This week’s articles aren’t all about cats. (Okay… Two of them are.) The 1990s video game “console wars”; sentence diagrams; Laura Ingalls Wilder’s autobiography; Hello Kitty travels to space; and Pizza Hut’s Pizza Cat(s). ★
• An interesting case study focusing on the video game “console wars” of the 1990s, which pitted the upstart Sega Genesis game system against Nintendo. Notably, the culture clash between Sega’s U.S. and Japanese teams regarding how to proceed plays a major role in the ultimate outcome. [Fast Company]
• Whenever I study a language with a radically different syntax than English, I’m thankful I had a chance to learn how to diagram sentences. The ability to visualize how words interact with each other gives me a fighting chance… and yet, for the most part, it isn’t taught in today’s classrooms. NPR takes a brief look at the history of sentence diagramming, its pros, and its cons. [NPR]
• Of interest to anyone who eagerly consumed the Little House pioneer saga as a child: The South Dakota Historical Society Press is planning to release Laura Ingalls Wilder’s autobiography in the relatively near future, complete with extensive annotations by a leading Wilder biographer. [Publishers Weekly]
• Hello Kitty… in Space. Back in June, Japanese researchers launched a tiny Hello Kitty figure into space aboard a trash can-sized micro-satellite, and now they’re holding a contest to determine which messages will appear on her digital display board while she’s in orbit. [Anime News Network, Sanrio’s Hello Kitty 40th Anniversary: Let’s Send a Message From Space! Campaign via RocketNews24]
• I’m not sure which amuses me more: that Pizza Hut Japan has a “Pizza Cat” campaign or that it popped up in Adweek’s “AdFreak” column. Either way, I’m singing the “Piz-za Cat-o” tagline to myself for several hours after I view the videos. Check out the official Pizza Cat site, too. [Anime News Network, Adweek, Pizza Hut Japan: Pizza Cat]