Newmark's Door

At last, really important information

"How to Win at Rock, Paper, Scissors".

Really.

Bobby Fischer's "Game of the Century".

The one with the queen sacrifice and the astonishing sequence after. On YouTube with commentary.

"Pizza Topping Markup Calculator"

From Centives, an interesting blog written by Lehigh University undergraduates.

See also the Monopoly Property Value Calculator.

The GTA V trailer is out

Woah.

"Virtually Every Top Bridge Player In America Has A Finance Background"

"America's highest-rated bridge players are overwhelmingly composed of Wall Street guys. Bridge is a complex card game that fits the analytic side of finance, as poker appeals to instincts."

How cool is this?

"After 80 Failed Inventions, This 84-Year-Old Created The Game Of The Year".

George Weiss has spent the last 45 years filing patents for failed inventions from his Brooklyn basement. 

But it wasn't until three years ago, when he was cutting up plastic tiles, that he thought of Dabble: a fast-paced word game that is now in 42 stores nationwide and just won the 2011 Game of the Year Award from Creative Child Magazine in the Family Word Games category.

"20 predictions for the next 25 years"

The U.K.'s Guardian assembles some experts to predict. Some are plausible; some are not. This one, from an executive at Ogilvy and Mather, made me laugh:

In 25 years, I bet there'll be many products we'll be allowed to buy but not see advertised – the things the government will decide we shouldn't be consuming because of their impact on healthcare costs or the environment but that they can't muster the political will to ban outright. So, we'll end up with all sorts of products in plain packaging with the product name in a generic typeface – as the government is currently discussing for cigarettes.

(The man knows how government works.)

This takes me back . . .

"Lego art: sculptures by Nathan Sawaya".

Another of my petty gripes: why do Legos come almost entirely in stupid kits now? Whatever happened to boxes of parts for kids to exercise their imaginations on?

Sheesh.

Although there is this. That's what I'd buy a little kid.

Blast from the past

"Play Your Favorite DOS Games in XP, Vista, and Windows 7". X-Com, Lost Admiral, Pizza Tycoon, and Wayne Gretsky's Hockey would be worth playing again.

Or if you'd rather spend time with things that are more up-to-date, you could try "The greatest internet sports games of all time". "Quick Hit Football" looks interesting, but I haven't spent much time with it. 

"Like air hockey for the friendless"

If you have a few minutes to kill, try Taberinos. It gets hard around level 12.

(Link via Metafilter.)