It would have been delicious had Laura not won immunity and they could have blindsided her tonight. With Laura immune, I think Foa Foa should have voted out Dave Ball, who's the guy on the other tribe who bleeds Galu. That may not have been obvious to them, though.

I would love to see a season with everyone who's ever been removed for medical reasons invited back. There aren't enough of them to make up a full cast, so throw in everyone who's ever been voted out first. The season of second chances. People try so hard to get onto the show. Getting medically removed or voted out before the game's even really begun must be a tremendous blow. Give them all a shot at redemption.

I am incredibly angry at Fringe and, by extension, JJ Abrams.

As soon as Charlie started walking down the hall toward the furnace, I groaned and said to my wife, "Please tell me he's not going to replace Charlie." And that's exactly what happened.

Last season was so good, and my hopes for this season were even higher. Then they go and do this. It's a cheap trick, and it was done cheaply. Based on what we'd already seen, there was nowhere near enough time for the villain to kill and copy Charlie, let alone retrieve the doctor's body from whereever he'd stashed it-- we'll give the benefit of the doubt and say it was in the same room-- and position it to be found by Peter. It was a horrible cheat.

And it's a cheat we've seen before, when Sydney's best friend Francine was killed and replaced by a doppelganger on Alias. Hey JJ, just because you're stealing from yourself doesn't make it any less lazy.

I liked Charlie. Though he was often peripheral, he served an important function, connecting Olivia to the real world. He was her anchor. Taking him away may advance the plot, but it insults the audience and weakens the show. I am not looking forward to weeks of Charlie's sinister looks behind Olivia's back. How tedious. This show had so many other great things going for it-- there was no need to resort to such a hackneyed stunt.

Perhaps in the other universe, there's a show called Fringe not written by hacks.

The man is thinking a few moves ahead. Assuming that, as has been true for the past few seasons, there would be an immunity idol hidden in their camp and trying to figure out where it would be was brilliant. That he actually found it floored me. Kudos to Russell, but shame on the producers. This should be a sign to them that they've gotten lazy and predictable. Granted, nobody was going to stick their head under that tree accidentally, but if you're looking for the idol it was a pretty reasonable think to check. They should have buried it somewhere away from camp that wouldn't be stumbled upon and could only be found with the clues in hand. Shamefully lazy, really.

I'm now hoping against hope that Russell somehow manages to get the other idol too.

I'm not sure why Yasmin's there, but it sure as hell isn't to win a million dollars. Instead of making friends and recruiting allies for later in the game, she used her visit to alienate every single person on the other tribe. How can anyone be so clueless? I don't think she'll be around very long.

This was the first of two medical evacuations this season. The full-contact physical challenges have been getting more brutal season by season. They just seem like really bad ideas-- the players have no protective padding, are in 115 degree heat, and haven't been eating well. That's a recipe for disaster. I'm amazed we haven't seen broken bones.

And kids, here's one last important survival tip: if you're going to float around a swamp all afternoon, be sure not to ruin your tribe's fishing gear.

I think it's hilarious that this guy is a multimillionaire, and is there to play the game. It's not about the money for him, it's about going up against opponents mentally and physically. I feel sorry for everyone else this season, because they're playing an entirely different game and don't even know it.

I'm surprised the rules permit players to destroy other players' stuff. Getting rid of an opponent's socks may seem small, but that player is going to be really unhappy, physically uncomfortable, and disadvantaged. Imagine trashing their shoes, or their underwear. Why not plant a snake in their bed? What exactly are the limits of what players can or can't do? It seems like if you can avoid getting seen by other players, you could get away with a lot-- especially if you remember to sabotage yourself in a trivial way, so nobody suspects you.

What amazed me about tribal council was that Russell appeared to be completely honest, saying Marisa told him she was feeling uncomfortable about him. And instead of everyone thinking, "Geez, Russell totally turned on her based on a single minor comment, that guy's trouble" they all rallied behind him. They all viewed Marisa as the guilty party (or decided to jump on the "anyone but me" bandwagon). And Marisa, after Russell stabbed her in the back at tribal, didn't even have the sense to out him as a snake and tell everyone that he approached her about having a secret alliance.

I love that Betsy, the cop, smells a rat, but hated that she a) chose to say something about it to Ashley (if I'm remembering that right), and b) proceeded to call Ashley out as the weak link at tribal council. You can bet Russell is going to hear about Betsy's mistrust of him, and I have no doubt he'll engineer her ouster. She's the oldest woman in the tribe, it shouldn't be a hard sell. I'd have thought Betsy would be smart enough to keep her eyes open and her mouth shut, her friends close and her enemies closer.

This could be a very entertaining season.

