90WPM

What makes a dish stand out so much that a (presumably) sane person would spend twice as much — or ten times as much — as she would on the meal’s déclassé cousin? Is there something innately superior to foodstuffs like foie gras and truffle oil that justifies their astronomical cost?

My first piece for The Atlantic Health is about why we pay so much for gourmet food. If you’ve ever wondered about why lobsters or truffles are so damn expensive, it’s worth reading.

I watched the Splinter Cell franchise’s long-established hero, Sam Fisher — operating somewhere in Middle Eastistan — enter a tent, kill two gentlemen, and grab a third. Sam asks this third gentleman where a certain colleague of his might be. The gentleman declines to answer, so Sam sticks his knife into the gentleman’s clavicle. The gamer is then given an onscreen prompt to twirl around his controller’s joystick, which in turn twirls around Sam’s knife in the gentleman’s wound. The screaming gentleman gives Sam the info he needs — and, suddenly, it’s “moral choice” time, for Sam has to choose whether to kill or knock out his freshly tortured victim. Let’s review: a moral choice — after an interactive torture sequence.

An unflinchingly personal moral analysis of shooter games. Tom Bissell rocks my world.

Even with the glut of lo-fi ads for tech companies, this ad for Tiny Wings 2 is refreshing and will send chills down the spine of anyone who played the original. Excited for the launch Thursday.

Realizing that Windows is not a hegemony will unleash market forces that nobody can predict.

Awe-inspiring. 5 years later, it turns out the iPhone and iPad helped Apple cut Microsoft’s lead on overall devices from 52x to 2x.

It is not part of my job to push an agenda, but rather to be relentlessly honest in everything I see, say and do. I’ve never wanted to be any kind of reporter other than a good one, and I do not desire to promote any cause other than the truth.

Inspiring email from Anderson Cooper reposted on The Daily Beast. (via TMN)

This one made the rounds on the Apple blogs, due to this:

This tiny detail in the iPod app noticed by a Gizmodo reader is an early sign of what will soon be a sea change in interface design. One Apple employee (who I can’t name as the company does not allow employees to speak on the record without approval from media relations) said that in the future, your phone will show drop shadows based on the actual position of the light in the room, as detected by the phone’s ambient sensor — and everything in the UI will be rendered in 3D on the fly.

Anyone who’s read this blog for more than a few months has seen me mention Nick Disabato’s Distance quarterly at some point. My essay for the publication’s first issue is still one of my favorite things I’ve published (read an excerpt), and the latest issue looks excellent. I’m especially excited to read Francisco Inchauste’s essay about evaluating the importance of the things we make.

Now, on to the difficult part: Distance is in financial jeopardy. As in, that red part of the graph. For many reasons, which Nick has outlined in full, the project has not met its financial goals, and is in danger of being abandoned before it reaches its first birthday.

At the time of writing, Distance needs 418 new readers in order to meet its financial goals. You can see the live total here. If you haven’t subscribed, consider it, and if you have, tell your friends — better yet, tell the Internet — to check it out.

Poynter picked up my interview, highlighting (of course) the part where he discusses his reading habits.