think or thwim

Bill Hicks’ last words are at billhicks.com

:: Fresh Creation

Bill Hicks in 1990. I think this is one of his best performances.

When Bill Hicks was 14 he used to sneak out of his parent’s house to perform at a Houston comedy club. Here’s some rare early footage from when he was about 18:

Peter Molyneux talks about his strategies to make players feel emotional attachment to a virtual dog in the upcoming game Fable 2.

He went into more detail about it when he demonstrated the game at GDC 2007. Part 2 of 4:

Molyneux has had an interesting career. Take a look at his Wikipedia page.

:: New Scientist

In his new book Paul Hawken writes that considering the human species as an organism, the movement is an immune response to political corruption, economic disease and environmental degradation.

When I wrote this book I wasn’t trying to write a hopeful book or an un-hopeful book. I was simply trying to find out how big it is, how it works, and where it came from. In the process I feel like hope or optimism discovered me. If you look at the data right now and you’re hopeful - you’re not really looking at the data. But, if you look at the people who are addressing the problems and you’re not hopeful - then you don’t have a heart. Both are true at the same time, and one doesn’t obviate the other.

It’s really important that we don’t lose site of this extraordinary uprising and upwelling of humanity that’s occurring right now. Nothing even remotely like this has ever happened before in history. There are no antecedents. There’s no precedence. We simply don’t have a way to even see it.

Encouraging.

There’s also audio available for a similar talk he did for The Long Now. In it he tells a little about the history of the movement. Specifically he tells the story behind Emerson, Thoreau, and Civil Disobedience. “Emerson made it cool to go to jail.” I think that podcast had most of the stuff in this video too, so I’d listen to it if I had to pick one.

Paul Hawken | Blessed Unrest: How the Largest Movement in the World Came into Being and Why No One Saw It Coming

WiserEarth.org

The fact of the matter is, for the Democrats not to be able to find somebody who could have defeated George Bush is beyond belief. It’s stunning! It would be like finding a normal person who would lose in the special Olympics.

- Lewis Black

I’m in the middle of about 15 half-written posts, but something important came up. The new version of Desktop Tower Defense was just released, and I’ve been conducting research to see if I should recommend it or not. There are some new towers and creeps, but the regular levels aren’t much different. The “10,000 gold” version with 100 levels under the “fun” menu is great:

Desktop Tower Defense v1.5

Jared Diamond:

We’re better off in almost every respect than people of the Middle Ages, who in turn had it easier than cavemen, who in turn were better off than apes. Just count our advantages. We enjoy the most abundant and varied foods, the best tools and material goods, some of the longest and healthiest lives, in history. Most of us are safe from starvation and predators. We get our energy from oil and machines, not from our sweat. What neo-Luddite among us would trade his life for that of a medieval peasant, a caveman, or an ape?…

Then he makes the case that agriculture is a mistake that we have never recovered from.

Jared Diamond | The Worst Mistake in the History of the Human Race

:: Good Shit

Jared Diamond summarizes his latest book in a talk at UC Santa Barbara.

Guns, Germs and Steel was about the reasons that some societies overpowered others. Collapse looks at the reasons some societies fell apart. For instance, Easter Island, once covered by lush forest was scalped by it’s human inhabitants leading to a collapse into war and cannibalism. What was the Islander thinking as he was cutting down the last palm tree?

Jared Diamond | Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed Still #402 Amazon sales rank.