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UPDATE: LEGEND Shane Warne gave day-night Test matches “a tick and smiley face” as pink ball fever lit up cricket at Adelaide Oval on Friday night. Adelaide Oval’s crack curator Damian Hough concedes there were plenty of ‘sleepless’ nights in daring to be different and deliver cricket’s blueprint pitch. It took a perfectionist in Hough to produce a pitch out of the box and against the grain of benign surfaces around the globe that conspire against enthralling cricket. Incredibly, Hough devised the pitch a decaying format needed. There was something for everyone straddling the hardest degree of difficulty – using an immature, three-year old drop-in tray. New Zealand folded for 202 after dinner while Australia was 2/54 in reply at stumps on the opening night with the ball swinging under lights as expected. Australian skipper Steve Smith (24) and Adam Voges (9) showed the benefits of mental application and resume 148 runs behind the visitors today. “It was good bowling from Australia, a couple of bad shots and nothing to do with the pink ball,” said Warne. Quality Black Caps left-armer Trent Boult (1/15) and Doug Bracewell (1/6) are a handful at the slightest hint of green and so it proved claiming David Warner (1) and Joe Burns (14). Day one was captivating with 12 wickets falling but short of the 18 on day one of the third Test between New Zealand and Australia in 1974 at Auckland with the red ball. All the talk about pink balls and day-night Test history in front of a bumper first day crowd of 47,441 in Adelaide had overshadowed the simple mechanics that had proven successful over 138 years. Hough’s pitch provided encouragement for pace, spin and prudent batting as promised but it was up to players to perform. A director is only as good as his talent. “There’s just enough in this pitch if you get it in the right spot,” noted former Australian skipper Mark Taylor. Mitchell Starc, bowling with stress fractures that will sideline him here, continued his first class prowess with the pink ball he dislikes. Black Caps No.3 Kane Williamson (22) lasted 10 balls against Starc when switched to the river end, eventually finding an in-swing rocket impossible to defend. Skipper Brendon McCullum followed quickly (4) with a silly swipe. Hough’s strip for the day night Sheffield Shield clash last month between South Australia and New South Wales had provided the template for this Test and been given the thumbs up in a private review with Smith. Still, Hough ‘worried at night’ but triumphed in his mission to make people forget the pink ball and focus on the match. It can be revealed Hough left exactly 11mm of top layer, coarse, matte grass on his pitch in a bid to prepare the ideal surface ball but didn’t influence the contest. Some curators leave 6mm and others across the subcontinent none. The bounce and carry has improved out of sight in Adelaide while the coarse grass provided turn from the outset. Off-spinner Nathan Lyon was introduced in the 11thover then removed set opener Tom Latham for 50. Mark Craig (11) was mesmerised by a corker turner from Australia’s leading off-spinner. Peter Siddle reached 200 Test wickets exploiting subtle seam movement to claim Bracewell (11) and Ross Taylor (21) . “There’s a good 10 millimetre of grass out there and we haven’t seen enough of that in recent times,” said Taylor, as a sequence of six consecutive first innings Test totals exceeding 500 in Australia came to an end. There’s a fine line between a green top and ‘nibble; but Hough has managed a top layer of consistent grass that he says can be rolled but then “pop back” to life for the duration of a match. It’s the formula groundsmen around the world will be on the phone for. |
The Senate on Wednesday passed a short-term bill to fund the government, days ahead of the Oct. 1 deadline to avoid a shutdown. ADVERTISEMENT Senators voted 72-26 on the continuing resolution (CR) to fund the government through Dec. 9. With the legislation heading to the House, where it could be voted on as early as Wednesday, senators are expected to leave Washington until after the November election. Lawmakers had hoped for a brief September session that would let vulnerable incumbents get back to the campaign trail. Republicans are defending 24 Senate seats this year, and Democrats are defending 10. Instead, negotiations dragged out for weeks amid a myriad of policy battles, though leadership remained optimistic they would avoid a repeat of a 2013 shutdown. Twelve Democrats and 14 Republicans voted against the spending bill. Sens. Tim Kaine Timothy (Tim) Michael KaineTrump claims Democrats ‘don’t mind executing babies after birth’ after blocked abortion bill Democrats block abortion bill in Senate Trump unleashing digital juggernaut ahead of 2020 MORE (D-Va.) — who is running for vice president and returned to the Senate briefly Tuesday — and Bernie Sanders Bernard (Bernie) SandersPush to end U.S. support for Saudi war hits Senate setback Sanders: 'I fully expect' fair treatment by DNC in 2020 after 'not quite even handed' 2016 primary Sanders: 'Damn right' I'll make the large corporations pay 'fair share of taxes' MORE (I-Vt.) — who is out campaigning with Hillary Clinton Hillary Diane Rodham ClintonSanders: 'I fully expect' fair treatment by DNC in 2020 after 'not quite even handed' 2016 primary Sanders: 'Damn right' I'll make the large corporations pay 'fair share of taxes' Former Sanders campaign spokesman: Clinton staff are 'biggest a--holes in American politics' MORE on Wednesday — didn't vote. The White House formally signaled its support for the bill Wednesday, though the Office of Management and Budget said in a statement that it was "disappointed" that a provision allowing the