fueling up on cupcakes and Twinkies
Gained so much weight my girl left me
She said to call her if I ever change my ways

Body Language

The Center for Nonverbal Studies is a private, nonprofit research center located in Spokane, Washington. The Center is committed to the idea that, for a deeper understanding of "who we are" and "what it means to be human," more attention should be paid to our nonverbal nature. Areas of special interest include body movement, gesture, facial expression, adornment and fashion, landscape architecture, mass media, and consumer-product design. All of our senses--balance, hearing, smell, sight, space, taste, time, and touch--are channels for nonverbal cues. Set aside time to view the nonverbal dictioary of gestures, signs and body language cues.

Smile

Media:  1. "So, there’s the 1984 study that found that ABC News anchor Peter Jennings was more likely to smile on camera when talking about Ronald Reagan than Walter Mondale, and that in the same year the people who watched ABC News voted for Reagan in greater proportions than the people who watched other network-news shows".:  2. "Who has the most coveted smile in Hollywood? ’Twenty years ago, everyone wanted a smile like Farrah Fawcett’s,’ says Dr. Irving Smigel, a New York dentist who created the Supersmile product line . . . and has worked on Calvin Klein and Johnny Depp.’'Now most of my patients mention Julia Roberts. Her mouth is very feminine’ ".

Supermarket mandatory smile. In the late 1990s, Safeway, the second largest supermarket chain in the U.S., instructed its store employees to smile and greet customers with direct eye contact. In 1998, USA Today ("Safeway’s Mandatory Smiles Pose Danger, Workers Say") reported that 12 female employees had filed grievances over the chain’s smile-and-eye-contact policy, after numerous male customers reportedly had propositioned them for dates. Commenting on the grievances, a Safeway official stated, "We don’t see it [the males’ sexual overtures] as a direct result of our initiative."

Smiley face. The yellow "smiley face," a popular graphic symbol designed by commercial artist Harvey Ball in the early 1960s, has become a universal sign of happiness. Its color is associated with the brightness of the sun (see COLOR CUE). According to his son, Charlie Ball, Harvey ". . . understood the power of it (the smiley face) and was enormously proud of it [even though others, rather than Ball, profited financially from the design]. He left this world with no apologies and no regrets, happy to have this as his legacy". Designed to enhance the Worcester, Mass.-based State Mutual Life Assurance company’s "friendship campaign," to bolster employee morale, the smiley face took Ball about 10 minutes to complete. "Fearing that a grumpy employee would turn the smile upside down into a frown, he [Ball] added the eyes".

Tech Guide

Mens Health has an online version of their tech guide for 2005: new products that will improve your life. Wires unraveled explains the different cables used for hookups.

SonigCast Aireo Wireless Internet MP3 Player

There are more than 1,000 MP3 players on the market, but this one--from a Minnesota company that employs just 12 people--does something no other can: It connects wirelessly to your PC, swapping songs via an 802.11b Wi-Fi connection. Better yet, it can wirelessly download music directly from the Internet. It’s clearly the future of MP3s, so much so that we have to think Apple, iRiver, and others are reverse-engineering it as we write this. The first Aireo debuted in January, but had only 1.5 gigabytes of cargo room. We've fallen hard for version 2.0, a 20-gigabyte model that’s 25 percent slimmer. $200 (est.).

Pink Martini

Pink Martini is a 12-piece group that plays a mixture of lounge jazz, classical and Cuban dance. They have two albums out that can be heard in their entirity by clicking the yellow radio. It will bring up a small second window, well worth listening to. A bio page of singer China Forbes, band was greatly influence by the music of Edith Piaf. Snip below is an intersting tidbit that I did not know. James Taylor has a holiday album out distributed thru Hallmark Cards. You can download the song "River", which was written by Joni Mitchell. From this page you can listen to or save some songs of guitarist Eric Johnson.

