Sunday, June 30, 2019
Parliament in Ottawa (2)
The back of the Parliament building in Ottawa where the library is located. This shot was taken from the river in 2000.
Friday, June 28, 2019
Parliament in Ottawa (1)
A close-up outside the Parliament library in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada. This photo was taken sometime in 2000.
Wednesday, June 26, 2019
Fort Henry (2)
This photo from Fort Henry in Kingston, Ontario, Canada was taken in September 2000. Fort Henry was built during the War of 1812 to protect the Kingston Royal Naval Dockyard. It was replaced with a much larger fort in the 1830s.
https://supload.com/HJ5Cv0DJB
MLB 98 (PlayStation)
MLB 98 (PlayStation)
The PlayStation was the Sega Genesis of the 32-bit generation in terms of sports games. There were a vast number of sports games for the PlayStation but that's probably mostly because that system dominated the era. The Saturn died an early death and the Nintendo 64 was later in coming and never had the same volume of games because of Nintendo's licensing and the fact that it used expensive cartridges. MLB 98 was (almost) the start of a long series of baseball games. However, technically MLB Pennant Race was actually the first game in the series.
Tuesday, June 25, 2019
The Overuse of Mathematics in Economics
If you enrolled at university today, you would find economics modules filled with mathematics and statistics to explain economic phenomena. There would also be next to no philosophy, law, or history, all of which are much more important to understanding the way our world works and how it impacts the economy.
The reason is that since the end of the 19th century, there has been a push toward turning economics into a science—like physics or chemistry. Much of this has been done by quantifying phenomena and explaining it through graphs. It has been precisely since this shift that there has been such a poor track record of public policy, from fiscal to monetary.
What many contemporary economists fail to realize is that economics is as much of a philosophical pursuit as a mathematical one, if not more so.
A Brief History
Modern economics was first introduced as a formal subject called “history and political economy” in 1805. Economics was a three-decade-old discipline then, as Adam Smith had published his Wealth of Nations in 1776. The earliest economists were philosophers who used deduction and logic to explain the market. Smith deployed numerical analysis only as a means of qualitatively assessing government policies such as legislated grain prices and their impact. No graphs or equations were used.Even earlier, 17th-century philosopher John Locke contributed more to economic liberty than any mathematician has since. Likewise, philosopher David Hume successfully explained the impact of free trade with his price-specie flow mechanism theory, which employs pure logic. John Stuart Mill’s book On Liberty likewise furthered the cause for free markets without using math.
The first substantial misuse of mathematics was by Thomas Malthus. In 1798. He predicted mass starvation due to population growth, which was exponential and outpacing agricultural production, which was arithmetic. Malthus was evidently wrong, as contemporary free-market Japan’s population density towers over collectivist sub-Saharan’s Africa. Malthus could not quantify the rule of law and free markets.
Alfred Marshall’s Principles of Economics (1890) was the first groundbreaking textbook to use equations and graphs. One of Marshall’s students, John Maynard Keynes, would further the cause of quantifying economics by mathematically linking income and expenditure and how government policy could impact this. Keynes’ General Theory (1936) would serve as a blueprint for 20th-century economic policy as more scientific methods of economics gained favor in the coming decades. Friedrich Hayek summarized this shift in his Nobel Prize acceptance speech.
It seems to me that this failure of the economists to guide policy more successfully is closely connected with their propensity to imitate as closely as possible the procedures of the physical sciences—an attempt which in our field may lead to outright error. It is an approach which has come to be described as the "scientistic" attitude—an attitude which is decidedly unscientific in the true sense of the word, since it involves a mechanical and uncritical application of habits of thought to fields different from those in which they have been formed.
Quantifying the Unmeasurable
It is impossible to quantify human action. Although equations, such as utility measures, do exist to quantify human behavior, they are faulty when examined. How can an equation tell me when I am no longer satisfied with a certain good? Mathematically speaking, it is when marginal utility becomes negative. This may be true. However, the problem is how to determine how much chocolate will give me a stomach ache—mathematically speaking, what amount will produce negative marginal utility. A doctor could not figure this out, let alone an economist.There cannot be “catch-all” formulas due to the complexity of economic phenomena. Measuring the elasticity of demand for a certain good is at best a contribution to economic history. Elasticity will hardly be constant in the same country throughout time, let alone in other countries. However, the economists pursuing this analysis do not do it to update economic history—it is done for the purpose of having government micromanage demand for these goods. In reality, government should allow the free market to produce a certain good. The market will determine the demand/supply.