Export-Import Bank to make transactions larger than $10 million was not included. Wednesday's vote came after a late-night deal to include aid for the Flint, Mich., drinking water crisis broke a stalemate that was threatening to torpedo the Senate's bill. House leadership will allow a vote on an amendment adding emergency funding for communities with lead-contaminated drinking water to a water infrastructure bill. Democrats, who had been holding up the government funding bill over Flint aid, quickly threw their support behind the agreement. "I've had conversations with people, I've been given the assurance by the Republican leadership that something will happen in the lame duck," Minority Leader Harry Reid Harry Mason ReidBottom Line Brennan fires back at 'selfish' Trump over Harry Reid criticism Trump rips Harry Reid for 'failed career' after ex-Dem leader slams him in interview MORE (D-Nev.) said. "I'm comfortable in talking to [House Speaker Nancy Pelosi] that the House feels comfortable with where they are on Flint." In addition to Pelosi, Reid said he spoke with Majority Leader Mitch McConnell Addison (Mitch) Mitchell McConnellHouse to push back at Trump on border Democrats block abortion bill in Senate Overnight Energy: Climate protesters storm McConnell’s office | Center-right group says Green New Deal could cost trillion | Dire warnings from new climate studies MORE (R-Ky.) and Michigan lawmakers as they ironed out a final deal. The Senate's vote means that it will move before the House has formally added the Flint money to its version of the Water Resources Development Act (WRDA). Sen. Gary Peters (D-Mich.) brushed aside questions about whether Democrats should hold off on supporting the Senate's CR until after the House passes its water bill, saying they had "strong assurances" from leadership. Peters and Sen. Debbie Stabenow Deborah (Debbie) Ann StabenowLand conservation tax incentives should inspire charitable giving, not loopholes Four names emerge for UN position: report Democrats brush off GOP 'trolling' over Green New Deal MORE (D-Mich.) vote against the spending bill because it did not include help for the drinking water crisis. He criticized the bill after the vote, saying "there is no excuse whatsoever for leaving the people of Flint behind." The Senate CR also includes funding to fight the Zika virus, combat the opioid overdose crisis and provide emergency funding for floods in three states. Democrats quickly claimed victory after the vote, noting the bill included Zika funding, does not expand into next year, and does not include a push by Sen. Ted Cruz Rafael (Ted) Edward CruzTrump unleashing digital juggernaut ahead of 2020 Inviting Kim Jong Un to Washington Trump endorses Cornyn for reelection as O'Rourke mulls challenge MORE (R-Texas) to block the Obama administration from transferring internet management authority to a global organization. Sens. Kelly Ayotte Kelly Ann AyotteBottom Line US, allies must stand in united opposition to Iran’s bad behavior American military superiority will fade without bold national action MORE (R-N.H.) and Rob Portman Robert (Rob) Jones PortmanAddressing repair backlog at national parks can give Congress a big win Texas senator introduces bill to produce coin honoring Bushes GOP Green New Deal stunt is a great deal for Democrats MORE (R-Ohio), who are both running for reelection and supported the spending bill, praised it for including funding for the opioid crisis. "While there is more we need to do, this is an important step forward for New Hampshire," Ayotte said in a statement. Portman added that the money was "critically important" so that the administration can quickly implement the Comprehensive Addiction and Recovery Act (CARA) that was passed this year. “One of my biggest priorities is to ensure that CARA is implemented as quickly as possible, and I’m going to continue to push the Obama administration to do so," he said. "This funding ... is a down payment that also puts us on a path to fully funding CARA." The Senate spending bill had drawn fierce backlash from conservative groups, who worry lawmakers will use a lame-duck session to break the budget caps. "Leaders in both parties have agreed to tack on non-germane riders and promises to consider 'sidecar' legislation at another time," the Club for Growth said on Wednesday. Heritage Action is also opposed to the bill. Tiffany Muller, the executive director of the progressive outside group End Citizens United, also knocked the CR for not rolling back a Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) provision. “Mitch McConnell’s obsession with protecting the shady, dark moneyed interests that put him in power is damaging our democracy," she added. Democrats have expressed frustration that the bill wouldn’t reverse a policy rider included in last year’s omnibus appropriations package that blocks the SEC from requiring corporations to disclose political spending. Republicans are quick to note that because the SEC language is current law, they would have to attach a rider to this year's otherwise “clean” funding measure to unwind it. - Updated at 4:03 p.m. |
