The Most-Loved Car, Bikini Baristas Put On Notice, and Some Bitch-Slapping

1. What car delivered the most satisfaction this year? Probably a Lexus, or a Prius, right? The answer may surprise you.

2. Snohomish County, just north of Seattle, takes aim at the latest menace to society: bikini baristas.

3. Papa John’s, which is donating all profits from pizzas sold yesterday and today to the families of the four police officers who were gunned down near Tacoma last month, is so overwhelmed with business that all but three of its 20 Seattle-area stores have stopped taking orders. I love the community response, but this left us scrambling for other dinner plans.

4. Perez Hilton gets bitch-slapped.

5. Speaking of bitch-slapping, have you been weighing the Barnes & Noble Nook versus Amazon’s Kindle? The New York Times’ tech maven David Pogue opines: “Every one of the Nook’s vaunted distinctions comes fraught with buzz kill footnotes.”

UPDATE: Other reviewers pile on:

Here’s The Wall Street Journal’s Walt Mossberg: “My recommendation on the Nook is to wait, even if you prefer its features to the Kindle’s. It’s not fully baked yet.”

Here’s the AP: “I’ve been trying Barnes & Noble Inc.’s $259 Nook for a few days, and I’m not eager to prolong the acquaintance.”

The “Incest Map” and Other Interesting Things

1. The Seattle Times brings us a hefty PDF (12MB) of the “Incest Map”, a diagram showing the relations between scores of Seattle bands.

2. It’s official: Dead Space 2! The original was one of my favorite games of 2008.

3. Also from The Seattle Times, the infuriating story of how the IRS spent tens of thousands of dollars to audit an impoverished single mother of two in order to squeeze her for $1,400 in (questionable) unpaid taxes:

4. The Federal Trade Commission has issued its annual report on Marketing Violent Entertainment to Children:

“The Commission finds that the video game industry has made great strides in restricting the marketing of violent M-rated games to children. Although there remains room for improvement – particularly in the area of Internet advertising – the video game industry outpaces the movie and music industries in the three key areas that the Commission has been studying for the past decade.” (Hat tip to Dubious Quality)

5. Finally, here’s today’s examination of the Amazon Top 100 sellers in video games. Yet again, New Super Mario Bros. Wii took the top spot. Wii titles accounted for 34 spots on the list, up from 30 for most of last week. Xbox 360 had 11 titles while the PlayStation 3 had just seven. Interestingly, of the Wii games, eight of them, or nearly one-quarter, were music or rhythm games.

As for the hardware, the Wii was still the top-seller, coming in at No. 2, while the low-end PS3 was No. 18. However, the Xbox 360 Elite bundle saw a big jump, to No. 30, while the Modern Warfare 2-themed ”Super Elite” system was No. 84. At No. 91 was the 250-gigabyte PS3.

China’s Mysterious Beauty and Four Other Things to Click On

1. Chinese media are abuzz over the “mysterious beauty in black” seen behind President Obama during his visit to Shanghai. It turns out her name is Wang Zifei and she is a graduate student at Shanghai’s Jiaotong University.

2. Another cool China link: artist Liu Bolin becomes invisible by painting himself exactly like the background.

3. Finalists in National Geographic’s International Photography Contest. My favorite is the one of the New Zealand farmer.

4. Crispy Gamer’s Ten No-Bullshit Rules for buying video games for kids. Crispy Gamer is increasingly becoming one of my favorite gaming sites. These guys can write.

5. Lev Grossman picks the six greatest fantasy novels of all time.

Five Things

1. Want to learn to taunt your enemies like a reclusive megalomaniac dictactor with bad hair? It’s the North Korea insult generator.

2. What kind of political system is suitable for colonists on an interstellar journey? Sci-fi author Charles Stross flags some interesting issues.

3. Think movie acting can be bad? Try the 50 Worst Video Game Voice Acting clips.

4.  ”Sometimes his loose-limbed shuffle and sibilant drawl suggest Jimmy Stewart as a crackhead.” That’s The New York Times reviewing Nicholas Cage in his new movie, “Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans”.

5. Crack that whip! Pearl Jam does Devo.

Five Things That Caught My Eye Today

1. Electronic Arts is rumored to be closing Pandemic Studios. Yes, this is the same Pandemic that, along with BioWare, EA paid more than $800 million for two years ago. Although Pandemic was behind Full Spectrum Warrior, one of my favorite games of all time, its recent efforts, like last year’s Mercenaries 2, were met with lukewarm critical reviews.

2. Stunning photograph of a crescent Earth shot by Rosetta, the European comet-chasing spacecraft. Oh yeah, and irregularities in Rosetta’s flight path may lead to a re-writing of the known laws of physics.

3. Fascinating profile of Jon Huntsman, Jr., Obama’s new (Republican) man in China. In an awesome historical twist, Huntsman as a child handed Henry Kissinger his briefcase as he departed with Nixon on the famous secret trip to China in 1971.

4. Intel’s Itanium chip finally turns a profit. After a decade. And billions of dollars of investment and promotion.

5. And from The Onion video files: Ultra-Realistic Modern Warfare Game Features Awaiting Orders, Repairing Trucks.

The funniest thing I read all week

Was this piece from Cracked.com. I was literally in tears during lunch today.

It’s funny how when I was growing up, Cracked was the lame, wanna-be Mad Magazine. But now it’s successfully reinvented itself as an irreverent online humor site on par with The Onion.

Fonts

Sorry about the varying font sizes here. This appears to be the default font for this template. Some past entries appear larger because I composed them in Word first and pasted them over.

To get everything looking the same, I think I’d have to go into each post individually and reformat the text. Frankly, that’s too much hassle. I would, however, like to settle on a standard font and text size. Anybody have any preferences?

Ugh

So much for my plan to post something every day in 2009. Two weeks ago, Harlan came down with something nasty that caused him to miss nearly a full week of school. Relieving Tala from sick parent duty became rather more pressing than refreshing the blog. Of course, once Harlan got better, I came down with the same thing. The bug has been gestating in my chest all week. I worked from home on Wednesday and would have taken a sick day on Thursday, but I figured yesterday wasn’t a good day to not show up at the office. And today my bug blew up into something pretty nasty. Hopefully regular programming will return soon.

Conversations with Harlan

We watched Jurassic Park the other night. If you remember, they thought the dinosaurs were all female but because they had used frog DNA to fill in the gaps in the dino DNA, the dinos developed the ability to switch sex and reproduce.

Harlan: “Dad, if I had a dinosaur I would name him Bob. But if he suddenly started laying eggs, I would call it Alissa.”

Harlan’s friend Matthew came over the other day.

Harlan: “Let’s pretend we’re half man, half wolf!”

Matthew: “Yeah! And half monkey!”

Moving Burger King ad. No, really.

Watch this.

Burger King went to places like Romania and Thailand to find people who have never eaten a hamburger before. Despite being sponsored by Burger King, it’s a surprisingly moving piece of promotional material. You will love the people they find.

I was touched by the innocence and generosity of the locals. I’m prone to being overly emotional about random things, and as I watched it in my office, tears welled up and I was just praying nobody would come in for me.