Why Does President Obama Want to Send NASA to an Asteroid?

I’m really hoping one of you is a NASA fanboy so that I can get a good reason why President Obama is determined to send astronauts to an asteroid (say that ten times fast!). According to The Associated Press:

Landing a man on the moon was a towering achievement. Now the president has given NASA an even harder job, one with a certain Hollywood quality: sending astronauts to an asteroid, a giant speeding rock, just 15 years from now.

Wow. Really?!? I realize there are longterm aspects to Obama’s job, but should he really be allocating millions of dollars to some silly venture when the country has so many problems? I’m totally not getting it. Did he watch Armageddon recently?!? (Though sending Ben Affleck to an asteroid in real life would be kind of cool.) I’m sure the project would lead to some impressive scientific discoveries, but the whole thing seems ridiculous to me when the employment rate is hovering around 10-frickin’ percent!

Keep me in check boys and girls. Am I overreacting? Perhaps I really hated Armageddon and the movie is clouding my judgement. Or maybe I’m angry about still being unemployed. *shrug*

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This Week’s Videogame Releases

It looks like the only interesting game being released this week is Capcom’s Monster Hunter Tri. The series is ridiculously popular in Japan, particularly on the PSP, and enjoys a nice following in other regions. I know most of you aren’t high on the Wii, but if you pick up this game, do let me know. For that matter, is there anything you plan on buying this week?

Blast From the Past: Reset Episode 6

Superheros, new consoles, and Konami — this episode of Reset has a lot going on! The second clip is particularly amusing when viewed through the retroscope; predicting PlayStation 3 factoids before launch is always good fun. Anyway, check it out!

Part 1 — I love X-Men Legends. Action-RPGs are some of my favorite games and I’m a comic-book nerd, so the game is perfect for me. Naturally, I was excited to check out X-Men Legends II at an Activision event.

Part 2 — Good friends EGM Mark and 1Up Jane return to talk about the PlayStation 3! It’s great hearing thoughts and predictions made before the systems launch, knowing how it eventually played out. See who was right and who was wrong in this Yahoo! Studios clip.

Part 3 — Kat Hunter gets the skinny on a slew of Konami games at a San Francisco press event. From Castlevania to Karaoke Revolution to Crime Life, there’s something for everyone in this clip.

SlickyFats RPad.tv Magnet Pic

After two failed attempts at sending RPadholic SlickyFats a magnet, he finally has one!!! You see boys and girls, persistence pays off. Ha! Anyway, here’s the photo he sent over.

If any of you don’t have magnets, please let me know. I have a few left and would love to send you one (note to self: buy more stamps). If you already have magnets and want to send in new photos, please do. Photos of an Rpad.tv magnet attached to an exotic dancer get priority (just kidding).

Google Pushes HTML5 With Gmail Drag-and-Drop Attachments

Google has been one of the biggest proponents of HTML5 and it continues to champion the standard with drag-and-drop attachments for Gmail. Currently enabled on a rolling basis for Gmail users on Google Chrome and Firefox 3.6, this nifty bit of tech adds convenience to the file-attachment process.

Sadly, none of my Gmail accounts have this feature enabled at the time of this writing. Please let me know if it’s working for you. If so, what do you think?

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What Are You Playing This Weekend?

I’d like to say that I’m going to jump right back into Final Fantasy XIII this weekend, but considering that I’ve been back in America for 14 hours, that’s probably not happening. I need to settle down, adjust to Pacific time, catch up on a ton of email, etc. When I need a mental break (i.e. escape from reality), I’ll probably jump back into Civilization: Revolution on my iPhone. Outside of that, I don’t see myself doing much heavy gaming. Of course I could always be convinced to play some Uno this weekend. Ha!

How about you guys and dolls? What are you playing this weekend?

Things I Missed While in Asia: MacBooks and Pokemon

There were so many excellent things I didn’t get to write about while I was in Asia. The two biggest — at least, that I can recall — were Apple refreshing its MacBook Pro line and Nintendo announcing Pokemon Black/White.

As for the new MacBook Pros, the 15- and 17-inch models get some excellent Intel i5 and i7 processors, while all models get new Nvidia graphics chips. Sadly, the 13-inch model doesn’t get any i5 love. I suppose that just makes my decision easier though. Ha!

The new Pokemon games promise to be the biggest leap the series has taken in a long, long time. From what I’ve seen and read, the differences should be plentiful, but the core gameplay will remain. Considering that this is one of my favorite series of all time, I’m super excited for this.

Out of curiosity, I wanted to see what you thought the biggest news was while I was hopping around Asia.

Blast From the Past: Reset Episode 5

The first clip of this episode was the season’s most popular. A bunch of girls parading around in bikinis equals traffic. Who knew. Anyway, here’s the show!

Part 1 — I went down to Vegas to catch Sony Online Entertainment’s “Quest for Antonia” modeling contest for EverQuest. I was totally rooting for the gamer girl to win, but she fell just a tad short. Check out these interviews with the contestants, as well as lots of footage of them strutting their stuff. Oh, I almost forgot! Blair Herter was one of the judges in this contest.

Part 2 — Here’s a fun clip for fans of Quantic Dream and Heavy Rain. It’s about the company’s previous title, Indigo Prophecy. I was high on the game from the start and it ended up being one of my favorites for the original Xbox. It’s fun taking a look back at it and seeing how the company’s style has progressed with Heavy Rain.

Part 3 — My pals EGM Mark and 1Up Jane return to Yahoo! Studios. This time we talk about the political heat games were getting at the time. Remember, this was around GTA “Hot Coffee” time. Soon after that, other titles were getting scrutinized. Gettin’ Up: Contents Under Pressure, 25 to Life, and The Sims were just a few of the games feeling the heat (make a Power Station joke please).

Almost Back!

Hello guys and gals! Thanks for keeping the site moving while I’m away. Things will be back to normal (whatever that means) soon! I’m currently typing away in the Cathay Pacific lounge in Hong Kong, waiting for my flight to Los Angeles. I’ll be back on Thursday night and will crank out a bunch of content on Friday.

Asia has been fantastic on several levels, but I really miss you guys!!!

Today’s question: how are you doing?

This Week’s Videogame Releases

There’s not a whole lot going on this week in terms of game releases. The only interesting title I see is Splinter Cell: Conviction for Xbox 360. Perhaps I’m missing something, but that appears to be it. Anyway, I’ve played there first few chapters of Conviction and really enjoyed myself…but not in the customary Splinter Cell way. There’s way more of a focus on action and the stealth portions of the game are much more forgiving than in previous installments. You have much more freedom and the game has a broad appeal because of it, but traditionalists might not dig it.

Are any of you picking up Splinter Cell: Conviction? Or are you picking up an older game or a title I forgot about?