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.

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!”

Latest column: “Grand Theft Childhood”

My latest weekly column is up, and I finally managed to run my piece on Grand Theft Childhood. I actually interviewed the authors about a month ago but a combination of a busy news cycle and writer’s block stymied my efforts to get this piece out earlier.

Some people get writer’s block when they don’t have anything to say. I get it when I have too much to say. This book is so interesting and well-written that it’s almost impossible to sum up in a 600-word article. Almost every page has something interesting. On top of that, I spoke to the authors for more than an hour, giving me even more material to work with.

So I’m a bit frustrated with the piece I produced, mainly because it had to leave so much out. There is also so much rich social and political context to this debate that I was only able to touch on briefly. I do urge anyone curious about video games and kids to pick up a copy. It’s a fascinating, informed and thoughtful look at the issue.

Read on, or hit the link:

By Scott Hillis

SAN FRANCISCO, May 8 (Reuters Life!) – Playing video games does not turn children into deranged, blood-thirsty super-killers, according to a new book by a pair of Harvard researchers.

Lawrence Kutner and Cheryl Olson, a husband-and-wife team at Harvard Medical School, detail their views in “Grand Theft Childhood: The Surprising Truth About Violent Video Games and What Parents Can Do”, which came out last month and promises to reshape the debate on the effects of video games on kids.

“What I hope people realize is that there is no data to support the simple-minded concerns that video games cause violence,” Kutner told Reuters.

Goo

Wisdom from a 6-year-old:

“Dad, if you want to know goo, you’ve got to taste goo.”

Interior decorator

So Tala took Harlan to the Asian shopping center down the street after school today.

They were moseying along when Harlan suddenly went: “Mom, I have to go to the bathroom really bad.”

That was quickly followed by, “We’d better go now, otherwise I’m doing to redecorate my pants.”

I think he got it off TV somewhere, but he insisted it was his own joke.