Economics, among other things, is the study of the allocation of scarce resources. If there is a limit of a certain good, it’s not the government’s job to utilize an equation to distribute it. Rather, governments must ensure that the property rights of that good are clearly defined. It is then up to the person who owns the good to allocate it. As such, economics is more related to jurisprudence than math.
The Solow-Swan growth model is a perfect example of quantifying economics. It claims to explain long-run economic growth based on productivity, capital accumulation, and other variables. It is unquestionable that these factors impact growth, however, it oversimplifies the complex interactions between various qualitative factors.
For example, English Common Law has allowed countries such as the US or Hong Kong to prosper more than African nations with no basis for the rule of law and where corruption is still widespread. Protestant nations were historically more favorable toward capitalism compared to other religions. Both of these factors undoubtedly affected the variables in the Solow-Swan model—the problem is quantifying them. Productivity and capital accumulation do not “just happen.”
Theoretical Predictions
Monetary policy has suffered the worst. Today, central banks manipulate interest rates to stimulate the economy due to a false belief in purely theoretical mathematical models. Such sophisticated analysis would be welcoming if it offered a better track record. By artificially lowering interest rates, central banks create malinvestment in the economy, creating a bubble.Once the economy is deemed to be “overheating,” the rates are raised, causing the bubble to burst. This is precisely what has happened since the introduction of discretionary monetary policy in many instances. The 2008 crisis is the most recent example.
However, such policy was not possible with the gold standard because there was no need for a central bank nor monetary policy, as a tool, to even exist. Likewise, the economy was much more stable. Why did gold work? It could not be manipulated easily by the government, and furthermore, it was spontaneously chosen by people because it fulfilled the necessary criteria. Mathematical formulas cannot replicate this. One economist jokingly described it:
Instead of trading away your valuable pigs for horses, why not accept some smooth stones? Don’t worry that you don’t want them, someone else will give you horses in exchange for them! If we could just all agree on which smooth stones are valuable, we’d all be so much better off!
Mathematics Can't Explain Everything
While serving as Hong Kong’s financial secretary from 1961 to 1971, John Cowperthwaite was skeptical about government collecting statistics outside what was necessary, claiming, “If I let them compute those statistics, they’ll want to use them for planning!” Hong Kong remains one of the richest and freest economies.Sadly, Cowperthwaite’s skepticism of central planning based on models is rarely heeded today, evidenced by the Keynesianism that has reemerged in the intellectual sphere. Furthermore, considering that publishing in mathematically-driven economics journals is needed to secure tenure, it is questionable whether mainstream economics will be changed by such incentives.
Mathematics has a place at best for budgets and debt servicing—but it should be recognized that mathematically-driven economics is a divergence from the foundation of traditional economics.
Luka Nikolic
Luka Nikolic is a Master’s student at the University of Ljubljana. He holds a Bachelor’s Degree in Business and Economics from the same University and his main interests are economics, politics, and finance. He was born in 1995 in Subotica, Serbia and is looking to pursue a career in investment banking.This article was originally published on FEE.org. Read the original article.
Monday, June 24, 2019
Brevard Renaissance Fair 2019 – The Craic Show – Part 4 (Step It Out Mary)
The Craic Show performs 'Step It Out Mary' at the 2019 Brevard Renaissance Fair in Melbourne, Florida.
https://dai.ly/x7akwy4
Brevard Renaissance Fair 2019 – The Craic Show – Part 4 (Step It Out Mary)
Sunday, June 23, 2019
50 Cent Comics - Astonishing X-Men #52
Next up from my 50 Cent MegaCon score is Astonishing X-Men #52. The X-Men has always been one of my favorite comic franchises though I stopped reading on a regular basis long before Astonishing X-Men came along. The Uncanny X-Men, The X-Men (later), X-Force, X-Factor, The New Mutants and Excalibur...those were the titles I remember.
