A Hail of Bullets

I've got some things I wanted to talk to you about. No, wait, it's nothing like that! Sorry, I didn't mean to make this sound like a break-up conversation. We're not breaking up. Things have been great with you, they really have! I just wanted to bring some stuff to your attention is all. I don't have too too much time to do it, though, so I've resorted to using drive-by bullet points. Hit the dirt!

• John Madden is hanging up the mike. I'm not sure how this affects the business at large, given his perhaps waning relevance. But sports fans will certainly miss him (quote Johnsen, who just found out looking over my shoulder: "Awww, now I hate football"). The guy's a legend. Heck, even I, living on the frozen Isle of Sportlessness, will regret his absence.
• Big Sam is back in town. Boston just got a little drunker.
• In what could be the only argument ever to be made against spam blockers, I was very nearly denied one of the most magical subject lines ever written: "Paris Hilton Pees Like Men"
  
• The pundits are all abuzz concerning ASU's shafting Obama on an honorary degree. I assume my readers are like-minded souls, and agree with me that this is at least somewhat disgraceful. The best reaction I've read so far comes from Marc Lamont Hill:"Barack Obama holds earned degrees from Columbia and Harvard, published two best-selling books, was the first black editor of Harvard Law Review, became the third black man elected to the Senate since Reconstruction, and, last I checked, was president of the United States. Barring an unexpected attempt to play point guard for the Washington Wizards, I think Obama has pretty much blown his load on the achievement side of things."
• Allow me one serious link (and a work-related plug) before I move onto yet greater depths of geekitude. Helen Benedict, the author of the linked NYT article, is a voice that I feel needs to be heard. She's an observer and critic of the war in Iraq who has written a book for Beacon Press concerning, specifically, the military's systemic misogyny and the horrific treatment of its female soldiers. She follows the stories of five women and their experiences, from enlistment through Iraq and back again. Her work is intelligent and heartbreaking, and, in my eyes, belongs with the likes of Chris Hedges.
  
• Super geekitude! (Note: Mute before watching, or be subjected to god-awful synth music)
  

  This video might not look like much, until you realize how it was rendered: it's procedurally generated video, meaning your computer's CPU and GPU create what you're seeing on-the-fly. In layman's terms, it is your computer creating art through math, all by itself. The benefits to this mode of production are two-fold: It obviates the armies of artists that are usually required to create the textures that go into digital world-building and it takes virtually no disk space. Do you know how large the file is that rendered that video? 4k. That's about the size of the text document I've just written. Pretty impressive.
  

• Because Mauro seemed to like the Braid artwork, here's another game that will knock you on your artist's cheeks: Scary Girl. I didn't find it overly entertaining, sadly, but it's incredibly slick and imaginative, full of characters I'd expect to see on Emily's handbag or some such hip thing.