Sunday, 2 January 2011

When Shigeru Miyamoto was a child, he didn’t really have any toys, so he made his own, out of wood and string. He put on performances with homemade puppets and made cartoon flip-books. He pretended that there were magical realms hidden behind the sliding shoji screens in his family’s little house. There was no television. His parents were of modest means but hardly poor. This was in the late nineteen-fifties and early nineteen-sixties, in the rural village of Sonobe, about thirty miles northwest of Kyoto, in a river valley surrounded by wooded mountains. As he got older, he wandered farther afield, on foot or by bike. He explored a bamboo forest behind the town’s ancient Shinto shrine and bushwhacked through the cedars and pines on a small mountain near the junior high school. One day, when he was seven or eight, he came across a hole in the ground. He peered inside and saw nothing but darkness. He came back the next day with a lantern and shimmied through the hole and found himself in a small cavern. He could see that passageways led to other chambers. Over the summer, he kept returning to the cave to marvel at the dance of the shadows on the walls.

Miyamoto has told variations on the cave story a few times over the years, in order to emphasize the extent to which he was surrounded by nature, as a child, and also to claim his youthful explorations as a source of his aptitude and enthusiasm for inventing and designing video games. The cave has become a misty but indispensable part of his legend, to Miyamoto what the cherry tree was to George Washington, or what LSD is to Steve Jobs. It is also a prototype, an analogue, and an apology—an illuminating and propitious way to consider his games, or, for that matter, anyone else’s. It flatters a vacant-eyed kid with a joystick (to say nothing of the grownups who have bought it for him or sold it to him) to think of himself, spiritually, as an intrepid spelunker. The cave, certainly, is an occasion for easy irony: the man who has perhaps done more than any other person to entice generations of children to spend their playtime indoors, in front of a video screen, happened to develop his peculiar talent while playing outdoors, at whatever amusements or mischief he could muster. Of course, no one in the first wave of video-game designers could have learned the craft by playing video games, since video games didn’t exist until people like Miyamoto invented them. Still, there may be no starker example of the conversion of primitive improvisations into structured, commodified, and stationary technological simulation than that of Miyamoto, the rural explorer turned ludic mastermind...

Continue reading

Nick Paumgarten @'The New Yorker'

In Memorium

Nigel Pickup (8)
Robert Carrigan (13)
Peter Easton (13)
Ian Hunter (14)
Donald Sutherland (14)
Mason Phillips (14)
Brian Todd (14)
Martin Paiton (14)
Russell Morgan (14)
David McGhee (14)
Robert Maxwell (15)
Richard Bark (15)
Walter Shields (15)
George Wilson (15)
Douglas Morrison (15)
Thomas Grant (16)
Francis Dover (16)
John Jeffrey (16)
Russell Malcolm (16)
Robert Mulholland (16)
Brian Hutchinson (16)
Thomas Stirling (16)
Alexander Orr (16)
Thomas Melville (17)
Thomas McRobbie (17)
Duncan McBrearty (17)
William Somerhill (17)
Robert Cairns (17)
Margaret Ferguson (18)
John Semple (18)
Andrew Lindsay (18)
James Mair (19)
James Rae (19)
James Trainer (20)
Charles Stirling (20)
Ian Frew (21)
George Findlay (21)
Robert Grant (21)
George Irwin (22)
David Duff (23)
John McLeay (23)
John Crawford (23)
James McGovern (24)
Robert Rae (25)
Peter Farris (26)
James Sibbald (28)
Richard McLeay (28)
Alex McIntyre (29)
John Neil (29)
Charles Livingston (30)
Donald McPhearson (30)
William Shaw (30)
Peter Wright (31)
Charles Dougan (31)
John Buchanan (31)
John Gardiner (32)
Thomas Dickson (32)
Hugh Addie (33)
Walter Raeburn (36)
Robert McAdam (36)
James Grey (37)
George Smith (40)
Adam Henderson (42)
George Adams (43)
David Anderson (45)
Matthew Reid (49)

YNWA

@'AnfieldRoad'

The incredible shrinking sound bite

Egyptian President Condemns Deadly Explosion Outside Church in Alexandria

Eyewitnesses say at least 21 people have been killed and scores wounded in a suicide bombing attack at a Coptic Christian church in Alexandria, Egypt. Tensions between Christians and Muslims have been on the rise in Egypt and nearby Iraq following recent threats by the al-Qaida terrorist group.
Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak denounced the explosion at a Coptic church in the port city of Alexandria overnight, calling on Christians and Muslims to unite in confronting such acts of terrorism.
He says that this act of terrorism points to the involvement of foreign gangs that wish to turn Egypt into a terrorist playground in the region. He warns that he and the Egyptian people will stop these forces from carrying out their plots to destabilize the country and destroy the cohesion and unity of its people. The plotters, he adds, will ultimately be captured and punished.
People inside All Saints Coptic church began screaming after the initial blast, as a priest urged them to stay calm. The New Year's eve midnight mass had just drawn to a close and worshippers were preparing to leave. Many of those who began leaving early were either killed or wounded.
Firemen doused the flames after the blast while friends and rescue workers ferried the wounded to local hospitals.
A heavy set man who was burned across his face explains what happened, saying he was leaving the church when he felt a massive explosion. He said he was dazed by the force of the blast and woke up in the hospital.
The Egyptian Interior Ministry issued a statement saying the explosion was caused by a suicide bomber although several eyewitnesses claim a car bomb was responsible for the blast.
Other eyewitnesses say angry Coptic Christians tried to attack a mosque across from the church after the explosion and that fights broke out, causing more casualties. Al-Arabiya TV showed a crowd of mostly young Coptic men waving their fists and shouting as police intervened.
The local TV news channel, Nile News, reported that despite the angry reactions of many people, dozens of ordinary Egyptians rushed to area hospitals to donate blood for victims of the blast...

Continue reading

Edward Yeranian @'Voice of America'

♪♫ Junoon - Sayonee

The old man of the mountain returns

Power corrupts, but it corrupts only those who think they deserve it

@'xkcd'

One minute's silence to mark Ibrox stadium disaster

As a an 11 year old in Glasgow at the time I unfortunately remember this day all too well!

Detroit In Ruins

@'The Guardian'
Unfortunately Julian Temple's wonderful film 'Requiem For Detroit' appears to no longer be online, but this is frightening reading.