There's a lot going on in this issue. Karma is being mind controlled by someone else...awkward as that's sort of what she does. Oh, and Wolverine explodes. There's some kind of bomb in his stomach. I'm not too worried though. With that mutant healing factor of his I'm sure it will all work out in the end.
Astonishing X-Men #52
Friday, June 21, 2019
CompuServe (1984)
CompuServe (1984)
It seems like there has been online dating for as long as there has been an online world. This ad from 1984 is for CompuServe, one of the centralized online services that were available before the internet came along or was easily accessed directly anyway. The marriage motif seems to be suggesting that you could find your future spouse on CompuServe and I'm sure that happened many times through the years.
This particular ad is emphasizing one of CompuServe's services called "CB Simulator". Essentially this was a chat area with many channels and operated more or less like IRC or group text messaging. I guess they needed something from the physical world that people could relate to for the name since there were no cell phones or text messaging to speak of and chatting online was still a novelty. CompuServe wasn't cheap though. I'm not sure exactly what the cost was in 1984 but as I recall later in the 1980s it was something a little less than $20 per month but then you paid by the minute for your online time as well. There were non-prime hours at night where certain services could be accessed without the extra per-minute cost though.
This ad is from the September 1984 issue of Compute!. In 1984, CompuServe was accessible by pretty much any computer of the day that you could attach a modem to since it was purely text based. All you needed was a computer, a modem, a phone line and some terminal software. I can't quite tell if that's a VIC-20 or a Commodore 64 in the ad.
Thursday, June 20, 2019
The Futility of Those Bans on Plastic Bags and Straws
Canada, following precedent set by the European Union, is poised to join a growing list of places where single-use plastic items have been banned. Though the government hasn’t specified which items will actually be outlawed in 2021, according to The Guardian, “bottles, plastic bags, and straws” are being considered.
First, they came for the bags. Then, they came for the straws, but perhaps instead of looking for other common products to ban, we should look at what these regulations actually do.
Of course, plastic bans aren’t just restricted to Europe and Canada.
Plastic bag bans have come to California and New York, and to a number of cities in the United States. The bans are typically aimed at grocery stores and other businesses that give out the bags to customers to carry out purchased items.
The bag bans are billed as a means to reduce waste and pollution by forcing Americans to bring reusable bags to stores.
Questionable Results
However, it turns out that not only are those bans an inconvenience, they also have questionable positive benefits for the environment—and may actually be making things worse.A recent study by University of Sydney economist Rebecca Taylor in Australia established that bans on plastic shopping bags change behavior; namely, people used fewer plastic shopping bags as the sources dried up.
However, people didn’t stop using plastic bags as a whole. Instead of reusing plastic bags as trash can liners, for example, customers purchased garbage bags to make up for the lost supply.
In areas with the shopping bag bans, there was a huge upsurge in the purchase of 4-gallon bags. These bags are typically thicker than the thin plastic shopping bags and use more plastic.
“What I found was that sales of garbage bags actually skyrocketed after plastic grocery bags were banned,” Taylor said in an interview with National Public Radio. “ … so, about 30% of the plastic that was eliminated by the ban comes back in the form of thicker garbage bags.”
Waste Shifted to Paper Bags
In addition, a plastic bag ban causes a jump in the use of paper bags—creating, according to the study, about 80 million pounds of additional paper bag trash a year.That may seem like a reasonable trade-off. After all, paper bags are biodegradable, right?
Yes, but the process of manufacturing those bags is still quite intensive, and there’s evidence that paper bags are actually worse for the environment, according to some studies.
Not surprisingly, some big-government nannies want to ban, or at least curtail, the use of paper bags also, for good measure.
Reusable Bags Aren't Much Better
As for the environmentally-friendly reusable bags, studies have found that they create few “green” benefits. Worse, they are often highly unsanitary.Plastic bags are, of course, not the only plastic items that cities are trying to do away with. An even less useful crusade, this one against plastic straws, has been gaining steam as well.
The straw ban, which started in Seattle and has moved on to other cities, has largely been fueled by an informal survey by a 9-year-old activist and the mistaken notion the U.S. is causing plastic buildup in the oceans.
Again, the ban is ineffective or useless at best. It ends up being little more than an inconvenience for those who now have to suffer through soggy, melting paper straws that taste like a used paper towel halfway through a drink.
