What makes a volcano explode?

How did the dinosaurs die?

How do magnets work?

These and much more are the burning questions of our time.  Fake Science has answers.

Stephen Hawking thinks that it's a bad idea to contact alien civilizations:

Earth had better watch out, at least according to Stephen Hawking. He has suggested that extraterrestrials are almost certain to exist — but that instead of seeking them out, humanity should be doing all it that can to avoid any contact. …

He suggests that aliens might simply raid Earth for its resources and then move on: “We only have to look at ourselves to see how intelligent life might develop into something we wouldn’t want to meet. I imagine they might exist in massive ships, having used up all the resources from their home planet. Such advanced aliens would perhaps become nomads, looking to conquer and colonise whatever planets they can reach.”

He concludes that trying to make contact with alien races is “a little too risky”. He said: “If aliens ever visit us, I think the outcome would be much as when Christopher Columbus first landed in America, which didn’t turn out very well for the Native Americans.”

While I agree that any aliens reaching the stars are likely to be similar to humans or worse, meaning chauvinistic and rapacious but more technologically advanced, the problem is that we've been contacting alien civilizations since the 1920s through commercial radio, which bleeds off into space.  The signals from Mexican border radio stations of the 1950s, designed to be heard loud and clear in Chicago and New York, are already introducing aliens to Buddy Holly and Little Richard, and will continue to do so forever.

And aliens can't dance.  "Bob" help us all.

I was not able to attend this weekend's Wondercon, but a friend took this picture that I think sums the event up nicely.

It can't be wasting time if it feels good to do it, right?

Obey the Game is the latest flash game effort from thoughtful author John (previous interesting efforts include: Achievement Unlocked and This is the Only Level).  The other games I mentioned offered some interesting if shallow looks at certain kinds of game mechanics.  Obey the Game is cleverer and more fun to boot.  The game places you in a series of challenges, each needing to be beaten before a short timer expires.  The goal is displayed in the center of the screen (e.g. "use the stairs" on a level with several spiked platforms and, yes, a stair case).  Follow the instructions and you advance to the next level.  Consecutive wins will net extra lives.  Some of the challenges are arcadish and they get harder as you go.  Simple right?  Well, the game (randomly?  I don't know) will sometimes tell you to "disobey", which means doing the opposite.  Don't take the stairs (dying is appropriate here!).  Don't collect the coins.  Stay alive (on the suicide level, natch). The only thing that costs a life is failing to obey (or, if the game so orders it, disobey) the goal.  The challenge escalates quickly often meaning a split second decision wins or loses the level.  The game is surprisingly fun.

Secondly, we have Elona Shooter .  A castle defense game based on the fascinating rogue like of the same name.  It features different classes, leveling and skill gain, lots of structures to build up in town which do different things, loot collecting.  It's difficult but pretty fun.  Hunter and Rogue are the suggested starting classes (both get an immediate helper you'll want to replace ASAP.  The hunter gets a bow gun, they rule.  The rogue is a money making machine).  You can earn achievements to help you on the current and subsequent play-throughs (if you're a masochist; I am).

Jeff Vogel has his second in a two part blog post detailing some of the cost and sales numbers for Spider Web's games (part the first). It's pretty fascinating even though he doesn't hand out every last detail. It also shows how leveraging online distribution allows a game maker to benefit from the long tail. Geneforge 4, the game detailed, is not yet profitable but is on the cusp. And is a sure thing to be a long-term money earner even if it's not spectacular by indie standards (which are irrelevant by the money-hat-making standards of someone like Blizzard or even the money-bracelet-making standards of Valve).  It costs Spiderweb software nothing to offer Geneforge 4 alongside all of its other games.  Here's hoping it sells at a steady rate from now until the stage 4 zombie outbreak Popehat has predicted for 2016, and that he and his are able to weather those trying times and begin making games anew as the remnants of society begin to pick up the pieces (we will need diversions to help ease the burden of the horrors that we came through, of course).

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Geeksite extraordinaire Topless Robot ran a contest to identify the stupidest lack of sensible and obvious technology displayed in Sci-Fi. And of course the lack of seat belts in Star Trek wins.

And what about Worf? He doesn't even get a chair. There he is, at the back of the proverbial bus, and there's no chair. So he's on his feet pretty much 24/7 staring at the back of Picard's chrome dome, while there's a tireless android up front, sitting in a chair. Is it because he black/Klingon?

I actually sort of preferred some of the other entries. For instance:

Why no USB ports in Robocop? Imagined dialogue:

Q: How should this robot cop we invented interface with other computers?
A: A sharp 10 inch spike.
Q: Do PCs even have a port for a 10 inch spike?
A: PCs? umn hello it's 1987, we don't have high tech shit like PCs… err well we do but…but… Our MAINFRAMES have always had 10 inch spike ports.

Amongst the Cheeto-stained sweat-panted ranks of hardcore MMORPG enthusiasts today, there is concern about the state of the economy and the job market. No, not the market for Greater Astral Essence at the Ironforge Auction House. The actual, meat-world economy. Specifically, can you be a hardcore MMORPG gamer, a reliable guildie, a go-to raid partner, and still get a job, pretending for the moment that you ever actually intended to in more than a theoretical sense?

