Atari goes to the movies

Bruno Bonnell, CEO of Atari, confirmed today that work had begun on a movie adaptation of Atari’s classic arcade game PONG. “We are all very excited to bring PONG to a new generation through the art of movie magic,” stated Bonnell in a press release.
Head writer for the screen play is Steven E. de Souza, know for other video game works such as Street Fighter and Lara Croft Tomb Raider: The Cradle of Life. Souza told Variety that “PONG is the classic story that all other video games are based on. PONG: The Official Movie of the Game will take you past the pixels.”
Few details have been released about the plot of the movie, but director Paul W.S. Anderson let a few hints slip out. “There will be awesome hand to hand combat, I can tell you that much,” blurted Anderson. “If you’ve played PONG, it will be like discovering it for the first time all over again. If you’ve never played PONG, it will be like discovering it twice. Twice much,” continued the Mortal Kombat director.
New Line Cinema head Robert K. Shaye confirmed “we are sitting on the green light button for the sequel. If PONG: The Official Move of the Game has a great opening weekend, you will be sure to see PONG: Double Agent from Hell in theaters for 2007.”
Paul Anderson let out one more bit of information to tease fans. “Antonio Banderas like you’ve never seen him before. He will play both ‘padz,’ as we’re calling them. Brothers separated at birth and trained to eliminate the other. Banderas was the only one I would consider for the job,” boasted Anderson.
Look for PONG: The Official Movie of the Game to be released in theaters for Christmas of 2006.

Way I Play – Video Game News, Reviews, and Rants » Atari goes to the movies

Judge Bars Intelligent Design

HARRISBURG, Pennsylvania — “Intelligent design” cannot be mentioned in biology classes in a Pennsylvania public school district, a federal judge said Tuesday, ruling in one of the biggest courtroom clashes on evolution since the 1925 Scopes trial.Dover Area School Board members violated the Constitution when they ordered that its biology curriculum must include the notion that life on Earth was produced by an unidentified, intelligent cause, U.S. District Judge John E. Jones III said.Several members repeatedly lied to cover their motives even while professing religious beliefs, he said.The school board policy, adopted in October 2004, was believed to have been the first of its kind in the nation.”The citizens of the Dover area were poorly served by the members of the Board who voted for the ID Policy,” Jones wrote.The board’s attorneys had said members were seeking to improve science education by exposing students to alternatives to Charles Darwin’s theory of natural selection. Intelligent-design proponents argue that it cannot fully explain the existence of complex life forms.The plaintiffs challenging the policy argued that intelligent design amounts to a secular repackaging of creationism, which the courts have already ruled cannot be taught in public schools.The Dover policy required students to hear a statement about intelligent design before ninth-grade biology lessons on evolution. The statement said Charles Darwin’s theory is “not a fact,” has inexplicable “gaps,” and refers students to an intelligent-design textbook, Of Pandas and People, for more information.Jones said advocates of intelligent design “have bona fide and deeply held beliefs which drive their scholarly endeavors” and that he didn’t believe the concept shouldn’t be studied and discussed.But, he wrote, “our conclusion today is that it is unconstitutional to teach ID as an alternative to evolution in a public school science classroom.”The controversy also divided the community and galvanized voters to oust eight incumbent school board members who supported the policy in the Nov. 8 school board election.The case is among at least a handful that have focused new attention on the teaching of evolution in the nation’s schools.Earlier this month, a federal appeals court in Georgia heard arguments over whether evolution disclaimer stickers placed in a school system’s biology textbooks were unconstitutional.A federal judge in January ordered Cobb County school officials to immediately remove the stickers, which called evolution a theory, not a fact.In November, state education officials in Kansas adopted new classroom science standards that call the theory of evolution into question.Text of the statement on “intelligent design” that Dover Area High School administrators have been reading to students at the start of biology lessons on evolution:”The Pennsylvania Academic Standards require students to learn about Darwin’s theory of evolution and eventually to take a standardized test of which evolution is a part.”Because Darwin’s theory is a theory, it continues to be tested as new evidence is discovered. The theory is not a fact. Gaps in the theory exist for which there is no evidence. A theory is defined as a well-tested explanation that unifies a broad range of observations.”Intelligent design is an explanation of the origin of life that differs from Darwin’s view. The reference book, Of Pandas and People, is available in the library along with other resources for students who might be interested in gaining an understanding of what intelligent design actually involves.”With respect to any theory, students are encouraged to keep an open mind. The school leaves the discussion of the origins of life to individual students and their families. As a standards-driven district, class instruction focuses upon preparing students to achieve proficiency on standards-based assessments.”