There are certainly worse laws and petty tyrannies to suffer under than bans on plastic bags. Nevertheless, it’s ironic that a progressive “utopia” such as San Francisco is waging war on plastic grocery bags, with a total ban looming in the near future, even as it is literally covered in trash, hypodermic needles, and human waste.
Our zeal to fix First World problems is also coming at the expense of not stopping re-emerging Third World problems.
That said, Americans live in a wealthy society, in which we have the luxury of making economic sacrifices to improve our environment. Local polities are free to eliminate plastic bags and straws—or other such things—as they see fit.
However, it’s telling that so many of these movements are based on little more than environmentalist virtue-signaling, and create additional hassles, rather than effective measures to make our communities better or cleaner.
This article is republished with permission from the Daily Signal.
This article was originally published on FEE.org. Read the original article.
Wednesday, June 19, 2019
New Mutants #19 (Vol. 3)
Next up in my 50 cent comic stash from MegaCon is New Mutants #19. Along with The Uncanny X-Men, the original run of The New Mutants was one of my favorite comics back in the day. This issue from 2011 is actually from Volume 3 which reunites the original team members.
Apparently, this series started when a Magik from the future comes back in time from to warn of impending danger.
In this particular issue, the team has been captured by some soldiers that had been stuck in Limbo for many years and who are trying to go back and destroy the place, or at least its occupants. However, they need members of The New Mutants in order to create a weapon. Of course, they manage to escape.
I never read anything other than the original run of The New Mutants but this at least seems reminiscent of it. It's hard to gauge the quality of a series from one issue but it seems those who liked the original series would be interested in this one.
See the previous entry in the 50 Cent Comics series here: https://megalextoria.blogspot.com/2019/06/50-cent-comics-uncanny-x-men-290.html
Batter Up (Sega Genesis, Super Nintendo)
Batter Up (Sega Genesis, Super Nintendo)
You might have thought that motion gaming began with the Wii but you would be wrong. This ad is from 1994 and features a bat controller that was used to swing at pitches in video baseball games on the Super Nintendo and Sega Genesis. That ad isn't real specific as to which games it works with. It just says "it's compatible with the most popular video baseball games". Given that swinging at a pitch mostly just involved pressing a button, it's probable that it worked with the vast majority.
I don't think this particular accessory was very popular. That's probably in part because it doesn't really give you any actual control except as an alternate way to send a button press. Also, this was a wired controller and I can imagine that a number of game systems were yanked off the top of the TV or shelf that they were on some of the more vigorous swings. Not to mention the number of times a kid brother or sister was whacked in the head. At least it appears to have been padded.
This ad is from the November 1994 issue of EGM^2.
Vintage Photos - Oestreicher (357-360)
See the previous post in this series here. Feel free to skip the quoted intro text if you have read it before.
I had the opportunity to pick up a huge batch of slides recently. These are pictures spanning from as early as the late 1940s to as late as the early 1990s (maybe earlier and/or later but these are what I have sampled so far). These came to me second (third?) hand but the original source was a combination of estate sales and Goodwill. There are several thousand...maybe as many as 10,000. I will be scanning some from time to time and posting them here for posterity.
Apparently, getting your pictures processed as slides used to be a fairly common thing but it was a phenomenon I missed out on. However, my Grandfather had a few dozen slides (circa late 1950s) that I acquired after he died. That along with some negatives is what prompted me to buy a somewhat decent flatbed scanner that could handle slides and negatives (an Epson V600). That was the most money I was willing to spend on one anyway. It can scan up to four slides at a time with various post-processing options and does a decent enough job. The scanner has been mostly idle since finishing that task but now there is plenty for it to do.
This set continues a rather large batch of slides that originally came from an estate sale and appear to have belonged to a locally well known photographer from the Spokane Washington area and later Northern Idaho named Leo Oestreicher. He was known for his portrait and landscape photography and especially for post cards. He career started in the 1930s and he died in 1990. These slides (thousands of them) contain a lot of landscape and portrait photos but also a lot of photos from day to day life and various vacations around the world. Here's an article on him from 1997 which is the only info I have found on him: http://www.spokesman.com/stories/1997/jan/04/photos-of-a-lifetime-museum-acquisition-of-leo/
Many of these slides had the date they were processed (presumably) stamped or printed on them (month and year). I've found that in cases where I could verify the date, either because a more specific date was hand written or there was something to specifically date the photo in the photo itself, that this date has typically been the same month the photos were taken. In other words, I expect that in MOST cases these photos were taken relatively near the processing date. No doubt there are some exceptions.