Happy anniversary, honey.

Then we started using Burnout Paradise as a demo for Project Natal, and I played quite a bit of it as we tuned the experience. I was surprised by how much fun I was having, even when we switched Natal off and I used a controller. Eventually I took home the team's copy, and I've been hooked ever since.

It's a brilliant piece of game design. Instead of a series of racing circuits, Burnout Paradise drops you into Paradise City and its environs, a sprawling network of highways, dirt roads, railroad tracks, city streets, and back alleys that you're free to drive through however you like. Sprinkled-- no, poured-- throughout the map are various flavors of collectibles: billboards to break, fences to drive through, and jumps to land. You could spend dozens of hours just finding all of them, and in many cases figuring out how to actually collect them. And collecting them feels good. Flying off a ramp and through a billboard is yee-ha thrilling thanks to the game's breezy controls and forgiving driving model.

If you want some more structure, just pull up to a traffic light. Every single one in the game hosts an event you can opt into. They come in a few different flavors-- straightforward races, Marked Man races where you need to reach a destination before enemy cars run you off the road, Stunt Runs, and timed runs. My favorite is Road Rage, where there is no destination, merely a goal-- run the required number of cars off the road before they do the same to you. There are records for the fastest time on each stretch of road, and Showtime mode lets you set up absurd chains of point-gathering crashes anywhere, anytime.

Crashes in Burnout, whether your own or your victims', are spectacular affairs rendered in slow motion so you can appreciate every shard of twisted, broken metal. Cars fly through the air, tumble end over end, and shatter in viscerally satisfying ferrotechnic displays.

As you complete events, new car models get released into the city. If you take them down (run them off the road), you gain possession of them and can drive them yourself. As you play deeper into the game, the cars become faster, stronger, and more performant. The game keeps rewarding you and dangling more carrots in front of you.

Burnout Paradise is bursting with cool places to drive, whether it's over the top of a railroad trestle, around the bowl of a rock quarry, careening through hidden tunnels or jumping over the dam. You can complete events to collect cars, or you can drive at your own pace to find all the fences and billboards. You can beat the fastest times on every road in Paradise. You can perform other fun tricks for achievements.

And then... you can go online.

Last night I played multiplayer for the first time with 3 friends, and we spent hours playing through a bunch of 4-player challenges. The game offers 500 challenges for 2-8 players, ranging from "everyone meet up at the wind farm" to "collectively drive against the flow of traffic for 10000 yards at the same time" to "collide in mid-air at the drawbridge". Tackling those challenges cooperatively was a blast. If one of you is forced off the road by another player, the camera takes your picture and sends it to the driver that beat you-- a great opportunity for funny moments. There was a lot of laughter. If the other players in the group hadn't had more willpower than I and signed off in favor of sleeping, I'd have played through the night.

Burnout makes getting into a multiplayer game super-easy. You don't need to use the klunky default 360 invitation system-- instead, they built a custom interface directly into the game that lets you invite friends without plucking you out of the driving experience. Every element of the game has been polished to a glistening shine.

A sequel is inevitable, and I'll be lining up to play it.

Fun to browse.

He did not rule on whether or not an average consumer would be misled into believing that the cereal contains actual nutritional value.

The net effect is the most accessible gaming device ever. You don't have to explain to someone that they need to use the A button, a thumbstick, a trigger. They just get into the game and play the way they expect to play. Our team's demos at E3 showed two activities: Ricochet, a full-body Breakout game, and Paint Party, where you can free your inner Jackson Pollock by throwing paint at a canvas and creating stencils with your body.

I can tell you that Ricochet is super fun to play. You just get up and move your body. You can slam the ball with your hand, or you can just step into its path and have it bounce off your body. You can butt it with your head, spin a roundhouse kick, move in or out, etc. No controls to learn-- when you move your arm, your avatar moves his. It doesn't get more intuitive.

People are also floored by the simplicity and whimsy of Paint Party. This is a painting activity that isn't about creating the next great work of art. It's not about fine control and accurate rendering-- it's about the freedom to fling paint without worrying about the mess. It's about the fun of unbridled exuberance and expression. It's about the visceral satisfaction of flinging paint in a wide swath across a blank canvas. It's about the simple joy you had with fingerpaint as a child, before you were told to stay within the lines. And to play it, all you need to do is call out the colors and fling your arms.

Gamers frequently complain that motion control isn't for them. They're wrong. I think we're going to see some mind-blowing, innovative games developed for this platform that gamers will poop their pants for. Just imagine, for instance, what a great development team could do with the Star Wars license on Natal.

