World of goo

Puzzle game based on physics

It's about the beautiful goo balls living in the beautiful World of Goo
Go balls think that they are the most beautiful in the world.

random review from 2dboy site: "This isn’t just the small matter of being one of the best games of the year, it’s also the emergence of a stellar new talent in gaming... a game that constantly reinvents itself, reimagining the possibilities, evolving and throwing out surprise after surprise."

original site

World of Goo Trailer 2 Director's Cut
by 2dboy

Japanese gardens

Interesting site about Japanese gardens, their history, some literature based on them.

Karesansui

A small part of the site (from the introduction):

"A space that embodies nature can act as a kind of balm - a restorative for the mind. In its ideal form, the modern Japanese garden is just that spiritual space, designed according to a sophisticated aesthetic that evokes and celebrates nature. The means used differ, but all draw on a thousand years of what we call tokikata - in this context, the reading of the Cosmos through the garden."

"Japanese gardens are a living work of art in which the plants and trees are ever changing with the seasons. As they grow and mature they are constantly sculpted to maintain and enhance the overall experience. Hence a Japanese garden is never the same and never really finished. While the underlying structure is determined by the architecture, that is the framework of enduring elements, such as buildings, veranda's and terraces, paths, tsukiyama (artificial hills) and stone compositions, over time it is only as good as the careful maintenance that it receives by those skilled in the art of training and pruning."

Plato and a Platypus Walk Into a Bar – Understanding Philosophy Through Jokes

By Thomas Cathcart and Daniel Klein

Quote from the book: "A guy comes home from a business trip and finds his wife in bed, a nervous look on her face. He opens the closet to hang up his coat, and finds his best friend standing there, naked. Stunned, he says, "Lenny, what are you doing here?" Lenny shrugs and says, "Everybody's got to be someplace." In this gag, Lenny is giving a Hegelian answer to an existential question. The question is about the existential circumstances in the here-and-now, but the answer is from a grand, universal vantage point, what the latter-day Hegelian, Bette Midler called, “seeing the world from a distance."

Official site