Other than the second picture which has a hand written year of 1954, none of the pictures in this set are labeled. The labeled image is of a boat on a river. It looks like some sort of steam powered boat... There is another image of what is probably the same river, one of mountains and a Bengal tiger, presumably in a zoo somewhere. All of these are most likely from the 1950s.
Click on one of the images or the link below to also see versions processed with color restoration and Digital ICE which is a hardware based dust and scratch remover, a feature of the Epson V600 scanner I am using. There are also versions processed with the simpler dust removal option along with color restoration.
https://supload.com/ryA8CV9iV
The entire collection that has been scanned and uploaded so far can be found here.
Universal's Islands of Adventure (4)
This photo was taken at Universal Islands of Adventure in Orlando, Florida sometime in the Summer or Fall of 2000. That's the Hulk coaster in the background.
Fort Henry (1)
This photo from Fort Henry in Kingston, Ontario, Canada was taken in September 2000. Fort Henry was built during the War of 1812 to protect the Kingston Royal Naval Dockyard. It was replaced with a much larger fort in the 1830s.
Tuesday, June 18, 2019
Monday, June 17, 2019
Vintage Photos - Oestreicher (353-356)
See the previous post in this series here. Feel free to skip the quoted intro text if you have read it before.
I had the opportunity to pick up a huge batch of slides recently. These are pictures spanning from as early as the late 1940s to as late as the early 1990s (maybe earlier and/or later but these are what I have sampled so far). These came to me second (third?) hand but the original source was a combination of estate sales and Goodwill. There are several thousand...maybe as many as 10,000. I will be scanning some from time to time and posting them here for posterity.
Apparently, getting your pictures processed as slides used to be a fairly common thing but it was a phenomenon I missed out on. However, my Grandfather had a few dozen slides (circa late 1950s) that I acquired after he died. That along with some negatives is what prompted me to buy a somewhat decent flatbed scanner that could handle slides and negatives (an Epson V600). That was the most money I was willing to spend on one anyway. It can scan up to four slides at a time with various post-processing options and does a decent enough job. The scanner has been mostly idle since finishing that task but now there is plenty for it to do.
This set continues a rather large batch of slides that originally came from an estate sale and appear to have belonged to a locally well known photographer from the Spokane Washington area and later Northern Idaho named Leo Oestreicher. He was known for his portrait and landscape photography and especially for post cards. He career started in the 1930s and he died in 1990. These slides (thousands of them) contain a lot of landscape and portrait photos but also a lot of photos from day to day life and various vacations around the world. Here's an article on him from 1997 which is the only info I have found on him: http://www.spokesman.com/stories/1997/jan/04/photos-of-a-lifetime-museum-acquisition-of-leo/
Many of these slides had the date they were processed (presumably) stamped or printed on them (month and year). I've found that in cases where I could verify the date, either because a more specific date was hand written or there was something to specifically date the photo in the photo itself, that this date has typically been the same month the photos were taken. In other words, I expect that in MOST cases these photos were taken relatively near the processing date. No doubt there are some exceptions.
Only the final shot in this series has a date. It is a landscape photo taken in the mountains and was taken in 1952. The rest are completely unlabeled though there are shots of a woman in a flower garden and some kind of stage.
Click on one of the images or the link below to also see versions processed with color restoration and Digital ICE which is a hardware based dust and scratch remover, a feature of the Epson V600 scanner I am using. There are also versions processed with the simpler dust removal option along with color restoration.
1952
https://supload.com/rkGCi45jV
The entire collection that has been scanned and uploaded so far can be found here.
The Economics of Climate Change: What Universities Won’t Teach College Students
I recently gave a talk to a student group at Connecticut College on the economics of climate change. (The video is broken up into three parts on my YouTube channel: one, two, and three.) In this post I’ll summarize three of my main points:
(1) There is a huge disconnect between what the published economics research actually says about government policies to limit global warming, and how the media is reporting it.