A poorly-sourced rumor has some irrationally worried that the answer is no.

Forum poster Tale over on the f13 forums relates an experience with a recruiter in the online media industry, who reacted negatively to his conversational admission that he had spent too much time playing MMORPG games.

He replied that employers specifically instruct him not to send them World of Warcraft players. He said there is a belief that WoW players cannot give 100% because their focus is elsewhere, their sleeping patterns are often not great, etc. I mentioned that some people have written about MMOG leadership experience as a career positive or a way to learn project management skills, and he shook his head. He has been specifically asked to avoid WoW players.

Anecdote aside, I doubt the employers and recruiters have put out the word "no Blood Elves need apply." Do hardcore MMORPG folks suffer from sleep deprivation, impaired judgment, and dramatically divided priorities? Yes. But so does a much larger group in the employee pool. We're called parents. And our seven-year-old woke us up before six practicing the piano in his underwear, and our two-year-old woke up supernaturally grouchy and kicked us in the nads while we were taking her out of the car at day care. Some dude who stayed up until three in the morning leveling his mage is still in better shape than us to greet the day.

The anecdote does, however, illuminate a job-hunting risk for MMORPGers. If one is so immersed in MMORP culture — and so divorced from the way the rest of us talk to each other — that one thinks that it's a good idea to talk enthusiastically during interviews about "what this computer game taught me about management," then one had better not be applying anywhere else other than a hardcore gaming company.

Hat tip.

Blogging from the new iPhone. Shiny.

Geek Nirvana: Robot Chicken's recently released second Star Wars parody is available online. Best moments (other than the titular one): Anakin's happy place, and Vader reenacting Alderaan with a muffin.

Big news for George R.R. Martin – Song of Ice and Fire – Game of Thrones fans, of which I am one. As we wrote about here, HBO has been toying with producing a series based on Martin's Song of Ice and Fire books, starting with A Game of Thrones. But it's all been hypothetical, possible, in-development stuff.

Until now. Martin now reports that HBO has given the order to film the pilot episode of A Game of Thrones.

This is tremendously cool for Martin fans like me. HBO is the one network that I'd trust to do the book some justice.

I think it's about time to warm up a new post about suggested casting and how the series will, by necessity, be different than the book. I expect a lot of fanboi rage about every deviation from the books — as if a TV series and a book were the same art form.

More on the story:

Topless Robot
Hollywood Reporter

Via Geek Dad, a Star Wars themed wedding that I prefer to think was fake, but may not have been. Full pics here.

I declare the alternate-title-to-this-post contest open.

So Richard Garriot, aka Lord British, creator and developer of the seminal Ultima series of crpgs (developing vast gamer goodwill in Ultimas I through VII and squandering it in VIII and IX) is going into space. This time, he doesn't need to type a three digit coordinate to find Planet X. Instead, he'll use some of his gamer-garnered wealth to become the sixth private citizen in space. Iolo and Shamino don't get to come.

Follow the link for Tom Chick's excellent interview. I did not know that Garriot's father is an astronaut — that's cool.

So a group of people in the office is talking about young kids and their hazards and trying to freak out the recently married people. We're talking about the sleeping habits of our kids. So I say:

Babies must sleep. Babies must rest. Wise is the one who does not waken them.

. . . and get a lot of blank, uncomfortable looks.

Please note I had the good judgment not to complete the quote.

Geeks — including gaming geeks in particular — are not any more or less dysfunctional, on average, than the general populace.

However, as with any group, there is a core subset of uber-geeks who take games very very seriously and get very upset about sequels to their cherished games — sequels which cannot possibly live up to the image of the game said geeks have constructed in their head. Hence when a company like Blizzard announces that it's producing Diablo III, latest in an insanely popular clickfest crpg-lite, many Diablo fans react roughly the way Al-Qaeda would if you published a cartoon in which Muhammad wins a hot dog eating contest.

Hence a furious and interminable argument about the art direction and visual style of the newest Diablo, culminating in a hilariously entitled and irritable online petition to Blizzard complaining that the new game will be just too fucking pretty.

It has a list of demands headed What we want. It also has a list of complaints:

Outside scenarios with vivid colors, beautiful forests with colorful vegetation, shinny and beautiful waterfalls where even rainbows take place.

Oh, won't someone think of the imps?

Via i09, I see that HBO has a new drama series in production: True Blood, about a world in which vampires are real and reveal themselves to society. It appears questionable, but given HBO's track record with drama series, I'm willing to give it a look.

The writers shrewdly realize that this sort of thing would generate vampire wannabees — or the Poseferatu, as I would call them. I suspect that the Poseferatu would outnumber real vampires by about 20 to 1. I mean there's no hint of real vampires now and we've already got scads of orally fixated goths schlepping about holding Anne Rice readings. Imagine what would happen if they got wind that the real thing is lurking about. At the very least, there would be an exponential increase in shitty poetry.