She wrote her signature song, La Vie en Rose, in the middle of the German occupation in World War II. During this time, she was in great demand and very successful. Singing for high-ranking Germans at the One Two Two Club earned Édith Piaf the right to pose for photos with French prisoners of war, ostensibly as a morale-boosting exercise. Once in possession of their celebrity photos, prisoners were able to cut out their own images and use them in forged papers as part of escape plans. Today, Édith Piaf’s association with the French Resistance is well known and many owe their lives to her. After the war, Édith toured Europe, the United States, and South America, becoming an internationally known figure.

Legacies

Local Legacies are events, crafts, customs, or activities that represents traditional community life. In 2000, members of Congress and communities across the country documented more than 1,300 Local Legacies. Participants sent photographs, reports, and sound and video recordings to the Library of Congress’s American Folklife Center, where they will be preserved and shared for generations to come. Local Legacies was a project designed to involve Americans nationwide in the celebration of the Library's 200th birthday in 2000. The America's Library Web site is presenting a selection of these projects.

Roanoke, Alabama: Home of the Ella Smith Doll

During its prime, a doll factory in Roanoke, Alabama, operated by Ella Gauntt Smith, produced ten thousand of her dolls each year. The dolls are known by several names: Alabama Baby, Alabama Indestructible Doll, Roanoke Doll, or Ella Smith Doll.

Ms. Smith, a skilled seamstress, especially skilled in embroidery and lace-making, was also an amateur photographer who enjoyed traveling and watching movies. In December 1897, Verna Pittman, a neighbor girl, brought her broken bisque doll to Mrs. Smith for repairs. Smith experimented for two years before she successfully made the repairs: She poured the head full of plaster, covered it was a scrap of stockinette, and then repainted the features. She sewed the head onto the body and replaced the wig. The indestructible Ella Smith Doll had been born. In 1901, Mrs. Smith received the first patent on her doll (in her husband's name - as women could not be granted patents at that time), and in 1904 went to the St. Louis Exposition (World's Fair), where she won a blue ribbon with her dolls. Smith was always experimenting with her dolls, always making improvements, so that her creations were constantly evolving.

Smith was the first dollmaker in the South to manufacture black dolls, which made up approximately 10 percent of her production. With a hymn-singing parrot on her shoulder, she worked in a locked room on the second floor of a doll factory which her husband had built for her. Eventually she employed approximately 10-12 women, instructing them in how to mold the heads from a heavy fleece-lined fabric, cut the bodies, arms and legs from strong cotton, apply the flesh-colored paint, and paint the doll's features: hair, lips, and eyes. After an unfortunate business deal, Smith’s doll company was sued and had to pay a sizeable settlement. This took a toll on her already poor health -- she suffered from diabetes and kidney disease -- and Ella Smith died in April 1932.

Cycling

The Institute and Museum of the History of Science, located in Florence Italy: has a Cycling thru Time exhibition. Here is the index page of their online exhibits, which covers many different topics. Unfortunately, some are in italian only. Thru experimentation Evangelista Torricelli proved that air has weight and the existence of a vacuum. Another good science museum website is exploratorium, which explains the science of cycling, which is part of the sport science exhibit. Oh, you sing in the shower - find out how it acts like a low tech sound mixer that modifies your voice.

Women and Bicycles

If riding high-wheeled bicycles was a mark of virility and physical fitness for men, in Victorian Britain it was generally held to be unsuitable for women to be seen on bicycles. The position, the clothes’ movements while mounting or dismounting and the easy - and acrobatic - falls, were all at odds with Victorian prudery. Makers proposed fanciful alternatives for lady cyclists: from bicycles with both pedals on one side, to tricycles, to "dicycles" with big parallel wheels. It was with the invention of the chain transmission that wheel diameters finally began to shrink, yet, the clothing problem remained. Stylists launched the so-called "rational dress" for female cyclists: it consisted of long trousers, wide above the knee and tight at the ankle, suitably covered by an overcoat that was short enough not to prevent the use of pedals and yet long enough not to reveal the legs.

