Simpson's Paradox

Tom Lasseter, who replaced Tim Johnson as the China correspondent for McClatchy, mentioned today on his blog that Beijing plans to renovate all the hutongs around the Drum and Bell Towers. Renovation is hardly news in Beijing, where the pre-Olympic facelift hasn’t stopped and chai (Chinese for demolish) regularly marks aging walls for demolition. When [...]

I can’t always combine my love for China and games, but right now, I’m playing two different new Chinese releases. The first is RainBlood, an indie PC RPG from developer Soulframe. It’s technically not new, but the English translation is.  It’s a blend of mythic storytelling in fictionalized China, and hack-and-slash combat. I can’t tell yet [...]

New development studio Passionfruit Games contacted me the other day about beta testing their new puzzle/adventure game Tiger Eye: Curse of the Riddle Box. Passionfruit is made up of many HER Interactive veterans — the team who worked on Nancy Drew Dossier: Lights, Camera, Curses! and NDD: Resorting To Danger.
TE: CotRB is based on the paranormal [...]

This Joymax press release on multiplayer games, virtual societies, and Asian culture, landed in my inbox the other day:
Joymax, an independent developer and publisher of interactive entertainment for the global market, today announced the launch of a third “Clean Campaign” for historical fantasy MMORPG Silkroad Online. During the event, which will run until April 6, [...]

So, how about that Google Buzz, huh?
Google’s last toy, Google Wave, was kind of a flop for me because it seemed like a neat collaborative tool, but none of my friends were on it yet. (On a reread, doesn’t that make me sound like a pretentious tech geek?) Like any social network, it’s only as [...]

Eight or nine years ago, I worked in a diner while on a, ahem, break from college. The Pioneer Valley is full of similar college-age breakers, finding themselves, forming bands, creating art, getting that awful first novel out of the way, or just drifting between minimum wage jobs amid an ever-younger college crowd. It was [...]

I have a new review of Cake Mania 3 up over at Casual Gamer Chick.
Cake Mania 3 is an adorable time-management game for the Nintendo DS. Jill, our heroine from Sandlot Games’ PC versions of the Cake Mania imprint, is cheerfully preparing for her wedding day when she accidentally breaks a time-bender (I [...]

I went back to my old high school to see my old stats and programming teacher.  He was supervising a study hall on the Wednesday before Thanksgiving when I came in.
What I meant to say was, thanks for putting up with my moody high school crap, for letting me hang out in your classroom when I [...]

Halloween is coming, which means our local grocery store has put out bulk candy and decorated for the holiday. I’d usually focus on the M&Ms, but the severed head hanging over the candy bags got me thinking.
It seemed, suddenly, like less of a surprising decor choice and more of a tangible symbol of excess, the [...]

I came across this book when I was home in New Jersey cleaning out my old room. (Yeah, my mom said something about how I haven’t lived there in ten years and she’d really like a guest room and that piles of paperbacks are not her ideal way to decorate that guest room.) It’s a [...]