• Scramble Stuff — Why Scramble?
  'Scramble is here to rescue you from flying skulls, winged skulls, flying winged skulls with top hats on, minotaurs, bulging muscle man, dragons with flying skulls and top hats on them, flying minotaurs with winged skulls and flames, and all the other crap that infests the visual side of the MMA world.

  I lived for many years in Japan, where I was exposed to some of the coolest designs I've ever seen. They were bright, bold, fresh, and sophisticated in their simplicity. Barely a rippling muscle or a pumped-up minotaur-dragon in sight.

  T-shirts are emblazoned with barely-English slogans and large, bright characters. At first, I laughed at this English. Wanted to correct it. But now, I realise. It has taken on a life of its own. In the same way that a single, deft brush stroke can inspire the image of a swaying tree or a rippling lake in your mind, so a slightly off Engrish slogan can stir up thoughts and capture an idea better than a perfect sentence can.'

  Sorely needed.

  (tags: clothing nifty sports martial.arts)
• Large Hadron Collider ready to restart – The Big Picture – Boston.com
  It's quite "high science," but it's nice to see that it's still made from nuts, bolts, and pipes like many other things.
  (tags: nifty photo science tecmologies)
• Gamasutra: Greg Costikyan's Blog – Randomness: Blight or Bane?
  'And yet, if you look under the hood (that is, at the source code) you'll find that weapon damage in FPSes is partly random; typically, weapons do some set amount of damage (X) plus some additional amount of damage determined randomly and linearly between 0 and another factor (Y).'

  I had no idea.

  A very good article overall on players' expectations and the role of randomness.

  This fact isn't normally perceptible to players, who may assume that any variation in damage is a consequence of variation in accuracy or range; and indeed, in actual play, the randomness of FPS damage has little impact on ultimate outcomes.'

  (tags: surprising video.games game.design)
• Three mile desert of Chinese food on Mass Ave around Harvard | limeduck
  (tags: boston food restaurant review reference)
• Greatest board game cover of all time?
  (tags: nfity humor.unintentional Poland games.board art)
• Playing with weather stirs debate in China – Yahoo! News
  'Chinese scientists artificially induced the second major snowstorm to wreak havoc in Beijing this season, state media said, reigniting debate over the practice of tinkering with Mother Nature.
  After the earliest snow to hit the capital in 22 years fell on November 1, the capital was again shrouded in white Tuesday with more snow expected in the coming three days, the National Meteorological Centre said.'
  (tags: whoa weird science nature weather)

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