The big win, though, isn't with the gamers. It's with their families. There are a lot of people out there who are intimidated by game controllers. The Wii remote is certainly friendlier than most, but it's still something new to learn. Natal bypasses all of that. There doesn't even have to be a game to suck people in-- you'd be amazed how compelling and fun it is to just stand in front of the device and puppeteer your avatar. Everyone who uses Natal for the first time does some kind of silly dance or martial arts moves, just to watch their avatar mimic them. With your focus on your avatar, you feel free to experiment with your body in ways that you don't in front of a mirror. The fundamental functionality of the device is fun out of the box, before "game design" even enters the picture. And a lot of people who have never picked up a controller in their lives will get sucked in by Natal and have fun with a gaming console.

You can see the vision video shown at E3 here. Haven't found any online video of just the Natal E3 presentation yet, but our demos can be seen here.

Various news sources:

Time
Wall Street Journal
Yahoo
CNet
ABC

Update: complete footage of the Natal E3 presentation (albeit, sadly, without the elephant reveal) is here.

This is the difference between you and gifted practitioners of the writing craft. A Joss Whedon or a J. Michael Straczynski, after establishing the power of Claire's blood earlier in the series, would bring that thread back at such a critical moment. If that plot point became inconvenient, prior to the finale they'd illustrate why Claire's blood would not be a viable solution so that when the fateful event happened, the outcome would feel logical and tragic. What a good writer would not do is pretend that Claire's blood of Lazarus does not exist, while balancing on one foot and waving his hands madly through the air in the hope that the audience wouldn't notice.

I complain because I love. The show had such promise, once. It had wonder, and fun, and mystery. It had characters with motivations that made sense. It had the audacity to put a character named Hiro on the hero's journey. Then it developed an ability. The ability to defy logic, defy credulity, defy established characterization. The ability to go completely off the rails.

I should break the cycle of disappointment and leave the show, but I'm still in love with what it used to be. And deep inside, it has the potential to become that thing again. So I beg you. Find your characters again. Rediscover who these people were, and why viewers tuned in to watch them.

Otherwise, I might finally develop the ability to change the channel.

I played through Azada a while back and was underwhelmed-- I kept waiting in vain for it to impress me. Fairway Solitaire, on the other hand, I've come close to purchasing on a number of occasions. Lots of people I respect have said great things about it, and I was sad when the clock on the demo version expired. So I urge you to grab the free download while it lasts.

Details here. Make sure to follow the instructions-- you have to apply the coupon code to have the price reduced to zero.

Really?

Those of us in the puzzle community have been using that phrase for years to describe the ideal result of a sublime puzzle. Allow me to direct both parties in this legal scuffle to Martin Gardner's aha! Insight, which used the phrase as early as 1978.

Perhaps Oprah could make that her next book club selection.

Last night I accepted the Spire quest and went to the docks, where I promptly boarded the H.M.S. Ennui and disembarked into a completely different game. It was as if a bondage flick got spliced into my Care Bears cartoon. Suddenly I'm being yelled at to submit and obey, the game controller is throbbing to an everpresent foreboding heartbeat in a citadel of evil, I'm forced to choose between letting captives starve to death or losing experience points when my obedience collar shocks me. The game makes me run from point A to point B in a monotonous citadel for no apparent reason. The W pauses from her online sudoku puzzle long enough to give me a sidelong look and ask disgustedly, "What kind of game are you playing?" And when the sequence finally ends and I return to the game I wanted to play, ten years were stolen from my character's life (but I received no commensurate income boost from my various retail properties).

Boooooooooooooooo.

Aside from the heavyhandedness of the entire sequence, I think what I most object to is the notion that my character was in that hellhole for ten years. It took control away from me, when the whole essence of Fable is that you're in control-- your actions have consequences, you can be good or evil, who are you going to become? So it gave me two choices-- feed or starve the captives, kill or don't kill a friend (but when I spared him, an NPC killed him anyway)-- but otherwise, the arc of my character's story was removed from me. And in those ten years, the rest of the world hasn't really changed. The story jumped forward in time, but the world isn't selling that time shift to me.

And so our story continues.

Browsing there's one thing. Buying there's something else again. Williams-Sonoma is a full price shop. Everything is high end, and everything is full retail. In an age where Amazon will deliver the same stuff to your door for much, much less, who uncorks their credit card at Williams-Sonoma? It just never made any sense to me.

Apparently, it's making less sense to everyone else. The chain reported a 90% drop in revenue for the quarter, with profit falling from $1.15 a share a year ago to just 12 cents a share! And they don't expect to make a profit again until Christmas. Sales actually dipped more at Pottery Barn (29% vs 16.8% for W-S), which is owned by the same company.

Crazy! Sanity!