Recently on Offworld: Vectorpark on iPhone, PAX info influx, sex lives of Famicom programmers Boing Boing

Recently on Offworld, this weekend's Penny Arcade Expo opening has brought with it a tidal wave of new game details and announcements: Ubisoft crosses Splinter Cell with Keyboard Cat, Grasshopper's No More Heroes 2 goes 8-bit (on purpose), 2K reveals BioShock 2's multiplayer in motion, Monkey Island creator Ron Gilbert's DeathSpank gets its debut trailer, and Valve show off Left 4 Dead 2's undead clown-inhabited Dark Carnival.

Elsewhere, we saw Vectorpark's brilliantly serene Flash toys Levers and Acrobots come to the iPhone, Crappy Cat creator VanBeater lend his talents for the iPhone's Bear on a Wire, Farbs (aka. the guy who quit his job via Super Mario Bros.) teases his fantastic space shooter Captain Forever, and Capcom/Clover's gorgeously ukiyo-e inspired Wii/PS2 game Okami get a new sequel for the DS.

Finally, we got an accidental look into the sex lives of NES programmers via hidden messages in ROMs, covered our eyes for Kurt Cobain's shockingly awful/disrespectful appearance in Guitar Hero 5, and got a post-mortem on Guitar Hero typography, and our 'one shots': India gets Invaded, and Dance Dance American Revolution meets Dance Dance Industrial Revolution.

Death, taxes and the Ig Nobel Awards

When Joel Slemrod of the University of Michigan won his Ig Nobel Award in 2001, part of the prize criteria was that the research involved "cannot, or should not, be reproduced". Luckily for Slemrod, that's since been changed to "first make people laugh, and then make them think". See, Slemrod and... More.

The Math Book: From Pythagoras to the 57th Dimension, 250 Milestones in the History of Mathematics

Mathematics, as presented by Clifford Pickover, is a palace filled with awe-inspiring curiosities. His Math Book: From Pythagoras to the 57th Dimension, 250 Milestones in the History of Mathematics is a 500-page, full-color tour of mathematical highlights from 150 Million B.C. to 2007. Each two... More.

It's Not The Photographer, It's The Camera!

I enjoy reading the high end DSLR discussion boards on the internet. Those gearheads go ape over minute differences in "chromatic aberration" and "barrel distortion". They peep at pixels in Photoshop to see if their lens is able to give them a sharp image blown up to the size of the side of a barn.... More.

Taste Test: Kabosu

Kabosu is a citrus fruit that tastes kind of like a cross between a lemon, lime, and yuzu. It gets harder to find the further you get from Oita Prefecture, on the southern Japanese island of Kyushu, because 98% of all kabosu production takes place there. Legend has it that the tree first arrived i... More.