The Phantom City

UNC grads Jackie Manuel and Melvin Scott are working on their pro basketball dreams this summer. Jackie’s rehabbing his foot, and Melvin played for the Utah Jazz summer league team. Inside Carolina has a good article catching up with both of them.

Orange County Weekly does its best:

So that’s right dude, meet me at the bleachers
No principals, no student-teachers
Both of us want to be the winner, but there can only be one
So I’m gonna fight, gonna give it my all
We learn that it was a “dude” who gossiped about Gwen. She challenges him to a fight at the bleachers. If he imagines it will be a fair, one-on-one fight, he is sadly mistaken. Gwen and her aforementioned “pack” will pounce on him like rabid wolves.

However, I’m pretty sure the explanation can only be found by watching the video, along with other recent Gwen Stefani videos: She’s insane…but, at the very least, she is no Hollaback Girl.

Link courtesy of Adam M

London was hit with four more bombs today, but the small explosions just appear to have been detonators. As a result, the the casualty figures so far include one person injured, with no deaths.

Speculation is that this was a copycat bombing, run by a more group that didn’t know how to design the bombs. One of the bombs, and least, appears to have been a nail bomb, so it is likely they were intended to cause more death and destruction.

What seems really odd is that the bombs went off in three subway stations and a bus, exactly like the last bombs. Why is that, when the bus bomb from last time likely was actually aimed at a subway station as well?

The San Francisco Police Department has an aspiring novelist writing its community police blotter. Good reading:

He had not run for very long before he realized the two cops were only pacing him. They could see something he could not. With each frantic step a sense of dread nagged at him. The more calm and calculating they were, the further behind he left his common sense, and his panic ratcheted up. As he ran, the black and white radio car glided silently along behind like a predatory whale.

Link courtesy of Boing Boing

Bowler hats, multi-layered full skirts…must be Bolivian women’s professional wrestling!

Courtesy of The New York Times (free registration required), via Gawker

The man who kept the Enterprise running passed away today.

James Doohan’s Star Trek character was a great example for me of Gene Roddenberry’s vision of the future. Kirk, Spock, and McCoy may have been the center of most of the action, but Scotty stepped up and took command of the ship in the worst situations when they were away. It made it seem like the supporting characters weren’t just there for support. They were all highly competent, professional, and cool in a crisis, even if not as flashy as the Captain. It evoked a Starfleet system of selecting the best people, out of thousands of volunteers, based purely on merit and team cohesion. (Of course, that doesn’t explain why so many of the people they met from the Federation and Starfleet were venal, cruel, and incompetent.)

For anyone who hasn’t heard already, the background for this story is that someone allegedly created a mod called “Hot Coffee” that adds a sexual mini-game to Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas. As a result, Rockstar Games, which was suspected at one point of hiding the mini-game in GTA, has been embroiled in controversy over whether the ratings system for games works. The latest to weigh in is Sen. Hillary Clinton.

Now, I haven’t played San Andreas, but I have played Vice City, and it’s fun. (Then again, my favorite games are role-playing games that have my characters slaughtering hundreds of opponents before the end of the game, so I’m thinking the step from there to street criminal is not so long.) I would never let my child pay it. And, as it turns out, it suggests that very same thing, right there on the box, where San Andreas is rated M, meaning not recommended for anyone under 17.

What amazes me, though, is that in a game where you play a criminal who can beat random people on the street until blood spatters the sidewalk, rob them of their money, and then steal a car — and that’s the regular start to your day — the controversy now is about sex? Sex is what makes the difference between the ratings M (Mature) and AO (Adults Only)? Not the murder and mayhem, just the sex. Right.

BTW, the difference between M and AO is that the first one recommends you be 17 or older when you buy the game, while the other recommends you be 18 or older. I have a feeling that year doesn’t make much of a difference, since most parents buying the game for their ten-year-olds will be over 18 anyway.

One of the questions in the current controversy is whether stores should be required to check for actual proof of age when someone is buying a game. I’m all for that. In any state where movie theaters are required to check ages, stores should be as well. It’s just not that burdensome.

However, another question is whether “parents do not have good enough information to protect their children.” Somehow I don’t buy that one. While it may be a good political move to pretend that kids are playing these games because parents are overwhelmed by the evil influences of the outside world and simply don’t have enough information, the ratings system is pretty clear and transparent. Perhaps a good start would be to check games before buying them? Nah, that would make too much sense. (I know, one response could be that the child could buy the game on their own. Given prices of $49 for a new game, that’s a great indication of how much the world has changed since I was a kid.)

Update: GTA: San Andreas has been re-rated as AO (Adult Only). As a result, retailers are pulling the game until they can get a cleaner version, where you can only beat up and kill people, not have sex with them.

BTW, earlier comments aside, it seems obvious that the code was already in the game, and merely was unlocked by the mod. Rockstar’s got some explaining to do.

In the meantime, I hope this doesn’t convince other software authors to lock down their code from any modifications. Mods have become an integral part of gaming. So, Secret content that you don’t show to the Ratings Board = Bad, The ability to make a mod = Good.

Kerst ter Weele is running for Culpeper County, Va., treasurer. Shared an office with him for two years at Virginia Tech. He’s good people.

The Guardian is running a blog updated throughout the day with more information.

It is important however that those engaged in terrorism realise that our determination to defend our values and our way of life is greater than their determination to cause death and destruction to innocent people in a desire to impose extremism on the world. Whatever they do, it is our determination that they will never succeed in destroying what we hold dear in this country and in other civilised nations throughout the world. - Prime Minister Tony Blair

I want to say one thing: This was not a terrorist attack against the mighty or the powerful, it is not aimed at presidents or prime ministers, it was aimed at ordinary working-class Londoners…That isn’t an ideology, it isn’t even a perverted faith, it’s mass murder. - London Mayor Ken Livingstone

The first link is courtesy of Boing Boing.

Wow, didn’t see that one coming. It makes sense, since there are likely to be several retirements over the next few years, but with Chief Justice William Rehnquist ailing, I think everyone thought he would be the next to retire.

O’Connor’s confirmation is one of those moments that sticks in my head from when I first started paying real attention to politics. I remember the Iran Hostage Crisis, the invasion of Afghanistan, the U.S. holding out of the Moscow Olympics, Carter losing to Reagan, and O’Connor’s appointment as one big lump of events that ushered me into paying more attention to the wider world. It’s kind of sad she’s retiring.