Undead Astronauts

The Japanese have created a new fashion accessory that reads your mind and reacts to your thoughts by twitching cat ears. The product successfully fulfills the wetdreams of otakus the world over.

(Source)

wired had an interesting article yesterday. in it, they noted how japanese game publishers have been unable to convince japanese gamers to play anything but what they’ve been playing for years. there’s a mentality over there that equates foreign games with low quality.

this mentality isn’t limited to simple nationalism, as japanese publishers have experimented with different genres/subgenres and also been rejected by the gamers. it’s interesting that japan has basically not played much of the sandbox style games like GTA that have been such a hit in the US until very recently with the release of Just Cause 2.

they don’t play many FPS games either, as there are only a few Call of Duty style games in their best seller’s list. that’s a little hard to fathom for me, as i grew up on games like doom, goldeneye, quake 2, and halo. apparently their devs haven’t played FPS games since before any of the new consoles came out.

as eyebrow raising as that is, the article had a final surprise. (more…)

in what may be a looked back upon as a watershed event, level|up and G4 will be teaming w/ capcom to stream this year’s EVO events, and will broadcast a special edition of X-Play on July 20th devoted to EVO 2010. the production will be by the guys at level|up, which is run by fighting great alex valle.

from level|up:

All three days of tournament action will be streamed live on the Internet. To produce the live stream, EVO has partnered with Level|Up, universally renowned for their pro-gaming broadcast expertise and ability to make all the amazing on-screen action accessible to a global audience.

from g4 (actually the same stream run by level|up):

Beginning at 9:00am PT July 9th, G4TV.com, powered by Stickam, the first live streaming video network, will offer unprecedented access to the EVO 2010 world championships with 45 hours of non-stop live streaming coverage. The exclusive stream will feature tournament matches between top players, with live crowd audio accompanied by expert commentary to explain all the onscreen action. This streaming event will run from the start of the tournament on July 9th through the finals on July 11th.

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On Tuesday, July 20 at 6:30 pm, a special episode of “X-Play”, TV’s most watched videogame show, will be completely devoted to EVO 2010. X-Play vs. Capcom: EVO 2010 World Fighting Finals will delve into the legacy of Capcom’s legendary fighting games, and give viewers an all-access look at the history of EVO as it’s developed from a fledgling format to a mega-successful fighting institution.

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This year’s coverage is unlike anything ever presented before, and marks an ongoing commitment from G4 to employ both on-air and online strategies to provide fans with the most complete and explosive gaming coverage anywhere. (more…)

an ethnic specific gut bacteria has been found. japanese are better able to digest seaweed b/c they have a bacteria in their guts that breaks down algal cell walls. the only other place this ability is found is in marine bacteria.

According to the researchers, the enzyme helps Z. galactanivorans eat red algae, which westerners know best as the nori seaweed wrapping around sushi rolls. At some unknown points and in some unknown stomachs in the Japanese past, the enzyme-coding gene passed from Z. galactanivorans and into B. plebeius. That lucky microbe would have benefited from a newfound ability to process red algae, spreading through its stomach environment and eventually the human population, who in turn derived more nutrients from an algae-rich diet.

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“Often the question comes, ‘I’ve been eating sushi for two years now. Do I have this enzyme?’ The answer is, these are very rare events,” said Czjzek. “In the early days, seaweed wasn’t sterilized. Nowadays, it’s cooked, roasted and prepared. The chance to have this type of transfer is much lower.”

That’s likely the case with most types of food, said Gewirtz. As for whether “that’s a good or a bad thing, it’s hard to say,” he said. But Justin Sonnenburg, a Stanford University microbiologist who wrote a commentary accompanying the findings, is concerned.

“Consumption of hyper-hygienic, mass-produced, highly-processed and calorie-dense foods is testing how rapidly the microbiota of individuals in industrialized countries can adapt while being deprived of the environmental reservoirs of microbial genes,” he wrote.

i didn’t know how gut bacteria was passed down, but thankfully wiki has that covered. infants inhale or ingest the bacteria from the mom’s feces at birth. wtf ?

this makes me wonder about the gut bacteria of world travelers. if they travel and eat exotic foods from all over the world, would that possibly make their stomachs super digesters?

ed yong has more on the topic.

i believe there’s an SF4 tourney in japan starting today. the streaming info should be posted at these locations when it’s up, but i’m not too clear on when it starts. this is the warmup for daigo and co. for the big SBO tourney next weekend. should be interesting. not sure if any americans are there.

http://tgn.himitsukichi.com/

http://www.godsgarden.jp/

there have been a slew of stories on this topic, and i gotta say it’s bugged me that american media has latched onto this. i can’t put it better than what this yw forum poster said:

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Not gonna bother to repost the content here, you can go and waste 5 minutes of your life reading them if you want. Basically a bunch of articles about how Japanese men are all weirdo virgins who go on dates with anime dolls. All these stories smell of Japanese public relations firms planting stories in the Japanese-language media to promote someone’s latest male-advice book about “草食系男子” (grass-eating men), and then the American press picking up the story in translation and running completely out of context with it because it serves their own agenda.

One blogger analysed the “2-D men” story below and found that the statistics Katayama used (like 25% of Japanese men being virgins) are in fact fraudulent:
http://www.mutantfrog.com/2009/07/27…me-fetishists/

Love in 2-D (about guys who allegedly “date” anime characters), by Lisa Katayama
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/26/ma…pagewanted=all

Huge numbers of examples of this genre …
Japan’s ‘herbivore’ men shun corporate life, sex, by Yumi Otagaki
http://www.nationalpost.com/news/story.html?id=1833201

The Herbivore’s Dilemma: Japan panics about the rise of “grass-eating men,” who shun sex, don’t spend money, and like taking walks., by Tom Miller
http://www.slate.com/id/2220535/

In Japan, it’s the men who want to be skinny and cute, by Kaori Shoji
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/19/st…7017.html?_r=1

There’s even a Wikipedia article about this alleged “草食系男子” phenomenon, which conveniently lists a large number of books on the topic at the bottom.
http://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E8%8D%…94%B7%E5%AD%90

Again this closely resembles the whole “yellow cab” panic from two decades ago (about how all Japanese women working overseas were allegedly sleeping with every foreigner they met): a load of bullshit designed to be controversial in order to sell someone’s dumbass book.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yellow_…Japanese_media