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Electronic Arts officer Rich Hilleman has told a conference in the UK that portable gaming hardware now outnumbers consoles by 2 to 1.
Noting the success of the DS, PSP and iPhone, Hilleman slammed the price of producing console games has rocketed, with marketing costing up to three times more than the development of a title.

That’s only logical. Polishing a turd is a lot more work than producing it.

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This sort of analysis turns into uncomfortable news for environmentalists. Tesco looked into building more small stores and encouraging people to walk to them, rather than big stores with parking lots. They discovered that the carbon impact of the food people eat to power their walk to the store outpaces the gains from reduced car usage! The analysis of a grande latte – in the video above – shows that a company like Starbucks uses almost no water in producing a beverage, a few liters in producing a cup and lid, and hundreds in growing the coffee. You can bring a recyclable cup, and you’ll save some water… but if you really want to save water, you need to address the supply chain.

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T-shirts worn by the Smith-Cotton High School band have evolved into controversy among parents.

The shirts, which were designed to promote the band’s fall program, are light gray and feature an image of a monkey progressing through stages and eventually emerging as a man. Each figure holds a brass instrument. Several instruments decorate the background and the words “Smith-Cotton High School Tiger Pride Marching Band” and “Brass Evolutions 2009” are emblazoned above and below the image.

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“I made the decision to have the band members turn the shirts in after several concerned parents brought the shirts to my attention,” Pollitt said.

Pollitt said the district is required by law to remain neutral where religion is concerned.

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Band parent Sherry Melby, who is a teacher in the district, stands behind Pollitt’s decision. Melby said she associated the image on the T-shirt with Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution.

“I was disappointed with the image on the shirt.” Melby said. “I don’t think evolution should be associated with our school.”

and what a great teacher she is…

They should probably replace it with a t-shirt that shows the Earth orbiting the Sun.

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This is an interesting picture.

The fact that “verified by snopes” has been appearing on more and more of these kinds of chain letters lately tells me one thing: Over the years, those of us who have directed more than our fair share of moms, dads, brothers, sisters, etc. to snopes.com in an effort to (1) clear up blatant misinformation and/or urban legends, and (2) hopefully make the point that you shouldn’t trust everything you read without verifying it yourself… have been wasting our time utterly. We have been outsmarted by people who know their target audience better than we know them, as demonstrated by the fact that the addition of the words “verified by snopes” (and the suspect omission of any link to an article that might actually verify something) to any pile of shit that makes it to your inbox, automatically legitimizes otherwise batshitinsane claims.

Because this is what Snopes has to say:

The book does not posit a “defeated America,” nor does it express a Muslim point of view.

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Thousands of people have signed a Downing Street petition calling for a posthumous government apology to World War II code breaker Alan Turing.

Writer Ian McEwan has just backed the campaign, which already has the support of scientist Richard Dawkins.

In 1952 Turing was prosecuted under the gross indecency act after admitting to a sexual relationship with a man. Two years later he killed himself.

The petition was the idea of computer scientist John Graham-Cumming.

He is seeking an apology for the way the young mathematician was treated after his conviction. He has also written to the Queen to ask for a posthumous knighthood to be awarded to the British mathematician.