The Gothamist has a nice little interview with Ira Glass, the host of my favourite radio show/podcast This American Life, that I recommend you check out.
Categories
Category: article
Categories
Dibbell on Chinese Gold Farms
Julian Dibbell has an interesting article in the New York Times about China’s growth industry: gold farming.
Gold farming is the term used to describe playing Massive Multiplayer Online Games (MMO’s) to collect gold and other valuables and then sell them for real world currency. Though it’s not a lot to any individual worker, the amount of cash involved may surprise you.
In 2001, Edward Castronova, an economist at the University of Indiana and at the time an EverQuest player, published a paper in which he documented the rate at which his fellow players accumulated virtual goods, then used the current R.M.T. prices of those goods to calculate the total annual wealth generated by all that in-game activity. The figure he arrived at, $135 million, was roughly 25 times the size of EverQuest’s R.M.T. market at the time. Updated and more broadly applied, Castronova’s results suggest an aggregate gross domestic product for today’s virtual economies of anywhere from $7 billion to $12 billion, a range that puts the economic output of the online gamer population in the company of Bolivia’s, Albania’s and Nepal’s.
Previously: Play Money is Now Out and Professional Game Playing Conclusion.
A follow-up to the Joshua Bell violinist story I posted a couple of days ago has Washington Post staff writer Gene Weingarten answering questions about the article.
Categories
In Search of Autumn
Nick Tosches spends a year in search of the mysterious origins of his Windows desktop image: Autumn and the Plot Against Me. It’s an interesting read for all of us would-be detectives.
When I was in San Francisco last month, I came across this interesting sign outside a medical marijuana shop not far from City Hall. I didn’t really think about it much, other than the initial thought that it’s something I wouldn’t see at home, but apparently hocking medical marjuana is big business in California—so says the recent article,
Vanity Fair has written a great article about file sharing and specifically about the folks at The Pirate Bay! It’s six pages that I really enjoyed, and if you’re interested in the file sharing issue you should read it too.
Categories
Astana: the Tent City
Plans have been unveiled in Kazakhstan to build a giant 150 meter high transparent tent over its capital Astana, essentially creating an indoor city!
From the BBC article:
Underneath, in an area larger than 10 football stadiums, will be a city with squares and cobbled streets, canals, shopping centres and golf courses.
The idea is to recreate summer, so that when the outside temperature is -30C, the residents of the Kazakh capital can play outdoor tennis, take boat rides or sip coffee on the pavement cafes.
I wonder if they’ll have any problems keeping the air fresh.
Malcolm Gladwell’s New Yorker piece on predicting box office hits with algorithms relates Hollywood’s efforts to determine the value of a movie when it’s still in script form. The major problem they are facing is that with so many variables it’s hard to tell which elements are helping or hindering box office returns. It seems to boil down to the fact that in the end, “nobody knows anything about anything” or do they? As Gladwell’s works usually are, this one is a tremendously good read.
Categories
Is Osama Dead?
I’d heard the rumour floating around, but I didn’t believe it—this Reuters article (archived link), France to probe bin Laden death report leak, makes me wonder.
From the article:
France’s Defence Ministry said on Saturday a secret service report saying al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden had died could not be confirmed but said it would launch an inquiry into the leak of secret documents.
The Defence Ministry issued the statement after a French regional newspaper, L’Est Republicain, published a report quoting a French secret service report as saying Saudi Arabia is convinced al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden died of typhoid in Pakistan last month.
And this:
U.S. cannot confirm bin Laden death report
By David Morgan
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The U.S. government is unable to confirm a French newspaper report that al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden is believed to have died last month in Pakistan, the U.S. State Department said on Saturday.
“We don’t have any confirmation of those reports,” said State Department spokesman Sean McCormack.
“We have no confirmation of that report,” echoed White House spokesman Blair Jones.
A U.S. intelligence official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, came closer to an outright denial, saying Washington had no evidence to suggest the French report was true.
“We don’t have anything to support it,” the official said.
“We’ve heard these things before and have no reason to think this is any different. There’s just nothing we can point to, to say this report has any more credence than other reports we’ve seen in the past.”
The French regional daily L’Est Republicain reported that, according to a French secret service report, Saudi Arabia is convinced bin Laden died of typhoid in Pakistan in late August. The French government has said it could not confirm the report and would investigate the intelligence leak.
Media reports suggesting bin Laden was dead, seriously wounded or in ill health have surfaced periodically over the years, especially during lengthy periods of time without taped messages from the al Qaeda leader.
U.S. officials have suggested that his death would be accompanied by a surge of e-mail and telephone chatter among bereaved al Qaeda members, if not an actual announcement from the militant network.
But officials said they were not aware of any such chatter in recent weeks.
Still, a U.S. counterterrorism official, who spoke off the record, declined to completely rule out bin Laden’s death.
“It’s quite possible (that) there was some talk of this, but in terms of being able to confirm this, that I can’t do,” said the official, who declined to be identified.
A factor fuelling persistent speculation about bin Laden’s health is that he has not been seen on a new videotape since late 2004, while his second-in-command, Ayman al-Zawahri, has made a number of videotaped appearances.
But bin Laden, 49, a Saudi-born fugitive with a $25 million (13.2 million pound) price on his head, has released several audiotapes this year, which U.S. intelligence has authenticated.
His latest audiotape surfaced in July. In it, he warned Iraq’s Shi’ite majority of retaliation for attacks on Sunni Arabs and said al Qaeda would fight the United States anywhere in the world.
(Additional reporting by Sue Pleming in New York and Caren Bohan in Washington)
Categories
Rock Paper Scissors
The world’s most expensive game of Rock Paper Scissors was used to decide which of two art houses would hold an auction valued at $20 million.
I think tomorrow I’m going to find someone to have a match of paper rock scissors and will I choose rock? Too obvious—scissors all the way.
I heard that there was something like a 4% jump (I can’t remember the exact percentage—so sue me!) in the amount of times people were using rock after the Simpsons episode where Bart is thinking about his Rock Paper Scissors move against Lisa, “Good old rock, nothing beats rock.”