Sebastian Junger: Why veterans miss war. The Mystery of Bouvet Island. The Most Secretive Book in History. Image Credit: The Beinecke Rare Book & Manuscript Library, Digital Studio.
Mark Twain's Fascinating Letter To Walt Whitman. The following is an excerpt from Letters of Note: An Eclectic Collection of Correspondence Deserving of a Wider Audience, compiled by Shaun Usher [Chronicle Books, $40.00].
Walt Whitman, “the father of free verse” and one of the great American poets, in 1855 published Leaves of Grass. Untitled. American Icons: Superman. 1000 Books In 10 Years: Vol. 386: The Great Gatsby, by F. Scott Fitzgerald Literary Ramblings Literary Ramblings. F.
Scott Fitzgerald Matthew J. I’m leaving Mojang I don’t see myself as a real game developer.
I make games because it’s fun, and because I love games and I love to program, but I don’t make games with the intention of them becoming huge hits, and I don’t try to change the world. Minecraft certainly became a huge hit, and people are telling me it’s changed games. I never meant for it to do either. It’s certainly flattering, and to gradually get thrust into some kind of public spotlight is interesting. A relatively long time ago, I decided to step down from Minecraft development.
I was at home with a bad cold a couple of weeks ago when the internet exploded with hate against me over some kind of EULA situation that I had nothing to do with. Gamer proposes with a Skyrim enchanted item. A video gamer introduced to The Elder Scrolls 5: Skyrim by his girlfriend proposed to her in the most appropriately Skyrim way possible: with a real-world representation of the item that enables marriage within the game.
Sarah Briody received the "Amulet of Mara" from her fiancé. In the game, the amulet unlocks special dialogue options, including the ability to marry other characters. What's a first book? You'll know it when you've written it. The Chicago Reader Browse News & Politics Browse Music Browse Film Browse Arts & Culture Browse Food & Drink.
24 Things We Learned from the ‘Lego Movie’ Commentary. Warner Bros.
With the release of The LEGO Movie on DVD and Blu-ray this week, we’re taking a look behind the scenes of the movie with the cast and crew. Gamescom 2014: The Sun Will Burn Out Before You See All of No Man’s Sky. 2k Seeing everything in No Man's Sky will take over five billion years.
By Tal BlevinsWhile showing off No Man’s Sky at Gamescom this week, Hello Games co-founder Sean Murray took some time to explain the vastness of the procedurally-generated universe in the game. In the early days of development, the team was using a 32-bit number to generate all the planets in the universe. It seemed like plenty at the time, and as Sean told us, “with that 32-bit number it would take you four or five thousand years to see every planet if you spent only a second on each one.”
However, the team wasn’t satisfied with that level of cosmic scale and wanted to go even further, partially in response to message board threads saying there’s no way No Man’s Sky universe can be truly infinite because all technology has a limitation. Nintendo, Sony, and Microsoft Have You in the Palms of their Hands. [This is a guest post from one of our senior forum moderators, Matt Costello.
Get to know him in person on the forums. (Mattavelle1)]+ I have a theory. Just a theory, but bear with me. This theory of mine is more about control, money, and manipulation than anything else (but I’ll run the gauntlet, as this involves many interrelated topics) About 6 months ago, I went to visit my in-laws, wife and child in tow. No girls allowed. First-person shooters, action games and sports games have been popular among boys ever since the early '90s.
In 2012, the three categories combined were responsible for 58.8 percent of video game sales in North America. They're easily some of the most visible kinds of games, lining the shelves at retailers and appearing on television screens any time a story about video games makes the news. But not everyone buys the idea that games have become the realm of males. "I've always known there were some games and genres that attracted a heavier male audience than others, like shooters for instance," says. The FBI files on being and nothingness. From 1945 onwards, J Edgar Hoover’s FBI spied on Camus and Sartre. The investigation soon turned into a philosophical inquiry… Has David Birnbaum solved the mystery of existence?
In the summer of 2012, a number of philosophers at British and American universities received a bulky, unmarked package in the post. It contained a 560-page book, written in English but with the Latin title Summa Metaphysica, by an amateur whose name they didn't recognise: David Birnbaum. It isn't unusual for philosophy departments to get mail from cranks, convinced they have solved the riddle of existence, but they usually send stapled print-outs, or handwritten letters; Summa Metaphysica stood out "for its size and its glossiness", says Tim Crane, a professor of philosophy at Cambridge.
The book was professionally typeset. It even included endorsements from Claude Lévi-Strauss, the legendary French anthropologist, who described it as "remarkable and profound", and from the Princeton physicist John Wheeler, who once collaborated with Einstein. It would later transpire that 40,000 copies were in circulation, a print run any academic philosopher might kill for. Gaming Company Fined $1M for Turning Customers Into Secret Bitcoin Army. Image: Valve A gaming software company has been slapped with a $1 million fine after secretly adding bitcoin mining software to a product update earlier this year.
The history and future of cool: What does the term mean in 2013? Left three photos courtesy of Wikimedia Commons. Right photo byMerrick Morton/Columbia TriStar Marketing Group, Inc. Part 1 of a monthlong series on the history and future of cool. How Many of Your Memories Are Fake? - Erika Hayasaki. One afternoon in February 2011, seven researchers at the University of California, Irvine sat around a long table facing Frank Healy, a bright-eyed 50-year-old visitor from South Jersey, taking turns quizzing him on his extraordinary memory. The Longest Joke in the World. The Present - Universal Truth - The Ultimate Truth. Cortana digital assistant reportedly launching with Windows Phone 8.1... in the U.S.
In the last week or so, details have emerged describing 'Cortana', Microsoft's upcoming digital assistant that aims to offer the kind of voice interaction and interrogation features found in Apple's Siri, with the intelligent context-aware capabilities of Google Now. It's believed that Microsoft eventually intends to integrate the service into all of its major products, including the Windows OS family and the new Xbox One. The Egg.