The Nukezilla Sunday Supplement – April 24th 2011

Every Sunday we’re going to post links to articles we think are interesting from the last week. Sundays are usually very quiet around here, so this seems like the best day to do it. We’re going to link to articles on range of subjects, including videogames, technology, movies, geek culture and much, much more.

Videogames

The art of lying: LA Noire – Develop. An awesome read that I featured earlier in the week. This post looks at the facial recognition software that has been used for the character design in Rockstar’s LA Noire.

Intern Affairs: Behind Closed Doors – Killscreen Magazine. This is the first of three articles (see below) written for Killscreen Magazine by a former intern of GamesRadar, Joseph Bernstein. He details some of the less positive experiences he’s seen as an unpaid intern. In part one he talks about preview writing.

Intern Affairs: The Ten-Minute Rule – Killscreen Magazine. In part two Bernstein details the actual experience of writing for the site.

Intern Affairs: Killing In the Name Of – Killscreen Magazine. In the third part (there’s four over all) he looks at violence in games in relation to PR reps.

Health Packs, Barrels and Uniforms are Good [Simulationism] – What Games Are. A look at why uniform objects, with uniform colours and styles are used across all games. Why are barrels always red? Why do health packs have red crosses on them? This articles has a look.

Science

To Tug Hearts, Music First Must Tickle the Neurons – The New York Times. ”Now some scientists are aiming to do just that, trying to understand and quantify what makes music expressive — what specific aspects make one version of, say, a Beethoven sonata convey more emotion than another.”

The Science of Why We Don’t Believe Science – Mother Jones. ”A man with conviction is a hard man to change. Tell him you disagree and he turns away. Show him facts or figures and he questions your sources. Appeal to logic and he fails to see your point.” This article looks why changing someone’s mind is really hard.

Culture

What happens when you try to leave the Church of Scientology? – The Guardian. A look at the people who try to leave the (alleged) American cult and the way in which it tries to prevent people from doing so.

Cool Stuff

Think hyphens aren’t contro-versial? Think again – The Guardian. My favourite little blog at the moment written by the Guardian‘s style editor David Marsh. He looks at all the different details of journalistic writing, this time looking at why hyphens are so important.