– Why Summer Vacations (and the Internet) Make You More Productive – especially, I’m guessing, for creative-type jobs.
– Do property rights increase freedom? (Japan edition) – interesting story of a “libertarian’s paradise” in Tokyo, where taxes are (presumably?) lower but there are few free roads, parks, and benches. While this might sound more fair in theory, having to constantly decide whether it’s worth buying a coffee you don’t really want to sit down is exhausting. This reminds me a lot of the ice cream book and how making choices is mentally taxing.
– Van Gogh’s Paintings Get Tilt-Shifted – a very cool way of changing the focus of paintings! (b/w/o @hujhax)
– The Future of webOS: What it Could Have Been… – juicy details about, among other things, slab-style phones that were cancelled because they took too long.
– Why most people don’t finish video games – short version: as gamers get older, they have less time. So publishers are shrinking the size of single-player campaigns, which is fine with me. If I get as much enjoyment out of a 10 hour game than a 20 hour one, hooray!
– A Super Mario Bros version of Portal?! – it’s Mario with a portal gun! And it’s going to be playable!
Greg's Blog 
I think I somewhat disagree with the “Why most people don’t finish video games” article…perhaps a fair bit. I think they are right in that the main issues are time, age and number of games out there. There are tons of games including many that aren’t truly “passable” games, games without story lines and plots, etc. I don’t see going through every level in an expansion of Angry Birds as “passing that game” and neither do most people. Dead Red Redemption is an example they use; it’s not really a story heavy game but rather is a sandbox game that happens to have a story line to get you started…not a fair comparison to say Zelda. The main issue I think is age & time. I do think people have fewer hours to play games as they grow older but I think the majority of that comes out through lack of patience. I remember as a kid being willing to play through the most boring, plotless grind until I had a level memorized enough to do it perfectly (as many NES games required). As a 30something year old, I would never do that. If a game sucks, I don’t finish it. It’s not worth my time. I think adults value their time (especially free time) more and that’ why fewer games get finished. We have more money to buy games to try them and then feel less motivated to waste our time on finishing bad ones.
LikeLike
The post about “libertarian” Japan was interesting, but I think the poster is suffering more from “expat fatigue” than making any kind of insightful point about Japan. First of all, his post really only applies to Tokyo and not the rest of Japan which is quite different and I think he misunderstands some things. For example, there are no trash cans to prevent another sarin gas attack. As an American it seems he values parks, WiFi and free parking. Obviously the Japanese don’t value these things quite as much, but I don’t think that has much to do with a “libertarian paradise”.
LikeLike
True – and in the updates, he sort of addresses this. I think most of the point is that, by happenstance, the part of Tokyo that he hangs around in is what libertarians would like for society in general, and what the problems are with it.
LikeLike