Stephen Dubner, co-author of Freakonomics, has a question for you, prompted by a recent dinner at the midtown Benihana. Who is Celebrity X?

And one table over was a large party including someone that all of us recognized, whom we'll call Celebrity X. A year ago, I don't think many of us, if any, would have recognized Celebrity X -- even though he/she was pretty well known some 20 years ago. You could even say notorious. But that celebrity dimmed quite drastically. If in recent years you thought of this person at all, you probably would of thought of her/him as somewhere between a has-been and a clown.

Thanks to a couple of recent television shows, however, Celebrity X is back on top. This would seem to be due in considerable measure to an impeccable sense of timing.

The first correct guess wins a copy of Dubner's book, hooray. The leading candidate seems to be Flavor Flav, and that may not be correct, but we enjoy the thought of Flav rocking the crap sushi joint. A better guessing game: Is Freakonomics so bottomed out in the remainder bins that Dubner is reduced to baiting publicity traps with toothless celebrity fluff?

Comeback Player of the Year? [Freakonomics Blog via Boing Boing]
[Photo: Getty]

The Macworld Best of Show Awards, presented each year at Macworld Conference & Expo to the best products making their debut at the annual trade show, will be unveiled during a live, on-stage Feature Presentation at the January 2008 expo.

Sony's head of public relations for the UK, David Wilson, has told GamesIndustry.biz that the company is pleased with LittleBigPlanet's retail performance and expects the title to perform better due to "word of mouth".

The Media Molecule title went on sale on November 5, and entered the UK's All Format chart in fourth place, the same week as the company's MotorStorm: Pacific Rift came in at 29. The following week both titles dropped in the charts to 19 and 35 respectively.

"We're really pleased with the initial reaction to LittleBigPlanet - it has been our highest scoring game ever I believe with a Metacritic score of 95 and a huge list of 10/10s or 100 per cent scores," explained Wilson.

"We are also pleased with its commercial performance. In other times of the year it would be a clear number one - so you have to put the chart in context.

An anonymous reader writes "Today, more than 40 percent of all homes in the United States contain at least one video game console. Recognizing that all that gaming could add up to serious demand for electricity, NRDC and Ecos Consulting performed the first ever comprehensive study on the energy use of video game consoles and found that they consumed an estimated 16 billion kilowatt-hours per year — roughly equal to the annual electricity use of the city of San Diego. Through the incorporation of more user-friendly power management features, we could save approximately 11 billion kWh of electricity per year, cut our nation's electricity bill by more than $1 billion per year, and avoid emissions of more than 7 million tons of CO2 each year. In this November 2008 issue paper, NRDC provides recommendations for users, video game console manufacturers, component suppliers and the software companies that design games for improving the efficiency of video game consoles already in homes as well as future generations of machines yet to hit the shelves." The full report is freely downloadable as a PDF.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Filed under: Gaming, HDTV

We know it's been a rough couple of nights for you folks who didn't get your pre-order on (or got the shaft, even so) trying to hunt down a Playstation 3 without becoming the hunted, but there's an off chance that CompUSA may still be able to save your sanity. If 48 (or more) hours of sleeplessness has you ready to drop an inconceivable amount of cash to secure your machine through eBay, hold tight. Certain CompUSA locations will be bundling Playstation 3 units with any Sony HDTV purchase of 40-inches or larger, which could be fabulous news if you were planning on picking up a svelte new set (or dropping $2,000 in some entrepreneur's pocket) anyway. Currently, the lowest priced display compatible with the offer is Sony's $1,999 KDL-40S2010, which means that you'd be ponying up nearly $2,500 for the 20GB PS3 kit, or $2,600 for the 60GB package. Representatives have stated that some stores are "devoting their entire PS3 allocation" to the offer, which isn't exactly surprising considering last year's Xbox 360 bundle fiascoes. Regardless, for gamers looking to go all out, this may not be such an awful idea (especially if they end up including Wiis), but we're not sure if this offer will last past the (admittedly scant) first wave of shipments -- but hey, it sure beats getting shot up or beat down while squandering vacation days, right?

[Via GameSpot]

 

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Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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