loonyblog.

Heather passed this along to me from Chemical & Engineering News:

Joe Atkinson sent from Vancouver, British Columbia, a story about beer
technology that he saw in the National Post of May 27. For those who
haven’t heard, at least two minutes are needed to draw a pint of the
Irish-Made Guinness beer. Last year, however, Diageo, the multinational
owner of the Irish brewery, said it would introduce FastPour technology to
reduce the pouring time to 25 seconds.

The FastPour method entails filling the glass and placing it on a special
plate, the surger, where the beer is zapped with ultrasound “to create the
characteristic creamy foam.” Diageo tried this ploy in 30 pubs in England.
British reaction to FastPour was horrible, so Diageo has backed down. A
company spokesman told the British newspaper the Observer: “We got the
message. People love the ceremony and the theatre of the slow pull.”

President Bush is working on a law formally defining marriage as a union between a man and a woman, and thereby cementing a ban on gay marriage. If this passes, pay close attention, because I guarantee you that within 20 years it will be struck down as being blatantly unconstitutional.

What most people tend to forget when talking about this issue, is that there’s more at stake here than just the morality of homosexuality. Married couples are entitled to certain benefits in this country, which include the ability to file taxes jointly and better healthcare coverage to name just two. All of this because of a simple piece of paper that says two people are in a committed relationship. Whether or not you’re willing to accept the fact that two men or women can be in such a thing, the fact that these benefits are being denied to these couples is absolutely unconstitutional, and it may take a decade or two but that fact will eventually be discovered in this country.

I bristle every time I hear any politician talk about “morals” in the lawmaking process. I don’t care about their morality, because in many cases (such as our current administration and half the justices on the Supreme Court) their morality varies from my own. It strikes me as insane that people are still willing to listen to a politician tell them that the government has a role to uphold a certain (translation: their) standard of morality, and this is the #1 argument against gay marriage. So pass your law, Bush. But in 5, 10 or 20 years, or however long it takes, you’ll be looked at with the same disdain as Strom Thurman’s “dixicrat” presidential bid. Embarassing, outdated, and unbelievable that intelligent people ever believed such things.

As noted in this story over at Shacknews, Eidos has yoinked the Tomb Raider franchise out of Core Design’s hands and turned it over to Crystal Dynamics. I think this is probably a very smart move from Eidos’ perspective, since the Tomb Raider franchise has been languishing for years now, while the Legacy of Kain games keep getting better and better. But still, that’s pretty harsh.

I have a strange fascination with the Tomb Raider series. Although I haven’t played one since Tomb Raider III, I haven’t forgotten how good (and I mean really good) the original game was. I seem to be in the minority there, as most hardcore gamers tend to be very bitter on the subject of Tomb Raider, choosing to remember only the crappiness that came later in the series, instead of the groundbreaking first title.

For those who may have forgotten, Tomb Raider was one of the very first games to utilize a third person 3D camera. The only other game to do so was Mario 64, and while both games had camera problems, neither was so bad as to make the game unplayable. Tomb Raider showed off a completely 3D world in a way nobody had seen before. And the first time I saw the dinosaur in that game I was in total awe. Tomb Raider was also one of the first games to offer 3D acceleration when paired with a 3dfx Voodoo card, and I remember those first rendered screenshots and being absolutely blown away by what I was sure had to be pre-rendered.

But nonetheless, the franchise has faltered. The second game wasn’t bad, but by the third it was in desperate need of reinvention. Instead of giving us that, we had drivel like The Last Revelation and Chronicles shoved down our throats, and while the early details about The Angel of Darkness sounded intriguing (remember when it was going to be an episodic game?) the end result was more of the same, and more of the same that came late and was totally bug-ridden.

I think there’s still time to save the Tomb Raider franchise, although not as much as Eidos would probably like. It’s going to take a really good game to bring the series back, and hopefully Crystal Dynamics can do that. What’s still unknown is if there’s any time left to save Core Design, as their non-Tomb Raider games haven’t sold very well.

Hey, neato. Bill Maher has a blog. He’s using Movable Type, so while it’s not specifically linked anywhere he has RSS feeds here and here.

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According to an article at Slate, all it takes to get a song to the top of the Billboard Music Charts is 1,500 paid downloads. This seems awfully low, and certainly open to manipulation.