A new academic study into the legal rights of Prince Charles has revealed that the heir to the British throne has the authority to set off nuclear explosions without criminal punishment. Advertising John Kirkhope, a visiting research fellow at Plymouth University, studied UK legislation and government archives and deployed the Freedom of Information Act to unveil the legal privileges of Charles. He discovered that the Prince of Wales is exempt from sanction over a range of laws, including the UK’s Data Protection Act, and enjoys significant protection for his property compared with other landowners. “It is suggested that most people would find it odd that the Duchy of Cornwall (Prince Wales’ royal property) can cause a nuclear explosion without criminal sanction,” Kirkhope writes in the study titled ‘Is the Duchy free to break the law without criminal sanction?’, which is to be published in the ‘Plymouth Law and Criminal Justice Review’. Advertising According to The Times, he found a range of laws which contain provisions that the Duchy will not be made criminally liable for contraventions. They include the Data Protection Act 1998, the Marine and Coastal Access Act 2009, the Water Industry Act 1991, the Wildlife and Countryside Act 1981, the Nuclear Explosions (Prohibition and Inspections) Act 1998, the Transport Act 2000, the Licensing Act 2003 and planning acts. Britain’s parliamentary draughtsmen give the Crown immunity to the Duchy based on a law officer’s opinion written in 1913. The law officer stated that the lands of the Duchy were “in the hands” of the sovereign whenever there was no eligible male heir to the throne, but in the hands of the Prince of Wales when there was one. Since the monarch sometimes held the land, the estate had crown immunity. Kirkhope argues that this “fundamentally misunderstands” the nature of the royals’ interest in the Duchy. “They have no right whatsoever to its land or other property. Their sole entitlement is payment of the income which the Duchy generates,” he writes. Advertising A spokesperson for Clarence House, Prince Charles’ royal office, said “Statutes are a matter for Parliament”. |
Extended Hands-On Preview: Borderlands 2 – Old Faces, New Looks, and Thoughtful Execution Paul LaCen July 13, 2012 3:00:12 PM EST I’m going to get straight to the point, Borderlands 2 is masterful. I decided to start with a sense of brevity because the next part of this preview will be nothing short of gushing. Ignoring the classic “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it”, Gearbox makes a point to objectively assess what the original’s strengths and weaknesses were, and it is made clear that Borderlands 2 will settle for nothing less than a drastic improvement to something that wasn’t hurting in the first place. Having the chance to pick up any character at level 25, I opted to play Maya, the Siren. The game placed me in the middle of the Sanctuary, a refuge for those that oppose Handsome Jack’s self-proclaimed rule over Pandora. With questions running through my mind as to what happened to the original vault hunters, I made my way around town. I was lucky enough to have most of my questions answered. Players will be glad to know that they will be able to catch up with Lilith, Roland, Mordecai, and Claptrap, the last of which is much to the dismay of the inhabitants of the Sanctuary. With our former protagonists taking a non-playable role in Borderlands 2, it’s nice to see just how the old vault hunters are managing after their rightful credit got jacked. Claptrap still provides his unparalleled levels of personality to the game. My first encounter with the little guy turned into a harrowing quest; he tasked me to traverse the world in order to gain access to his stash, a four-item safe that carries over across characters. Luckily, Claptrap’s penchant for exaggeration is still with him. Players should be glad to know that the requirements for the new stash feature are far more reasonable. The first quest received from Roland sent me out into the Tundra Express to wake up our old hunter mainstay. After waking Mordecai up, he offered to help me make my way over to Tiny Tina’s workshop. The path to Tina was littered with enemies, but Mordecai definitely had my back. By tagging enemies with a fire weapon, Mordecai took that as the go-ahead to do the long-range dirty work from the high ground. Tiny Tina is miniature minx that mixes mayhem with mirth. The first thing I noticed about Tina was her voice. Fans of the “Hey Ash, Whatcha Playin’?” series will immediately recognize Ashly Burch as the voice behind her explosive antics. While her voice was enough to rope me in, Tina’s flair for the colloquial and volatile attitude made it very clear that she needed no help in that department. Tina’s first course of business was a tea party, but the party couldn’t start without guests, all of which had been kidnapped. In the course of getting the party started, I came across one of the amazing new guns that Gearbox added: The Baby-maker, a SMG that spawned replicas as mid-range throwing projectiles upon reloading. Whether the offspring was a boy, a girl, or twins of either gender was based on US census data, absolutely hilarious. Going through the game as Maya plays in a stark contrast to fans of Lilith’s phasewalk style of gameplay. Maya’s phaselock provides previously unforeseen utility, and will be a hit for fans that wanted to take a more proactive role with their siren’s abilities. The modification I had the chance to test out was turning my phaselock into a small black hole, pulling surrounding enemies into stasis along with my original target. As I leveled, I also gained the ability for my phaselock to bounce to multiple targets if the original was killed while he was in mid-air. An interesting aspect that I did not have a chance to explore was in her support/healing skill tree. Maya will be able to revive allies that are fighting for their life with the phaselock ability, an incredible tool in otherwise hairy situations. Veterans of the original will probably say “Your allies shouldn’t be dying in the first place”, but it’s one of those “it’s nice to have it and not need it rather than need it and not have it” situations. Maya’s support build makes a point to reward her for choosing to take the background role, and it’s nice to see Gearbox provide her with the tools to make it