Wired News: Judge Bars Intelligent Design

40 drunken Santas…six geese a-laying…

Mon Dec 19, 2005
WELLINGTON (Reuters) – Forty drunken Santas rampaged through central Auckland, stealing from stores and assaulting security guards, the New Zealand Herald reported on Sunday, in a protest against the commercialization of Christmas.Police said some of the Santas threw beer bottles, one tried to climb the mooring rope of a cruise ship and a security guard was punched during the fracas.”They came in, said ‘Merry Christmas’ and then helped themselves,” convenience store staff member Changa Manakynda told the Herald, which reported the Santas also attacked a Christmas tree.The event organizer, Alex Dyer, had warned the antics would only stop when someone was arrested, said the Herald, which linked the incident to “Santarchy.”
Santarchy (www.santarchy.com) and online encyclopedia wikipedia (www.wikipedia.org) record protests going back around 10 years in the United States, with participants marking Christmas in anti-commercial manner involving street theater, pranks and public drunkenness.Police said identification was a key issue as they tried to sort out which of the 40 men and women had done what.”With a number of people dressed in the same outfit, it was difficult for any witnesses to confirm the identity of who was doing what,” Senior Sergeant Matt Rogers told Reuters.

http://today.reuters.com/PrinterFriendlyPopup.aspx?type=oddlyEnoughNews&storyID=uri:2005-12-19T135728Z_01_EIC949001_RTRUKOC_0_US-NEWZEALAND-SANTA.xml

3D Quakers.com

I have just added a few links on the Halibut Protopage to a few items of 3D Max related interest. Just look under in the light blue 3DQuakers.com box. These are a few fairly cheap video tutorials.

Who came up with the theory of six degrees of separation?

The theory that everyone in the world is separated by at most five acquaintances was first proposed in a 1929 short story by the Hungarian writer Frigyes Karinthy. The story was called “Chains,” and while the six degrees theory was a purely fictional conceit, the idea proved popular.
In 1967, psychologist Stanley Milgram tried to test the theory by sending several letters to random people in the Midwest. The letter featured the name, address, and occupation of a single person on the East Coast; participants were asked to forward the letters to the people who they thought were most likely to know the person. It took an average of five intermediaries to reach the target.
The experiment came into some scrutiny afterwards, but the results were published in Psychology Today and gave birth to the phrase “six degrees of separation.” Playwright John Guare popularized the term with his play, which later became a film starring a then up-and-coming Will Smith.
But get this — the original 1967 experiment was repeated in 2001 with email, and the same results came back! Then there’s that whole Kevin Bacon business….

Who came up with the theory of six degrees of separation?

How Agatha dunnit

20-12-2005 From: Herald Sun

IT is one mystery that Agatha Christie did not solve for her readers: what makes her books so unputdownable?Yesterday, linguists claimed the answer was a form of mind control worthy of a murderer in one of her whodunnits.The British team found that Christie used literary techniques mirroring those of hypnotherapists that have a mesmeric effect on readers.These create a physiochemical response that causes people to seek them out again and again.It could explain why Christie is the best-selling novelist of all time – with an estimated two billion copies of her books in print – and makes it possible to establish a mathematic formula for writing a page-turner.Among the findings of a detailed computer analysis were that:

• AS Christie’s novels reach the climax, sentence structures become less complex, increasing the level of excitement and stimulating the brain’s natural opiates.

• SHE makes use of connected words and phrases which appear unconnected but convey a common message to the unconscious mind. For example, “I’d rather die than go swimming”, “grave mistake” and “good grief” in the same passage could conjure the spectre of death.

• HER frequent use of the dash creates a faster-paced narrative enticing the reader on, similar to the long mesmerising sentences employed by hypnotherapists.

• CHRISTIE uses a repetitive core vocabulary and plain English, shunning clever wordplay to force readers to concentrate on the plot and clues.