(2) President Trump taking the U.S. out of the Paris Agreement doesn’t really affect anything on the margin, even if we stipulate the alarmist position on climate change.
(3) If I’m wrong, and human-caused climate change really does pose a dire threat to humanity in the next few decades, then scientists are currently working on several lines of research of practical ways to actually deal with the problem.
The “Consensus Research” Does Not Justify Radical Political Intervention
I first clarified to the students that throughout my talk, I wasn’t going to grab results from right-wing think tanks, or from “fringe” scientists who were considered cranks by their peers. On the contrary, I would be relaying results from sources such as the work of a Nobel laureate William Nordhaus (whose model on climate change policy had been one of three used by the Obama Administration) and from the UN’s own periodic report summarizing the latest research on climate change science and policy.To demonstrate just how wide the chasm is between the actual economics research and the media treatment of these issues, I described to the students the spectacle I observed back in the fall of 2018, when on the same weekend news came out that William Nordhaus had won the Nobel Prize for his pioneering work on the economics of climate change and that the UN released a “Special Report” advising governments to try to limit global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius.
The media treatment (sometimes in the same story) presented these events with no sense of conflict or irony, leading regular citizens to assume that Nordhaus’ Nobel-winning work supported the UN’s goals for policymakers.
But that is not true at all. Here’s a graph from a 2017 Nordhaus publication that I included in my presentation:
Anyone remotely familiar with the climate change policy debate knows that such an amount of warming would terrify the prominent activists and groups advocating for a political solution. They would quite confidently tell the public that warming of this amount would spell absolute catastrophe for future generations.
My point here isn’t to endorse Nordhaus’ model. My point is simply that Americans never heard anything about this when the media simultaneously covered Nordhaus’ award and the UN’s document calling for a 1.5°C limit. And yet, Nordhaus’ own work—not shown in the figure above, but I spell it out here—clearly concludes that such an aggressive target would cause far more damage to humans in the form of reduced economic output, that it would be better for governments to “do nothing” about climate change at all.
With or Without the United States, the Paris Agreement Was Going to “Fail”
To continue with the theme of how they’ve been misinformed, I reminded the students of the media’s apoplexy when Trump announced his intention to remove the United States from the Paris Climate Agreement (or treaty, in lay terms). I showed them a headline in which famed physicist Stephen Hawking said Trump was pushing the planet “over the brink.”I then asked the students rhetorically, “You would think that the Paris Agreement was going to ‘work’ to contain the threat of climate change, except for Trump pulling out and wrecking it, right?”
And yet, the pro-intervention group ClimateActionTracker.org nicely illustrates that even if all countries met their pledges (including the U.S.), it wouldn’t come close to limiting warming to the weaker benchmark of 2°C, let alone the newer, more chic target of 1.5°C. Things were even worse if we evaluated the actual policies of governments (as opposed to what they stated they intended to do about limiting their emissions).
Technological Solutions
After spending so much time showing that the political “solutions” were failing even on their own terms, I summarized a few avenues of research (see this article for details) where scientists are exploring techniques to either remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere or reflect some incoming sunlight.Although I personally do not think human-caused climate change is a crisis, and do think that adaptation coming from normal economic growth will be more than sufficient to deal with any problems along the way, nonetheless scientists do have these other techniques in their back pocket should they become necessary to “buy humanity a few decades of breathing room” while technology advances in the transportation and energy sectors.
Americans, especially students, are being whipped into a panic over the allegedly existential threat of climate change. Yet the actual research, summarized in the UN’s own periodic reports and in the research of a Nobel laureate in the field, shows that at best only a modest “leaning against the wind” could be justified according to standard economic science.
By their own criteria, the alarmist activists are admitting that political measures are nowhere near achieving their goals. Their own rhetoric says that these activists are wasting everyone’s time pushing solutions that will end in catastrophe. Occasionally they slip up, as for example when Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez admits that her “we have 12 years left” was not to be taken literally.
In order to bring light to the climate change debate, at this point one just needs to actually screenshot and explain the evidence from the establishment sources. The rhetorical framing of the issue is so far removed from the underlying research that this alone is heretical.
This article is republished with permission from the Mises Institute.