seem worthwhile. One point of note is that parts of the tea party quest series actually had fail conditions, a new addition to Borderlands 2. The guest of honor at the tea party, a gentlemanly chap that went by the name of Flesh-stick, could not be described as a cooperative member of the festivities. Flesh-stick had to be lured into Tina’s workshop; she stressed that I not kill him, probably because she wanted that privilege to be all her own. Unfortunately, an errant reload of the Baby-maker gun combined with Flesh-stick’s haphazard run pattern caused a coincidental headshot when one of my gun’s offspring hit him in the face, resulting in a comical quest failure that I couldn’t have planned if I had tried. Finishing the tea party ended my playthrough, but Level Designer Carl Shedd was generous enough to show me exactly what was up with Axton, Salvador, and Zer0 at level 35. Roland was considered by many to be the most glaringly underwhelming things in Borderlands, and revamping the soldier class into something viable must have been a daunting challenge. Well challenge accepted, Axton’s new abilities strive to make the commando class anything but a pushover. Axton’s turret 2.0 has the ability to fire up to 22 missiles per volley, and he can use up to two turrets under the right build. Understanding that the Commando had to provide utility as well as power, Axton retains the long bow ability as well as a new magnet lock skill that lets him attach his turrets to ceilings and walls, the perfect solution to enemies that run for cover. Axton also features some support abilities, as one of his turrets can turn into a domed construct, protecting the hunters from incoming fire for a set amount of time. Lastly, the wasted turret situation is a thing of the past. Axton can reclaim a deployed turret to significantly reduce the recast of his next one, a key addition that will keep wasted actions from being a concern. I didn’t see much of the Gunzerker, but I do know that his Brawn skill tree would make Rambo blush. Subscribing to the “kill em all and let god sort em out” mindset, the Brawn tree promotes unrelenting aggression and rewards players for not backing down in the face of multiple enemies. The bottom skill on the tree is a taunt ability called “Come at me, Bro!” that provokes enemies and lines them for the slaughter. One of his mid-tier abilities reloads any gun he does not have currently equipped when he kills something. Screw manual reloading, let your trigger flex and you can’t go wrong. Fans looking for the Lilith experience will probably want to try Zer0, as his Deception ability allows him to distract enemies and walk around undetected for a period of time. A mix between the hunter’s sniping specialization and the phasewalk experience from the original, Zer0 can only be described as a F’ing Ninja. Players can choose to take the long-range route with him with attributes like piercing bullets and overkill stacking, a skill that takes any damage that you did over the enemy’s health and adds it to the damage of the next bullet up to 999 times. Where Zer0 really shines though is the ability to use Deception to dash around, homing in on enemies, targeting their weak points, and dismantling them in one slice. One of Zer0’s melee tree abilities grants him bonus time in Deception mode when he kills an enemy with a melee attack, so massacres will abound and death tolls will rise. His last tree focuses on support, marking enemies with his melee attack (or later, Kunai) will increase any damage the marked enemy receives by 20%. Stacked with the new Slag element that increases all bullet damage, even the toughest of enemies will be quick work. The last point of note is the level of aesthetic and stat customization you can provide your character. As mentioned previously by David Rodriguez, players can now provide their characters with new heads and skins that they can find throughout the game. With the use of the new stash function, anything found for another character can be sent over to the right recipient, providing characters with unique and fresh new looks. As for stats, the addition of the Badasss point feature was finally explained. Badass points are an achievement system (separate from the actual achievement system in Xbox Live) within the function of the game. As you complete tasks, your badass rank will increase. These tasks can range from killing an amount of certain enemies to completing certain sidequests to any number of novelty occurrences. As your badass rank increases, you will gain points to provide stat modifiers to your character, from increased base damage to elemental accuracy, providing the player with all the tools to make their character as unique as possible is the name of the game. Badass points and boosts also carry over to the rest of your characters, but Borderlands purists will be able to shut the boosts off if they so choose. Overall, Borderlands 2 is looking to be a well thought out advancement from the first, and Gearbox definitely pulled out all the stops to provide an innovative, unique, and entertaining experience. Borderlands 2 is slated to release in the US on September 18th and will hit Xbox 360, PS3 and PC. Players looking for a gold experience turned platinum will be glad to know that this sequel is up to the task. |
