How Mr. Q Manufactured Emotion

by bradgessler • 17 years ago

107 21 17 years ago

SwellJoe• 17 years ago

Is this the first interesting person they've met? Nothing beyond schedule exists on the other 9 days. Seems like a bad run of luck.

dcurtis3• 17 years ago

No, I've met tons of interesting people. It just takes a while to write.

pyre• 17 years ago

How come when I click on another day (say Day 8 for example), I am no longer able to navigate back to Day 10?

wallflower• 17 years ago

Wow, you're not only an excellent designer but an excellent writer as well. My suggestion: ask permission to record your conversations with them for future "This American Life" style podcasts. Yes, I know the jet engine noise might be intractable for audio quality.

karzeem• 17 years ago

In my experience, old people are frequently the best people to end up next to on a plane. Given 80 years, everyone will have some absolutely fascinating experiences.

patio11• 17 years ago

One upon a time, I was at a dinner my university threw to bring together scholarship sponsors and scholarship students. I was sitting at the table with Mr. M, of the Mr. and Mrs. M that were paying for much of my education. Mr. M was quite successful in the construction business and was bankrolling over a dozen engineering students that year. He was in his nineties at the time. [Edited to add: I just checked and it appears he passed away this year. I'm going to send his family a card after I get home from work.]

Anyhow, at one point, my college nemesis (also, through accident of fate, at my university through Mr. M's generosity) was doing his usual intellectual preening and mentioned some numbers he had been working on for his civil engineering project. As I recall, it was how much reinforced concrete he would be needing for some project or other, but don't take my word for that: if physically exists it is Not My Department.

Mr. M mentioned, in a humble and offhanded way, that perhaps Nemesis should consider adding 20% more reinforced concrete so that the structure at issue wouldn't fail.

Nemesis: "Well, I don't know where you're getting your numbers, old man, but in this day and age X is considered enough."

Mr. M: "Well, I suppose it is entirely possible they have improved on the formula since then."

Nemesis: "You mean since you used it last?"

Mr. M: "I mean, since I invented it."

cliff• 17 years ago

This is awesome.

The transition part especially reminded me of iMUSE (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IMUSE) which creates seamless transitions between music tracks in LucasArts games as you move between areas.

This significantly enhances the immersion of the games, and 99% of the players probably never even noticed. And that's the point. They're not supposed to notice. They're supposed to be immersed.

johnnybgoode2• 17 years ago

I don't know what happened with this project since that letter to JetBlue's CEO, but Mr. Q has completely and single-handedly saved what always sounded like a questionable idea.

dcurtis3• 17 years ago

There are at least five other people as interesting as Mr Q who have made this project completely worth it for me

johnnybgoode2• 17 years ago

That's good news. I hope you're right, because that would be great for all of us.

_pius• 17 years ago

If you guys keep this up you'll have a nice coffee table book by the end. I just hope you're taking some high quality stills. Nice work!

gsiener• 17 years ago

No offense, but I had trouble reading this because I got so distracted by the inane amount of waste on day 9 (JFK->SYR->JFK). I wish the US wasn't so obsessed with the all you can eat buffet of life...

adamhowell2• 17 years ago

Yes, because had he not been on the plane it wouldn't have flown.

mcantelon3• 17 years ago

Added weight doesn't require the consumption of fuel? Using the pointless consumption of resources to garner attention doesn't set a bad example?

mcantelon3• 17 years ago

It's like some sort of pretentious, web 2.0 version of a Japanese game show.

unwind• 17 years ago

Heh ... For some reason I mis-remembered, and expected an article about the profound impact of the classic arcade game http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Q*bert ... Not at all what I got, but a good read nevertheless.

How Mr. Q Manufactured Emotion

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