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My usual class rundown:

-History of Religions of Asia: Interesting topic, boring class. Covers various forms of Buddhism (Indian, Chinese, Japanese), Hinduism, Shintoism.

-Intro to Japan: Interesting topic, boring class. Mostly history of Japan with some humanities thrown in.

-Japanese 3: Japanese as usual, but my 2-day-a-week TA is very amusing and I'm getting along well with some of the classmates. Was off to a rough start after I kept answering questions in Spanish, but 3 weeks in the rust is shaken off and I'm doing better than ever.

-American Technology and Victory in the Cold War: OK, this class rocks. It's taught by a famous aerospace guy named Hans Mark. Go ahead and Google him. On the first page of results: Deputy Administrator of NASA in the Reagan administration, Secretary of the Air Force in the Carter administration, UT professor in Aerospace, former Chancellor of the UT System, Director of Defense Research and Engineering in the DoD, worked at Livermore National Labs just after the development of the hydrogen bomb... you get the idea. This guy was the guy in the room at a lot of important times. Now take a look at the course title again. This guy was the one making that technology happen. It's a first-person historical account and *it rules*. You can go on and on just talking about what it's like to be in the room with this guy while he just freely imparts his knowledge on you, but I'll stop here.

-Legal Perspectives on the War on Terror: This is technically a Plan2 junior seminar, but I refer to it as "the law class" because it's taught by a UT law prof and most people take it as law school prep. It's a 3-hour class that goes 3 hours straight on Mondays only, and I freaking love it. The workload is the heaviest I've had in college short of World Lit, except this material is engaging and interesting and I can read more than 3 pages without falling asleep. The ridiculous workload doesn't even bother me, nor do I feel completely exhausted when stepping out after 3 hours' worth of class. What I do find is that I get so into the zone for this class that I lose my sense of time, ability to converse with people, all those wonderful little things. But when I'm in there, it's exciting, it's legal, it's rational, and I love love love it. Maybe this law school thing is a good idea for me.

So! I doubt I'll become a shut-in this semester, but I'll be working hard and earning my social time, which all in all isn't a bad thing.

Tomorrow, I'm shunning my homework responsibilities so I can go see The Dalai Lama! He's giving a speech, here at UT, and it's going to be downright fascinating. Yay for learning stuff and stuff!

2004 was, by any account, the year of American game design. Top 5 games, anyone?

-Half-Life 2
-Doom 3
-World of Warcraft
-GTA San Andreas
-Halo 2

In 2005, however, the Tokyo Game Show has demonstrated that the Japanese not only retain the title for originality (4 of the above 5 are sequels, and the exception uses an established franchise, while the Japanese have recently given us Katamari Damacy and Lumines), but they've got a firm hold on innovation in the industry, and they're going to use it to their advantage.

Microsoft has admitted time and again that they lost huge on introducing the Xbox to Japan. Their Western answer to the question? Sign Japanese developers for the 360 and hope for the best. It seems like a rational idea, but they're forgetting that to succeed in Japan, you have to be a little crazy. Pokemon at the time was a ridiculous idea. It's saved Nintendo over the last 5 years after the Japanese poor performance of the Gamecube and the forever-long wait for Revolution, and it will continue to as the PSP gains market share. But at TGS, Nintendo made the Americans realize where they went wrong.

They told the world that Revolution's controller would change the way we play games. Then a piss-poor performance at E3 turned the Nintendo camp into a ghost town while Sony and Microsoft wowed the world with pretty visuals and guaranteed-hit games. Still no controller. Finally, they unveiled the controller. It looks like a remote:

Click!

And it makes you go, WTF mate? A one-handed controller? This is what we've waited for? And then you take a look at the spec sheet, where it's got lightgun functionality and 10-directional (roll/pitch/yaw/position) sensitivity, and you get some action like you see in this video: Click!

And only once you watch that video do you realize: holy hell, Nintendo got it right. There's an old saying in the industry that goes "Never underestimate Nintendo," and they proved it right after a justified several years of pessimism. Microsoft and Sony have every right to be confident in their next generation. After all, who could deny Halo 3 and Metal Gear Solid 4?

Side story on MGS4: Talk about a Japanese monopoly on originality. Hideo Kojima's famously been off his rocker for years, but as far as pure storylines go, 4 takes the cake. Snake is old. I mean, white-hair old. Yet, the game is essentially MGS3, with MGS1/2 characters, set in an urban environment. It sounds truly amazing.

Back to MS and Sony. Their reliance on established sequels, while it has been good for business for the last several years, has gotten too American of a business approach, and you can't export American gaming to Japan. They just don't buy it. Nintendo, on the other hand, has an all-new appeal to casual gamers. While J Allard (MS) explains how a $400 360 and Xbox Live subscription is going to give casual gamers unprecedented access to Checkers online, and Ken Kutaragi (Sony) thinks casual gamers are subhuman, one of these two execs are going to lose once Nintendo redefines what it means to play like a casual gamer. All of this time, it turns out, the experiments of WarioWare and tilt sensors have worked phenomenally in their favor and suddenly, Revolution is going to be the new easily-accessible system.

Fear not, disenchanted girlfriends who hate Halo. This new system will be fun, understandable, and not hard to play. At all. In fact, it'll be damn close to realistic. You'll be able to do Harry Potter's wand movements or actually swing a baseball bat. Meanwhile, Sony and MS have been caught red-handed following the most boring business plan money can buy.

Sometimes, those crazy Japanese work in mysterious ways. But at the end of the day, they've got a fantastic grip on what's fun to play.

I can't wait for winter to come around. Why, you ask? Because as much as the world hates Uggs, I think they're cute. So go ahead and wear them; you'll still be OK in my book.

If this isn't overturned - and I mean NOW - I'm outta here. This is downright fucking ridiculous.

It's because folks like Keith Olbermann owns the shit out of everyone from time to time. I've gotten into a lot of political arguments over the Katrina fiasco, and this clip shows just a piece of why the governmental people are the object of my disliking. Even better is Jon Stewart's rant on the 9/6 Daily Show, which I'll put up here if I can find it. Until then, enjoy the Olbermann beatdown.