I recently dusted off my Playstation 3 and completed my first play-through of Fallout 3 New Vegas. If you’re not familiar with the series, Fallout takes place in an irradiated American future based on speculative 1950’s technology. (To read more about Fallout New Vegas‘s interesting development history, check out this Kotaku story.) After a pretty amazing time with Fallout New Vegas (despite the glitches), I wanted to share possible applications for tabletop game design based on my experience. **ALSO before I get started, MINOR SPOILER WARNING! Some of Fallout New Vegas’s gameplay mechanisms, characters, and story events are explained in general through the following post.** Setting As Story Recently, there’s been big promise from procedural generation in video games. Procedural generation is allowing computer generation to create most, if not all of a world or level in a game from smaller component pieces. The idea is that the world will be vastly different each time you play the game, offering nearly unlimited replay-ability. I think the gameplay in New Vegas demonstrates why procedural generation is a long way from achieving the result of human storytelling. There is a ton of exploration in New Vegas, much of which is opening up filing cabinets. However, what made exploration so enjoyable was the knowledge that each location was about to tell me a story if I looked hard enough. After my thirty or so hours with the game, I think back to several discrete discoveries that told multitudes about the world. One example was exploring an underground Vault where raiders called “The Fiends” had a “medical facility” on a second floor landing. In the medical area, comically gruesome phrases were splattered across the wall in blood. These sentences suddenly evoked the bizarre surgeries the bandits had performed, and all the unlucky patients. In just a few thoughtful touches, the developers shared a wealth of characterization. Tabletop implementation ideas: Add more (and better) flavor text to cards. Remember that all flavor text should be adding information or creating character in your world. Use setting and character artwork to tell stories. As a designer or publisher, don’t leave everything up to your artist. Even something as simple as giving characters battered armor covered in mud instead of pristine shining mail says a lot about your setting. Use cohesive story lines instead of isolated events. Many games use a random event deck for moving the story forward. Instead, try creating five different multi-event story paths with individual events that thematically link together. Factions, Factions, Factions In New Vegas there are several non-mutually exclusive factions you can work with, such as a group of escaped convicts, a hidden brotherhood of technophiles, and several small towns trying to make ends meat. New Vegas has a reputation system that characterizes faction approval on a sliding scale. Actions such as fighting faction members, certain choices in quests, and working with an opposing side can all put you in disrepute with that faction. I think factions are great for a couple of reasons. First, allowing a player to support a group or organization allows players to role play their characters internal values in a concrete way. By giving people opposing viewpoints to choose between, a designer can question players about the values of their characters. Is your character really a defender of the weak when you could just join the Imperial Guard and make a handsome profit? In addition, factions are a realistic and interesting way to add conflict in your setting. Many RPGs exist in a reality where players can be loved by everyone, provided they complete the necessary side-quest. Having opposing factions reflects a nuanced reality, where helping one group might be seen as a slight to another. This seems like a fairly easy application for board games. Ideas for implementation include: Adding allegiances to certain paths of gameplay, which then prohibit the selection of other paths. Greater reputation with a single faction that more greatly benefits players. Force players to decide between two factions, and then change the board state based on that faction’s philosophy. Another Reminder to Make Your Villains Human The biggest stumbling block of New Vegas is a faction called Caesar’s Legion. The bad karma, moral antagonist of New Vegas, the Legion is a rigid warlike band of tribes known for its order and brutality. Now I think Obsidian was pretty close to something interesting with Caesar’s Legion, but the delivery is extremely alienating due to how dark the writing gets. On the positive side, there is sort of a hilarious humor to the fact that the Legion is modeled after the Roman empire, and is an army of men wearing red football padding, pronouncing the name Caesar incorrectly as Ki-sar. It sadly also seems like the type of major power to rise from the ashes of the nuclear apocalypse. (CORRECTION: Actually as a few commenters have noted, the Latin pronunciation of Caesar would be actually be Kaiser.) BUT…BUT… Just a heads up, slavery, violence towards women, torture, and general unsettling ideas to follow, so skip ahead two paragraphs if you’d rather not read about that stuff. The Legion is where Obsidian’s writers get really dark. While Fallout is certainly not known to pull many punches (heck, you can blow up an entire town in the previous entry), the darkness was usually matched with some level of humor or absurdity. Caesar’s Legion is almost pure darkness. Captured prisoners of war (and all woman) are forced into slavery under the Legion. The player’s first interaction with the Legion is in Nipton, where the entire town has been crucified and murdered. Let’s go back to my previous point about factions. Caesar’s Legion is one of the big three factions you can choose to radically affect the ending of the game. I went through a few of the Legion’s quests because I was interested in seeing Caesar (and potentially ruining his plans from within), but the more I worked with the Legion, the less I wanted to. Meeting Caesar offered no twist or nuance either. I get that both the real world and the world of Fallout is dark, but don’t expect your players