Good points, though I doubt those issues would escape people whose day-job involves economic analysis. To me, this entire trend of studying MMO economies to somehow derive real-world conclusions smells of professional self-doubt regarding the status of economics as a science.

I know that some economists have, over the past decade or so, started performing little experiments, in the hope that this would lend more empirical credibility to their field. Of course, the main problem is scale, since getting a few million people to participate in an experiment is just a tad inconvenient. It seems that some researchers expect to overcome the problem of experimental scale by turning an eye towards already existing, large-ish, and confined economies (i.e. MMOs), although this endeavor is faced with far too many problems to be taken seriously. Which is why it seems desperate.

This self-consciousness if, of course, thrown into high gear given the utter failure of economics (qua predictive science) that we're all quite familiar with at this point.

I heard this story once and I absolutely love it. Sadly, no sources, so it may be apocryphal.

The story goes that Greenpeace's latest publicity stunt was to try and protect seals in the arctic from getting poached, so they decide they would make their skins worthless to the poachers by spraying the seals with bright green paint. As it turns out, however, the main defense of arctic seals against their natural predators (polar bears) is to lay perfectly still, with eyes closed, hoping to blend into the snowy/icy background to evade detection. Thanks to Greenpeace, these seals were now visible from miles away and, not knowing they were now targets, would just lie perfectly still while polar bears raced towards and devoured them.

Hooray for Greenpeace.

Categorize this as flaming if you wish, but that is exactly the kind of reasoning unscrupulous people use to justify continuing violation of moral and legal conventions. Other variations include but are not limited to "don't hate the player, hate the game" and "screw or be screwed". All amount to the same thing, and all are inexcusable. Believe it or not, the majority of people entrusted with power over the lives of others live up to the minimal expectation that this trust will not be broken. The word that describes this is integrity, and no amount of fallacious reasoning will erase the fact that you lack it.

That they're soul-mates and stay together forever?

LOL

It's interesting to see someone having the exact same memory. In my final year of High School, my FIRST team found itself on both sides of that humiliation. In different matches, we both had to score points for our opponents, and found our opponents scoring points for us.

As I see it, the most serious imbalance in FIRST are those of the sponsors. How can a public school team sponsored by local transport and engineering companies seriously compete against, say, a team sponsored by both Microsoft and Delphi? For those who never competed, you should be aware that sponsorship, in FIRST, is not limited to supplying equipment and access to manufacturing facilities, but also employee-mentors, who provide varying (often unequal) levels of assistance during the design/build phase.

No scoring system can regulate that sort of unbalance.

That's an anomaly. Sullivan clearly refused Zeus' advances, and we all know how vindictive that bastard can be.

If this game is anything but a pretty remake of Netrek, this will have been a huge missed opportunity.

Tivo recording numbers is why they would do this. I've recently read an article about this, and it is clearly a good decision. Shows like Sarah Connor Chronicles (bleh) have small but dedicated followings, and the Tivo recording numbers (also kept and recording by Nielsen) are considerably higher than live-showing numbers. Hence, schedule is irrelevant, since the people who watch these shows will continue watching them regardless of the schedule.

I'm fairly certain there are studies directly contradicting this conclusion. Alas, I'm so bored of hearing this B.S. that I won't even go through the trouble of looking up the reference.

It is a useful stat because it means that more people are actually learning the material (given an unchanged curriculum), rather than that the material has somehow become easier. Schools such as MIT are not considered elite because a lot of students fail, but because they produce high quality graduates.

Again, the point is to actually teach better, not just give the impression of doing so.

Visit the campus of any university with a sufficiently high endowment and you'll see that vast rivers of money are spent ensuring that the environment is as conducive to good academic performance as they possibly can be. It is exactly the school's job to make sure their students receive as much help learning as possible, regardless of how much they choose to study. MIT is not at risk of becoming a "pay to pass" school, it is trying to maintain its dominance in the fields for which it is best known.

I was considering reactivating my facebook account just so I could dump everyone on my friends list and gorge on junk food.

As pointed out on MindHacks, its not that urban environments are bad for your brain, just that they are not beneficial. That is, it does not impart the positive benefits of natural environments.

Arabic numerals, arithmetic operators, and all their friends have allowed us to communicate cross-culturally for ages. Also, think of stop signs, bathroom signs, hazard indicators, etc.

There is nothing terribly unique about emoticons.

That's why I shoot deserters.

...are they making an effort to be historically accurate?

I've always liked the Total War series (since Shogun) but must admit to having been caught referring to some of the "history" I learned from the games. Rome:TW is particularly bad in this regard. Granted that the player can drastically alter the outcome of history, for instance by having a massive Portuguese empire take over all of Europe by 1250 A.D., but it would still be nice to be playing with actual historically significant events and persons.

And I have a lot of hope for this one, since a good chunk of it will deal with American history which many of the developers probably know a bit more about than Roman, Japanese, or medieval European history.

Also, I wonder whether we can now start looking forward to, say, Normandy: Total Way, which would be terrifyingly awesome. As the technology has gotten better, the series has tended to move forwards in time, with the exception of Medieval 2 which revisited a time period that had already been covered.