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Bulwer Lytton
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1–2 minutes·
The reliably humorous winners of the 2002 Bulwer Lytton contest for worst opening sentence for a novel. Also, check out the 2001 Lyttle Lytton contest winners, which limits the sentence length to 25 words.
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American TV
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1–2 minutes·
2 comments on American TVYesterday, I read an article at the Guardian about Big Brother 3 in the UK, which among other things mentioned that Channel 4’s editing of the primetime programmes results in a drastically skewed view of the contestants. I thought, “Well, obviously.” Then last night, while watching Big Brother 2 here in the US (I see…
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Rereadability
Having just read three novels, I’ve come up with a theory about the quality of books. Namely, if a book withstands rereading at least once, it’s probably good. Additionally, if a book that reads well initially does not lend itself to rereading, it may not be as good as your initial impressions gave it. I…
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Work
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1–2 minutes·
Things at work are proceeding along fairly smoothly. I’ve been running the first set of subjects on my pilot experiment during the last couple of days and processing the results (too early to tell whether they’re ‘good’ or not). Probably the most exciting thing that’s happened around here was a BBC crew interviewing the head…
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A Blog Too Far
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1–2 minutes·
The Guardian has just launched a competition for the ‘Best British Blog’. As far as I know, it’s the most lucrative competition of its type ever, with a £1500 prize fund. I, like many others, believe that this isn’t a good idea. It fosters an uncomfortable kind of competition in an area that doesn’t need…
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Synaesthesia
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3–4 minutes·
People might be wondering what it is that I’m doing in San Diego, beyond my rather nebulous description of ‘research’. Right now I’m working in the research labs of V. S. Ramachandran at the University of California, San Diego Center for Human Information Processing on an experiment to investigate an interesting condition called synaesthesia. Synaesthesia…
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A Tale in the Desert
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1–2 minutes·
A Tale in the Desert – a massively multiplayer online roleplaying game with no combat, no monsters, no swords and no armour. Sounds interesting? It is.
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A Push Too Far
ABC and LivePlanet will be offering the world’s second major commercial TV-mmoe in the form of Push, Nevada, premiering on September 12th, 2002. What’s distinctive about Push, Nevada is not the names behind it, or the storyline – it’s the seven figure prize it’s offering to viewers.
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DX2
I recently wrote a post in ARGN about the question of interactivity in mmoe-type games. Basically, I say that interactivity with respect to altering the story is overrated. Warren Spector, the designer of Thief and Deus Ex, both groundbreaking games when it comes to player interactivity, said in Edge that he wanted Deus Ex 2…
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Food
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1–2 minutes·
There’s an interesting thing about food in America. I was expecting food to be quite a bit cheaper here than in the UK. Instead, the prices are essentially the same, but you end up getting an incredible amount more, maybe double the portions in the UK. So this means you end up with the somewhat…
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