to be comfortable with something so evil. Even a good friend of mine, who notoriously only plays as evil characters in his games, said “heck no” when I asked him if he joined Caesar’s Legion. So the moral is, make your villains more human, especially if you want players to join them. When writing your world’s lore, ask these questions about your villains: Is everyone part of the organization for the same reason? Maybe there are people just looking for stable work? Has your villain experienced any trauma that has shaped their worldview? Who (in-world) likes your villain, and why do they like them? What do they beneficially offer their friends/followers? P.S. Unless you’re really interested in exploring the pain, ramifications, and complexities of evil actions in a detailed informed way, I would avoid using gratuitous or sexual violence, slavery, and other really dark subject matter. If you do choose to pursue these topics in your art, do so with a willingness to listen to others, and if possible, gather feedback from sensitivity readers. Alternate Endings Done Right Fallout New Vegas is virtually everything I want from an RPG ending, starting from the climatic last mission. From nearly the beginning, players are informed of an inevitable battle between the New California Republic and Caesar’s Legion at Hoover Dam. Throughout the game, players are forced to contend with the various parties of the Mohave to either gain their support or destroy their resistance. More importantly, the final battle interweaves many of the decisions made throughout the game, by allowing new troops to enter the battle and opening up different endings. After the battle, in a lengthy cut scene, every faction and companion is given their own epilogue (if the player met them). All told, it’s a way to show players their decisions mattered. Ideas for tabletop implementation include: Write a few paragraphs describing the ending based on which faction/species/player won. How cool would it be if each species in Twilight Imperium had their own ending? Set point limits for different paragraph-based endings in a Euro-style game. If a player reaches over a hundred points, read a special ending. Put new elements in the game if certain tasks/achievements have been accomplished. For example, if two battles have been fought in a single tile, flip the tile from greenery to a desolated landscape. The new tile could have special gameplay effects. Have you played New Vegas? Do you have any ideas that could be brought to a tabletop experience? Let me know in the comments, and please subscribe to my quarterly newsletter if you would like to get updates on recent articles, and my current projects. |
SEGA and IGN have recently released a video showing the reactions of IGN’s journalists while playing the game. Naturally, this video went viral and Frictional Games’ Thomas Grip felt the need to mention a couple of things about this upcoming horror title. After all, Frictional Games was behind the amazing Amnesia game – and is currently working on SOMA – so who better than Thomas to comment on that recent footage? According to Thomas, Alien: Isolation seems to be plagued by two major horror design issues. One is the fact that players should feel relief while dying in a horror game. “Watching a gory cutscene ain’t scary, it makes you relax” and horror games should avoid something like that. Thomas went ahead and explained it further more, claiming that players can relax a bit more on future encounters the after their first death in a horror game. As a result of that, the way to build tension afterwards relies ‘more on “will I have to replay the mission?” which is a lot less potent from a horror perspective.’ So, should horror games not feature deaths? Obviously that’s not what Thomas claims. “I think you need to have proper death at some point, but if the player reach that it should be seen as sort of a failure. Also, this makes one think of the fun question: “What is worse than death?” of which there are way too many answers.” The other major flaw according to Thomas is the fact that monsters can become really lame when players are under a desk, 1 meter away, looking straight at it. Thomas believes that this destroys player’s imagination. Moreover, Thomas believes that developers of horror games should not reveal their monsters via cutscenes as the reveal of the monster is a core moment of a horror story. Frictional Games is currently working on its upcoming horror title SOMA that is planned for a 2015 release, so it will be interesting to see whether the company will be able to scare the hell out of us with its new title! |
BY: The Darwin Awards is a popular website that "commemorates individuals who protect our gene pool by making the ultimate sacrifice of their own lives. Darwin Award winners eliminate themselves in an extraordinarily idiotic manner, thereby improving our species’ chances of long-term survival." I'd like to nominate a certain political party for one. It should win hands down. The competition is tough. "All human races, cultures, and socioeconomic groups are eligible," according to the contest rules. Though these rules do not specifically mention political institutions, the Republican Party, founded in 1854, meets the criteria for entry. No doubt about it. Its story is true—as much a part of our reality as the sky and the stars. The voters that make up the party are, as the rules stipulate, "capable of sound judgment." By supporting the least qualified, least knowledgeable, most unsuited major-party nominee for president in history, they are engaged in an "astounding misapplication of judgment." Every week that Donald Trump remains the Republican nominee, the party comes closer to removing itself from the presidential gene