As such, I propose the following to test this theory:

Anyone reading this with an iTunes Music Store account should log in and purchase Weird Al’s “Amish Paradise”. Why this particular song? Because I can pretty much guarantee that it won’t just randomly pop up in Billboard’s charts. Let’s see just how easy it is to game the list.

If you can, do it yourself, and tell everyone you know with a Mac. At only $0.99, it’s hardly an expensive experiment.

I was playing Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic last night, when I suddenly realized the voice of one of the characters I was speaking with was none other than Phil LaMarr. Yes, Phil LaMarr, who must be working overtime, because it seems like every day I hear his voice somewhere.

While he’s probably best known for being the guy who got his brains splattered in Pulp Fiction or his work on Mad TV, he’s actually been doing an insane amount of voiceover work in the last few years. He’s the voice of Green Lantern on the Justice League show, the voice of Static Shock, he’s Samurai Jack, he’s the voice of Hermes, the rastafarian accountant on Futurama (”tally me banana!“), he played a couple of characters on Family Guy, he was a deluded warrior in The Animatrix, and he did an admirable job of not laughing out loud at the dumbass dialogue he was forced to spout in Metal Gear Solid 2. And that’s just my quick list…check out this much larger one at the Voice Actor Page…the guy was on Mr. T and the T Force, for god’s sake!

Clearly the guy is a talented voiceover actor. I mean, he had to say “La-li-lu-le-lo” repeatedly without laughing, and he worked alongside Mr. T. Who knew the guy who cowered and splattered in Pulp Fiction was capable of so much?

Yikes, I’m glad I’m not in my old neighborhood right now…apparently there’s been a shooting at City Hall, which may or may not have resulted in the death of Brooklyn city councilman James Davis. What’s insane about this is that the gunman is still at large, which means right now there has to be a serious manhunt going on in the lower Manhattan area. I guess it’s a good thing Police Plaza is right there, huh?

I’m not looking forward to my commute home tonight…

Update: They’re now saying for certain that Councilman Davis has died, and according to MSNBC, the second “victim” is the shooter, who has also died.

Over the weekend I watched a few new ‘toons, including Cartoon Network’s new Teen Titans show. Teen Titans is one of those comic adaptations where I have no real attachment to any of the characters (except for Robin, and he’s not in the comics, IIRC) so I’m not bothered by any radical changes made to them. And as a result, I enjoyed TT, even if it was a little wacky at times.

And wacky it most certainly was. While most new cartoons are influenced in some way by Japanese anime, Teen Titans is the first show I’ve seen that is a clear attempt to create an American anime show. This is clear from the outset, as things start off with a J-pop theme song, and then the show itself which sports characters with the traditionally huge eyes and teeny mouths that get huge when opened. But that’s not the only influence by any means. Japanese symbolism like the vein on a forehead or single drop of sweat to indicate frustration are here, and there’s even a quick flashback sequence that’s done in a “super deformed” style. Yikes! If you can get past the hyperactive pace and insane Japanese style, it’s actually kind of fun.

Which is more than I can say for the new Ren & Stimpy show, which proves what I’ve thought for some time now…if left unchecked, John K. just isn’t funny. Anyone remember his Jimmy the Idiot Boy Flash cartoons? What was really sad about those, is that finally the world got to see what Spumco could do without censorship…and it wasn’t funny. At all. Really. After all those stories about how he tried to get a Jimmy show made, I finally understood why. It just wasn’t funny! And sadly, neither was the single episode of the new Ren & Stimpy I watched, which was totally uncensored (the constant eluding to their joint sex life just creeped me out). I’ve been told that another episode I have on my TiVo is much better, and I certainly hope so, because this one was just not funny in the slightest.

The last new ‘toon I watched over the weekend was MTV’s new CGI Spider-Man show, which I liked quite a bit. The visual style resembles Eidos’ Fear Effect games, which on paper sounds horrible, but I thought actually kind of worked. In all, this show has the same feel as the Ultimate Spider-Man books (it was developed by Ultimate Spider-Man writer Brian Michael Bendis, so this makes sense), and although I don’t read those, I think it works well for a series on MTV.

I was sitting in a bar the other night, talking with two girls I know who work there, when this old drunk guy stumbles over and makes a comment telling me to “stop drooling.” And my response was this:

“I beg your pardon sir, but I am a happily married man!”

In all the excitement, I nearly dropped my monocle in my brandywine and had that happened - good heavens - would my face ever have been red at the next salon!