"And as the previous example suggests, it was at times hard to see the line between play and work. As a result, work happened. Indeed, it may have happened in abundance, although we will not know for sure for a few months. In the pipeline (and don't hold me to this, you know how things go): Several research-ready, tiny-but-scaleable MMORPGs to be launched at universities; several student-run projects at Indiana; as well as a cross-university research initiative helped along by industry support."

Followup to Ludium 1 at Indiana University, Bloomington is going on at TN.

You can get a sense of the structure and goals at cssw1.org.

Pictures at Flickr, tagged Ludium

It came together, as Ted said in his opening words, like Stone Soup. First there was a vision, and the world collaborated to supply enough support, labor, money and passionate participants to make it real, and quite successful.

I learned a lot about the power of moving confidently in the direction of one's dreams.

Ludium 1 Games Academics and Designers

MIAMI - Alligators have clashed with nonnative pythons before in Everglades National Park. But when a 6-foot gator tangled with a 13-foot python recently, the result wasn't pretty.

The snake apparently tried to swallow the gator whole — and then exploded. Scientists stumbled upon the gory remains last week.

Wow, makes me think of a Rudyard Kipling story gone very, very wrong.

One of the primally grossest pictures ever.

Python Explodes After Eating Alligator - Yahoo! News

As a psychology graduate working in animal- behaviour labs, Seligman discovered "learned helplessness" and became a big name. Dogs who experience electric shocks that they cannot avoid by their actions simply give up trying. They will passively endure later shocks that they could easily escape. Seligman went on to apply this to humans, with "learned helplessness" as a model for depression. People who feel battered by unsolvable problems learn to be helpless; they become passive, slower to learn, anxious and sad. This idea revolutionised behavioural psychology and therapy by suggesting the need to challenge depressed people's beliefs and thought patterns, not just their behaviour.

Now Seligman is famous again, this time for creating the field of positive psychology. In 1997 the professor was seeking a theme for his presidency of the American Psychological Association. The idea came while gardening with his daughter Nikki. She was throwing weeds around and he was shouting. She reminded him that she used to be a whiner but had stopped on her fifth birthday. "And if I can stop whining, you can stop being a grouch."

Seligman describes this as an "epiphany". He vowed to change his own outlook, but more importantly recognised a strength — social intelligence — in his daughter that could be nurtured to help her withstand the vicissitudes of life. Looking back on "learned helplessness", he reflected that one in three subjects — rats, dogs or people — never became "helpless", no matter how many shocks or problems beset them.

"What is it about some people that imparts buffering strength, making them invulnerable to helplessness?" Seligman asked himself — and now he's made it his mission to find out.

Excellent article on controlling your own reality.

So what do you have to do to find happiness?

The challenge? Take any movie and cut a new trailer for it — but in an entirely different genre. Only the sound and dialogue could be modified, not the visuals, he said.

Mr. Ryang chose “The Shining,” Stanley Kubrick’s 1980 horror film starring Jack Nicholson and Shelley Duvall. In his hands, it became a saccharine comedy — about a writer struggling to find his muse and a boy lonely for a father. Gilding the lily, he even set it against “Solsbury Hill,” the way-too-overused Peter Gabriel song heard in comedies billed as life-changing experiences, like last year’s “In Good Company.”

His 'Secret' Movie Trailer Is No Secret Anymore - New York Times

peekay wrote:
Caption: "Question: How geeky is a sword stand made of Lego? Answer: Very."

I can't believe he did this. I want one for my Conan sword now. -Pk

Christmas has come early for Kerry, too, I'm sure.

-janelane, lego-master

[ What's incredible is that it doesn't look too bad... hmmm.... -k]

RE: Lego Katanakake (Sword Stand).

This guy has such a creative an personal way to raise money for Katrina relief.

Dare him to do something, and name your price. He will accept, reject or haggle, and document the dare on his website. People go from small (grow a bad moustache) to bigger (a prank involving his neighbors and a pizza delivery). He is game to try anything that doesn't hurt anyone and is family-friendly.

Dare Him for Charity

When the housing boom ends, what is the possible impact on the US economy? This is a broad brush look at three major potential problems:

1) Increased Unemployment.
2) Loss of mortgage equity withdrawal on consumer spending.
3) Financial distress.

Angry Bear - When the Bubble Pops...

This site is great! It is hard science, is intelligently designed and has no issue with using the word "apocryphal" with kids.

Science of Cooking

The huge influx of cash at the turn of the millennium led to the whole Web being built in the image of the Bay area. The website patterns that started there and - just by coincidence - happened to scale to other environments, those were the ones that survived.

Absolutely true...

California's subtle influence on computer culture

"Senator, that bill has to fail, if I have to take you on to do it. Perhaps I can't win—but I'm going to fight you! A copyright must not be allowed to last more than fifty years—after which it should be flushed from the memory banks of the Copyright Office. We need selective voluntary amnesia if Discoverers of Art are to continue to work without psychic damage. Fact should be remembered—but dreams?" She shivered. ". . . Dreams should be forgotten when we wake. Or one day we will find ourselves unable to sleep. Given eight billion artists with effective working lifetimes in excess of a century, we can no longer allow individuals to own their discoveries in perpetuity. We must do it the way the human race did it for a million years—by forgetting, and rediscovering. Because one day the infinite number of monkeys will have nothing else to write except the complete works of Shakespeare. And they would probably rather not know that when it happens."

Copyright Fiction by Spider Robinson