pool. Self-selection is at work here. Trump’s supporters are choosing their party’s demise. Want proof? Alan Abramowitz, a political scientist at Emory University, built a model that has correctly predicted presidential elections since 1992. The model says the GOP is set to win the presidency this year, 51 percent to 49 percent. But Abramowitz says to ignore his findings, not because they are wrong but because they describe an election that is not actually taking place. "The model is based on the assumption that the parties are going to nominate mainstream candidates who will be able to unite the party, and that the outcome will be similar to a generic vote, a generic presidential vote for a generic Democratic versus a generic Republican." Translation: If Republican voters had nominated a typical candidate, a governor or former governor who had won office in a big state by straddling the center and the right, that man would be ahead of Hillary Clinton right now. But instead the voters went for Trump, who has never run for nor held office, dodged the draft, and spent the last year insulting Mexicans, P.O.W.s, women, the disabled, Muslims, you name it, while saying George W. Bush lied us into war with Iraq and implying Ted Cruz’s dad had a hand in the Kennedy assassination. Then there was the part where he bragged about his genitals before ranting that he would order soldiers to commit war crimes and "If I say do it, they’re going to do it." This week he cast the troops in Iraq as thieves, threw his support behind an unconstitutional proposal to deny Second Amendment rights to citizens on the no fly list, invited Kim Jong Un to Washington, hinted that President Obama supported ISIS, denied press credentials to the Washington Post after the paper reported this insinuation, and then turned around and tweeted that a Breitbart.com article proved he was right about Obama all along. This is not a good man. This is not a stable man. It is in the self-interest of no rational person to have him near the situation room. So it does not come as a surprise to see support for Donald Trump collapsing in the Real Clear Politics poll average. Hillary Clinton now leads him by about six points. His unfavorable rating in the ABC News / Washington Post poll is up to 70 percent, a record high. The election isn’t until November 8. Where will Trump’s unfavorable rating be then? 85 percent? 90? He’ll make the record books all right—as the most reviled nominee in U.S. history. A majority of voters told CBS that Hillary Clinton would win the presidency. An analysis of 11 battleground states conducted by Politico has Clinton winning 8 of them. The GOP as a whole has a favorable rating of only 32 percent, the lowest number since Bloomberg started polling in 2009. Maryland governor Larry Hogan, one of the most popular officials in the country, said he would not vote for the nominee of his party. The Reuters poll has the Democrats leading the Republicans in the congressional generic ballot by 11 points. In recent days Trump has hired a pollster for indigo-blue New York and traveled to Georgia, Texas, and Arizona, even though Ohio, Virginia, and Florida will decide the election. Next week Trump plans to travel to Scotland—not to meet with foreign dignitaries but to reopen one of his golf resorts. He knows nothing, has done nothing but promote himself for 30 years, and deserves nothing. And he’s not going to change. Seventy year olds do not change. Four years ago I wrote that the summer of an election year is when campaigns define their opponents. In 2012, Barack Obama’s campaign transformed Mitt Romney from a mild-mannered technocrat into a soulless tool of capital. On Thursday Clinton began her television campaign against Trump, spending millions of dollars in swing states that will define the New York real estate developer as a risk to the nation’s economy and security, a misogynist and bigot, an ignoramus and doofus. She won’t be wrong. What is most remarkable is that the television advertising is beside the point. It is Donald Trump who has done the Democrats’ work for them, defining himself in the most negative terms through an unending series of inane, ludicrous, and deranged comments. It’s not the media, the party elite, the Democrats sabotaging Donald Trump. It’s Trump. This is self-immolation on an epic scale. Trump and his supporters overstate his competitiveness by conflating the wishes of the Republican primary electorate with those of the general electorate. Trump will replicate his success, they say, by continuing to do the things that won him the Republican nomination: "telling it like it is," accepting "the mantle of anger," not being "politically correct." This is a huge error. Not only do Trump’s utterances repel Democratic voters—a number of which any successful candidate has to win—but they also frighten Republican ones. Romney got 47 percent of the vote in 2012. To use a real-estate metaphor: How do you expect to build a skyscraper when you are demolishing the foundation? Trump supporters will tell me that I am paying too much attention to the polls, even though they fetishized the same polls throughout the primary. They are wrong. Any serious campaign analyst looks at the polls. It is mid-June, Clinton has had a consistent lead that is beginning to widen. What is likely to change the trajectory of this race? The terror attack in Florida did not change it. Whatever bounce Trump gets from the convention will dissipate by October. The debate—and there may be only one—is unlikely to move the needle in his direction. He’ll probably be able to hold himself together for about 35 minutes, then the moderator or Clinton will say something and he’ll let himself go, ranting about Monica Lewinsky and how Mitt Romney is a