The Polyphonic Spree

A beautiful puzzle game being used to promote a band`s music. Click on things to get your people through.

The Unfinished Swan

A video of an interesting new game called The Unfinished Swan.




And a bit of propaganda from the Obama campaign. It was done by a local group but is quite compelling:

Tuvan Rapper

I have always had a soft spot for Tuvan throat singers. Here is a Tuvan throat rapper. Works.

Good video of Obama talking to a small business owner

Rolling Stone`s profile of the "make believe maverick"

"McCain says his life changed while he was in Vietnam, and he is now a different man. But he's still the undisciplined, spoiled brat that he was when he went in," says the Vietnam war hero and former USAF chief war planner in Europe John Dramesi.

Actually, the article is soft on McCain on a few factual points relating to his record.

Something about this photo

Obama preparing before the first debate.
Understated. Something to show children trying to study.

The mechanical Turk

You can get all kinds of things done using this.

I had to laugh at this...

I was looking for a site to explain Japanese address formats. I came across this helpful post. It was not exactly what I needed, but the way it introduced itself entertained me greatly. I suppose my reaction relates to my Ron`s Nihonjin observations (a project which I seem to have dropped, by the way):

Japanese addresses reflect the primacy of the group in Japan.
They proceed from the general (the prefecture, or Japan itself for mail to Japan) to the particular (the addressee).

I just love the pervasiveness of this foreigners` language of packaging up just about every experience in Japan in these crap descriptive ideologies. Even in addressing conventions, people can find evidence for this stuff (or, rather, they simply have to apply the ideology, which has no need for evidence and does not rely on it). I am sure some Japanese old choffer has written something like this, but that of course is only evidence that Japanese old choffer writers of the "Nihonjinron" school are notorious bullshitters. I just can't help thinking that, rather than reflecting "the primacy of the group in Japan", this might be rather better understood as simply another (the other?) logical way to order an address from which very little can be concluded.

In case you missed them...

The full speeches by Bill Clinton, Al Gore and Barack Obama at the Democratic convention.

Map

US military presence abroad.

The candidates on evil

Thoughtful.

A very interesting new game.

Braid. Unfortunately, only for the Xbox 360.

End of malls. A new urbanism?

Mall culture is, apparently, dying and something is rising in its place.

(First I had heard of this. In Japan, they are still largely pre-mall. I am always wondering why they don't just build a big mall and make our shopping a lot easier. Anyway, we buy more and more stuff online, so I suppose they might just skip the mall stage.)