http://entertainment.news.com.au/story/print/0,10119,17610425,00.html

Big Bird murder link

From correspondents in New York16-12-2005

A MURDERED woman’s body has been found on the Connecticut property of the actor who plays Big Bird in the smash children’s TV hit Sesame Street.Police said yesterday they had charged a man with kidnapping a jogger. He told investigators he had accidentally run her over and had hidden her body in an attempt to conceal the incident.Judith Nilan’s husband reported her missing on Monday when she didn’t return from a jog.The 44-year-old social worker was found dead the next morning with her arms tied behind her back, her jogging pants pulled down and her head bloody where she appeared to have been beaten, police alleged.Scott Deojay, 36, a caretaker for the property where she was found, was charged with kidnapping.Prosecutors said they plan to pursue murder charges but, with the shed on the Massachusetts border, they were still sorting out issues of jurisdiction.The Massachusetts medical examiner’s office was conducting an autopsy to determine the cause of death and whether Ms Nilan was sexually assaulted.Police connected Deojay to Mrs Nilan after finding her headband near a bloody receipt signed by Deojay for items bought on puppeteer Caroll Spinney’s account.Police said Mr Spinney, who plays Big Bird and Oscar, had nothing to do with the crime.Near the headband were skid marks and, on Ms Spinney’s property, a trail of blood led to the shed.”The victim had appeared to have been beaten about the head,” police alleged.”Her hands were tied behind her back and the rope passed across the front of her body and then wrapped around her neck and her ankles.”Deojay appeared in court briefly and was held on $500,000 bail.

http://entertainment.news.com.au/story/print/0,10119,17585878,00.html

Chimp’s painting fools experts

From correspondents in Moritzburg, Saxony19-12-2005

A GERMAN art expert was fooled into believing a painting done by a chimpanzee was the work of a master.The director of the State Art Museum of Moritzburg in Saxony-Anhalt, Katja Schneider, suggested the painting was by the Guggenheim Prize-winning artist Ernst Wilhelm Nay.”It looks like an Ernst Wilhelm Nay. He was famous for using such blotches of colour,” Dr Schneider confidently asserted.The canvas was actually the work of Banghi, a 31-year-old female chimp at the local zoo.While Banghi likes to paint, she is not able to build up much of a body of work as her mate Satscho generally destroys her paintings before they can get to the gallery.But this one survived long enough to give Dr Schneider a red face.”I did think it looked a bit rushed,” she told Bild newspaper.

http://www.news.com.au/story/print/0,10119,17606986,00.html

Web Browsing

I have been listening to a Podcast called “Inside the Net” lately. This is a relatively new podcast in which the hosts, Amber MacArthur and Michael Arrington interview the movers and shakers of the internet commuinity. They have introduced me to Flock and ProtoPage. Both have been used to create this site. They both are examples of new tools used to create “Web 2.0″. I have no idea as to what that means exactly as there is no definitive explanation but it has sparked my interest. I will be checking this out more and more I think.

Righteous indignation makes me feel better about stuff

I have one phrase for the people behind the violence in Sydney at the moment – you fuckers disgust me.I don’t care which side of this ridiculous pissing contest you’re on, you’re all fucking morons for getting involved in the first place.I’ve spent the past three days of my life reading through as much information as I could before sitting down to write this, and I’ll be frank – it was originally going to be a spray against the ‘Aussie’ contingent that rose to the top of the gene pool like a poorly-timed turd at a swimming carnival.However, that would simply make me as bad as the rest of the folks who have an opinion one way or another on this… and, as far as I can tell, no one knows who started this whole sorry mess at all.It is, essentially, a tale as old as the hills – two very tribal groups have come out swinging, each one accusing the other of starting the conflict.To be frank, I don’t care who started it. What I do care about is how it gets stopped. Mob violence is not the answer. Bashing people in the street is not the answer. Destroying the property of ordinary, hard-working Australians – regardless of their race or religion – is not the answer.So – maybe an impassioned plea from a non-committed observer could be the way to sort it all out. However, I doubt even the combined negotiation skills of Australia’s 150,000 Buddhists could quell this one – but it’d be fun to see them try.Oh God, it’s so easy to point the finger at someone and blame them for the dramas, and the list of likely candidates is a lengthy one. Do we blame the government? Do we blame the population? To we blame religion? Do we blame the manufacturers of surfboards or small-but-powerful Japanese cars?I really don’t know, and at this point of the game, I’m beyond caring. I do know that there’s going to be much more violence this Sunday, so I’ll do the only thing left to the ‘responsible’ citizens of this country who aren’t interested in fighting.I’ll microwave a bag of popcorn, turn on my big screen telly, and watch the brawling erupt on TV. Hell – let’s make a drinking game of it.Every time you see an Aussie bloke with his pants slung so low you can see his undies, drink a beer.Every time you see a Lebanese man giving the finger to a TV crew, drink a beer.Every time you see a cop fucking up the application of a wrist-lock on a suspect, drink a beer.Every time you see a news reporter flinch mid-sentence because something moved near him, drink a beer.And every time the news anchor says the phrase ‘worrying scenes’, ‘escalating violence’ or ‘racial tension’, drink a beer.If you’re not drunk out of your skull by 7pm Sunday, email me or see a doctor – there might be something wrong with your liver.

The Chaser – Five things I learnt this week – 14.12.05