Disturbing: Any Town Nuked.. What Would Happen???

This picture shows the thermal blast radius if a 1952 hydrogen bomb were dropped on the city of Chicago derived from an application called (Click Here >>> Ground Zero II ). I picked this because this is my home city. This picture doesn't include the pressure wave or the fallout; but what's amazing about this site (Ground Zero II) is it allows you to click on the pressure map or fallout map. It even lets you pick wind speed!

That's not all, you can pick a bomb for ANY city in the world. Further, you can pick amongst many bomb types; from the smallest of suitcase dirty bombs, little boy or fat boy (the bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki Japan)to the kind of bombs North Korea is testing all the way up to the largest bomb ever tested, the Russian Tsar Bomba. (a 50 megaton tested by the USSR in 1961)

You can even put in the wind speed to calculate fallout.

They also include a massive asteroid impact.

Hat's off to Carlos Labs for creating this fascinating yet disturbing application.

(note - to use, just type your towns name, or type any town in the world, you then can click on the pressure tab to see what area the explosion would ruin as opposed to just what was incinerated, and if you can select the Fallout Tab to calculate the wind speed and direction for the radiation. Also, since this application is built on Google Maps, you can move around, zoom in or zoom out to see more detailed information.)

NY State Votes on Violent Game Ban

Today, New York state came one step closer to curbing violent video games. Both the State Senate and the House have passed video game violence resolutions. The laws have support from both sides of the aisle, making it very likely, New York will have some sort of violent game law by the end of the year.

New York legislators want to restrict the distribution of violent games to minors. The Senate and the House will have to come together and reconcile their two different bills, but that shouldn't be hard considering how good it looks to adult voters that you're trying to keep first person shooters out of the fragile minds of children.

Despite numorous studies that cut the tie between violent video games and violent people, law makers and politicos keep trying to rally public support behind making games less violent.

Choo! Choo! All aboard the censorship train! Next stop, missing the point entirely!

Read the insanity after the jump. [GamePolitics.com]

Apple is going up-town

Looks like Apple is opening another store in New York, more accurately the Meatpacking district within the Big Apple. The NY Post just announced that they are installing a new store at 9th Avenue and 14th Street. I'm not sure who Apple is targeting here -- skinny models? The beautiful people? It is a strange but fitting choice of location for a new 32,000 square foot Apple store.

The store will take up 3 stories and will be housed in an old warehouse down the street from Chelsea Market. Clearly Apple is after a more up-scale client with this store.