Okay, so Weta makes rayguns. They even sell them.

20 July 06 - "When I received my ManMelter for use on my trip to the rain forests of Vasplurgia, I blew my left leg off at the hip. Marvelous invention!"
-Major. Alfred Beardlington

See?

(Now go check out their website and look at all the cool pictures.)

Apparently water can read and has emotions. --> Linky!

Okay, so only one thing. But it was funny!

Pong is amusing, but Space Invaders? Out of this world. (Watch to see what I'm talking about.)

EDIT: Link updated

http://improbable.com/2006/05/29/chickenegg-theory-vs-experiment/

Which came first, the chicken or the egg? A recent theoretical debate has come to the opposite conclusion of the existing experimental datum.

An amusing read, if only for the experiment.

The first Super Smash Bros. Brawl [SSB for the Wii] trailer is out. I am told the the below are high-res copies:

Quicktime:
http://trailers.gametrailers.com/gt_vault/t_supersmashbros_brawl_e36_h264.mov

Windows Media Player:
http://trailers.gametrailers.com/gt_vault/t_supersmashbros_brawl_e36_h264.wmv

As for new characters, there's a "WTF?" character, a "WTFBBQ?" character, and an "OMGWTFBBQ?" character, but I won't say anything else in order to not spoil the surprise.

After the product description, go read the English text on large product picture.
This is not entirely the same text.
Right, then.
Appropriate for the end of this list, yes?

I'll have a more substantive update when I'm more awake.

For the sake of simplicity, I will now quote from an e-mail by Jonathan Elcock, a member of the Committee for the Advancement of Role-Playing Games (as am I):

Some researchers from the University of Ohio have put up an online questionniare intended to survey the motivations of people who role play, war game, board game and play CCGs up at www.gamesurvey.org. This will take you to
http://research.comm.ohio-state.edu/projects/bguillory/gamer/gamersurvey.htm but www.gamersurvey.org is easier to publicise.

There has been some discussion of the survey both at rpg.net (http://forum.rpg.net/showthread.php?t=261805) and on the forums of the Wargamer, who are co-funding the research alongside GAMA [the Game Manufacturers Association](http://www.wargamer.com/forums/tm.asp?m=168268&mpage=1&key=).

As I said on the forums at rpg.net, I think there are some issues with the questionniare but recognise that there is some potential for usefulness coming from the research.

I would encourage those reading this who qualify (i.e., hobby gamers) to participate in this survey.

As happens most months, Doki Doki Productions has posted a list of jokes, videos, &c. As happens most months, I've gone through them to find the two or three that are actually funny and that my friends might like.

For you video-gamers, prerecorded from 4chan, it's Video Game Rocks!

For some reason, someone went through way too much trouble to make a trailer for Titanic Two. I'm more entertained by their skill than with the actual content, but still.

And, finally, a guy in a suit covered in squeezebulb horns plays classical music that invariably devolves into something silly. (I'd have a better title for it, but the guy's speaking in French, so I have no clue what he refers to it as. Some people call it "toot toot.")

http://www.girlgeniusonline.com/cgi-bin/ggmain.cgi [May 1st, 2006 page for those of you reading this Wednesday or later]

Fun for all, especially those who know the meaning of "dungeon crawl."

Two charged in beating of 16-year-old boy outside party in Houston suburb

"Two teenagers severely beat and sodomized a 16-year-old boy who they believed had tried to kiss a 12-year-old girl at a party, authorities said."

"A police officer said investigators believe the attack was prompted by the age gap between the beating victim and the girl."

"'It's about 50-50 whether he lives or dies at this point.'"


Texas teens won't face hate-crime charges

More details about the attack.


If you don't know why I'm posting this, don't ask and don't comment.

I know that a lot of my friends are apolitical, and some of the political ones are conservative. However, most of you believe in Network Neutrality, even if you don't know what it is. If you're reading this, you're online, and that means that you're benefitting from it. I don't want to pay to have to use sites like this or Google because the sites have to pay AT&T et al. in order to be have their pages accessible by the ISPs' customers. However, that is what is currently being pushed by those ISPs. If you believe in, y'know, being equal and being able to use the internet and all that, go here:

http://www.civic.moveon.org/save_the_internet/

http://improbable.com/2006/04/13/aiming-for-excellence/
The Annals of Improbable Research:
Our staunch allies in assassinating spammers and shooting cell-phone users.

(No, really, the article on shooting people who use cell-phones in research libraries is great. It teaches more about the history of flatulance and the use of a knife at the dinner table than you ever expected to know, while making a good case for using tasers on the cell-phone jerks.)

Elsewhere they discuss The possible effect of kittycats on floral profusion.

New userpic. Art from http://www.girlgeniusonline.com/cgi-bin/ggmain.cgi?date=20060303 / Animation by me. May use with full credits.

Finally took the fleece out of my jacket, so now it's lighter and cooler.

doki posted some amusing links in his latest entry; the ones that I think some of you might appreciate are reproduced below.
Mario, Luigi, Toad, and Peach in concert
For all Inu Yasha fans
For both yaoi and yuri fans
Snakes on a Plane fanatics only

Annals of Improbable Research, Vol. 5, No. 3, pg. 16.

An amusing send-up of a research paper, among other things. Key quote: "The referee suggested to us that the relationship between a person's fame and the number of web pages that mention that person isn't necessarily linear. However, since a linear theory is more elegant than a theory that predicts a more complicated relationship, we concluded that the linear theory must be correct."

I'm going to switch to using Google and check my own fame. Admittedly, the Google page counts are inaccurate, but Altavista no longer provides page counts that I can find. Also, I am going to search for simply "Jesus" rather than "Jesus Christ" on the grounds that He might not always be referred to by his full name. Anyone knowing a person named Jesus probably knows of Jesus Christ as well, so this will not significantly inflate the measurement.

I have given a listing for my name and/or my most common screen name, which covers more of my online presence but also covers a few people who are not me. However, those people may think that they have heard of me even when they have, in fact, heard of someone else, so perhaps they should be included. I will leave that decision up to the reader.

M. Alan Thomas II: 192 pp. / 91.9 uLw / 7680 ppl.
M. Alan Thomas II OR CrazyDreamer: 671 pp. / 321.1 uLw / 26,840 ppl.
Monica Lewinsky: 2,090,000 pp. / 1 Lw / 83,600,000 ppl.
Jesus: 125,000,000 pp. / 59.8 Lw / 5,000,000,000 ppl. (assumed)

http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/James_Nicoll
(especially the first one)