Robert P. Murphy
Robert P. Murphy is senior economist at the Independent Energy Institute, a research assistant professor with the Free Market Institute at Texas Tech University, and a Research Fellow at the Independent Institute.This article was originally published on FEE.org. Read the original article.
50 Cent Comics – The Uncanny X-Men #290
Next of from the stash of 50 cent comics I purchased at MegaCon this year is The Uncanny X-Men #290 from July 1992.
For a while, The Uncanny X-Men was probably my single favorite title though I wouldn't start buying them on a regular basis until almost a year after this issue. This issue features a battle primarily between Hiro and the Cyburai. What could be more cool than cybernetic Samurai? Then there was the drama between Storm and Forge. Forge had asked Storm to marry him in a previous issue and Storm apparently said let me think about it. She decided yes but not before Forge got sick of waiting and retracted his proposal. Overall a pretty uninteresting issue despite the cybernetic Samurai...unless you were really shipping Storm and Forge I guess. However I guess this issue is important in one regard. It is this issue in which Forge leaves the X-Men. He wanted to help Mystique who he would later have an affair with. Sometimes reading the X-Men is like watching a soap opera.
Again, it was really the ads that were more fun to look at. There are lots of video game ads in this issue. The Super Nintendo had been relatively recently released so there are still plenty of ads for the original NES plus the Genesis and Game Boy. This ad is for Ferrari Grand Prix Challenge for the NES, Genesis and Game Boy. It is a rather mediocre racer if I recall correctly.
Here we have Forge maniacally fixing the blackbird. We also have the more interesting ad for Super Castlevania IV, one of the early games for the Super Nintendo.
Some more dialog with Forge. Or you can look at the ad for Hook for the NES...
I miss Rick Moranis being in movies. My favorite roles of his will always be from Ghostbusters and Spaceballs but I liked the Honey, I Shrunk/Blew Up the Kids movies too.
See the previous entry in this series here: https://megalextoria.blogspot.com/2019/06/50-cent-comics-avengers-311.html
Sunday, June 16, 2019
Info (November 1991)
While Info (or .info) covered both Commodore's 8-bit and 16-bit computers, by 1991 it was only covering the Amiga. The November 1991 issue includes: ProVisions
- Graphics - Brad Schneck presents a RoundUp of the top Amiga native made paint programs.
- MultiMedia - Harv Laser's Rockin' and Boppin' to CD+G on CDTV. (With discography!)
- Audio - Bob Lindstrom examines the topic of how to add music to multimedia.
- Video - OJ Sands III puts himself in the picture with MicroSearch's impressive Chromakey.
- UNIX: Is It For You? - Daniel Barrett finishes his discussion with Part II: For the Programmer.
- Quarterback Tools - David Martin reviews this Amiga utility program.
- Point / Counterpoint - Nick Sullivan and Chris Zamara debate the relative virtues of the Workbench and CLI.
- Checking Out Programs - Jim Butterfield warns that Hallowe'en and Christmas may be the same thing.
- Hardware - Mort Kevelson packs an A500 with ICD's internal peripherals.
- Public Domain - Jeff Lowenthal looks at programs from GEnie and CranWare.
- Tir Na Nog - Brad Schneck explains the creative process.
- CyberPlay - Tom reviews 4 new games, then twiddles his electronic thumbs.
- Productivity - Jim Meyer backs up with Ami-Back and Flashback.
- DevCon Report - Mark visits the Coors Brewery and the Amiga DevCon.
- .info Monitor
- New Products
- News & Views
- .info Update
- The Rumor Mill
- Advertisers' Index
Info (November 1991)
Thursday, June 13, 2019
Arazok’s Tomb (Macintosh)
Arazok’s Tomb (Macintosh)
Arazok's Tomb is a relatively obscure adventure for the Amiga and Macintosh that was published by Aegis Development in 1987. Aegis Development was a relatively obscure publisher that only published a handful of mostly equally obscure games. Arazok's Tomb is basically a text adventure game with some static and animated graphics, a drop down menu, and even some basic speech synthesis tacked on.
Universal's Islands of Adventure (2)
Storm and Rogue of the X-Men at Universal's Islands of Adventure in Orlando, Florida. This photo was taken sometime in the summer of 2000.
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