Tamin Ansary

Tamin Ansary is a columnist for Encarta, also an author and lecturer. He has written a 5 page column on Conspiracy Theory: Who is Controlling History? Wikipedia further examines the concept of conspiracy theory. I find it a complex topic because one has to be familiar with the history of the times to understand how or why the conspiracy developed. Abovetopsecret is a popular forum and conspiracy resource.

The banking heresy
Thus, the Knights Templar evolved into some of the first major international bankers. At the same time, however, operating as they were in a region where Judaism, Christianity, and Islam overlapped, they developed cosmopolitan views that could not safely be expressed in Europe. Therefore, the Knights Templar became somewhat private, even secretive, in their social dealings.

Many European kings ended up heavily indebted to the Knights Templar. In 1306, one king, Philip IV of France, hit upon a plan for "retiring his debt." He accused the Knights Templar of heresy, of worshipping a pagan god, and of using supernatural powers to cause all the bad things happening in France, from crop failures to epidemics. Credulous peasants embraced this superstitious yet highly convenient explanation of their miseries.

One Friday the 13th, King Philip had all the Templars arrested, netting as many as 15,000 on that single day. He tortured the leaders into confessing all manner of sins, then executed them and confiscated their wealth.

But bad things didn’t stop happening. Crops still failed. People still got sick. In fact, the 14th century turned into one of the most disastrous in European history. Rumors sprang up that the Knights Templar had reorganized under a new name. Suspicion eventually fell upon the Freemasons, a fraternal order much like the Elks or Oddfellows of today. Their members were flirting with such dangerous ideas as "all men are created equal" and "reason is better than blind faith." The Masons, some said, were really the Knights Templar in disguise.

Patent Pending

PatentPending is a blog about inventions and technology.

Fulton’s Airphibian

After WWII, America was certain that a new age of science and technology would make flying cars an everyday event.  Several flying cars were made, but they all had the worst of both worlds. They were lame airplanes, which converted to lame automobiles.  Any airplane that had to carry a automobile wheels, suspension, and drive train, is going to be a lame airplane.  The first to get CAA certification was the Airphibian, made by Robert Fulton.

It was designed to be a fully functional, if somewhat lame, automobile, which converts to a fully functional, if somewhat lame, airplane.  However, the idea sure sounds fun, and one wonders if current technology could produce an updated Airphibian with better performance.

The Airphibian was designed by Robert Fulton Jr. in 1945, and was intended to fly into an airport, drop the propeller, wings and tail, and drive into town from the airport.

Museums

If you are taking a trip and plan to visit museums on the way, museumca.org has an index of online museums in the USA. I have not seen any of the museums in Alabama, but plan to visit the one in Mobile. I have visited the Tuskegee museum (legends). Here is a listing of museums around the world.

National Historic Site - Alabama

Since the beginning of America’s existence, education has always been considered as one of the keys to social, political and economical acceptance for African Americans. Tuskegee Normal School was established by the state of Alabama, influenced by a former slave and a former slave owner to educate newly freed people and their children. The Normal school, later Institute, became a beacon of hope for African Americans to reach their goal of acceptance. The school officially opened on July 4, 1881 in the African American Methodist Episcopal Zion Church under the auspices of religion. This date was chosen to commemorate the independence of a Nation and the freedom of a forgotten people. Booker T. Washington became the first principal of a newly formed school at the age of twenty-six. He later hired individuals like George W. Carver and Robert Taylor to help lead the institute to its world-renowned status. Today, the legacy of Washington, Carver and many others has been preserved in the Historic Campus District of Tuskegee University where original buildings constructed by the students, from bricks made in the Institute brickyard still stand. The Site, located on the campus of present day Tuskegee University, became a part of the National Park System in 1974.

Greeting Cards

Riversongs is a unique greeting card site, highly recommended if you send online cards to friends. A friend sent me this xmas card and that’s how I found out about the site. I don't send greeting cards, feel sites are just building up an email database - then sell the addy listing. I may be skeptical and wrong, but most free sites turn commercial. Five years ago, all greeting card sites were free.