choke artist and all the people Hillary has murdered. And when we are in late October, and Trump is still behind, his supporters will dismiss the polls as skewed, as phony. And when Trump loses, his cheerleaders in talk radio and on the Internet won’t accept a smidgen of responsibility, but will blame the neocons and the media and the Republican establishment for not doing more to help a lunatic become president. It’s a joke. All of it: his candidacy, the apparatus of propaganda and grift surrounding it, the failures of governance and education and culture that have brought us to this place. What disturbs me most is the prospect that Donald Trump is what a very large number of Republican voters want: not a wonk, not an orator, not a statesman, not even a leader, really, if by leader you mean someone who persuades and inspires and manages a team to pursue a common good. They just want a man who vents their anger at targets above and below their status. How cathartic it is to give voice to your fury, to wallow in self-righteousness, in helplessness, in self-serving self-pity. It’s what one expects of teenagers, artists, bloggers, pajama boys—immature, peevish, radical, self-destructive behavior. If that is how Republican voters would like to end their days, in a defensive posture of suspicion and loathing of this big crazy wonderful country that has made them literally the wealthiest and most entitled generation of human beings in the history of the world, well, that’s their right as Americans, I suppose. Best of luck. The Darwin Award will be ready for you November 9. |
There is no future for NATO: Gates Posted Just three weeks out from his retirement, United States defence secretary Robert Gates has told a European think tank there is no future for NATO under the current arrangement where the US is forced to foot 75 per cent of the bill. He pointed out that only five members of the 28-member alliance currently spend the agreed minimum 2 per cent of gross domestic product on defence - the US, the UK, France, Greece and Albania. On Capitol Hill, there was outrage that defence spending throughout Europe has declined by almost 15 per cent over the past decade in the aftermath of September 11. "What I've sketched out is the real possibility for a dim, if not dismal future for the trans-atlantic alliance," Dr Gates said. He highlighted the war in Afghanistan as a prime example of a campaign being conducted under NATO auspices but where the United States bears the overwhelming burden of resourcing and funding. While the US maintains close to two million troops in uniform, Dr Gates says NATO struggles, at times desperately, to sustain a deployment of less than 45,000. He added that NATO can barely provide critical support with helicopters, transport aircraft maintenance surveillance and intelligence when it comes to Libya. The Pentagon chief said it was unacceptable that just nine of 28 NATO countries are actively engaged. "Furthermore, the mightiest military alliance in history is only 11 weeks into an operation against a poorly armed regime in a sparsely populated country, yet many allies are beginning to run short of munitions, requiring the US, once more, to make up the difference," he said. "Frankly, many of those allies sitting on the sidelines do so not because they do not want to participate, but simply because they cannot. The military capabilities simply aren't there." In his final policy speech, he questioned the viability of a military alliance born in 1949 as a US-led protector against Soviet aggression. "Future US political leaders, those for whom the Cold War was not the formative experience that it was for me, may not consider the return on America's investment at NATO worth the cost," he said. These were sentiments voiced before but never with such vigour and from such a senior member of the administration. So far Europe has been quiet in response. There might be a will to contribute more but in these harsh economic times, finding the way may prove more difficult. Topics: world-politics, unrest-conflict-and-war, united-states, afghanistan |
Desmond Tutu is archbishop emeritus of Cape Town and a Nobel Peace laureate. Throughout my life, I have been fortunate to have spent my time working for dignity for the living. I have campaigned passionately for people in my country and the world over to have their God-given rights. I have been fortunate to have long spent my time working for dignity for the living. Now, with my life closer to its end than its beginning, I wish to help give people dignity in dying. (Dignity in Dying and Compassion & Choices) Now, as I turn 85 Friday, with my life closer to its end than its beginning, I wish to help give people dignity in dying. Just as I have argued firmly for compassion and fairness in life, I believe that terminally ill people should be treated with the same compassion and fairness when it comes to their deaths. Dying people should have the right to choose how and when they leave Mother Earth. I believe that, alongside the wonderful palliative care that exists, their choices should include a dignified assisted death. There have been promising developments as of late in California and Canada , where the law now allows assisted dying for terminally ill people, but there are still many thousands of dying people across the world who are denied their right to die with dignity. Two years ago, I announced the reversal of my lifelong opposition to assisted dying in an op-ed in the Guardian. But I was more ambiguous about whether I personally wanted the option, writing: “I would say I wouldn’t mind.” Today, I myself am even closer to the departures hall than arrivals, so to speak, and my thoughts turn to how I would like to be treated when the time comes. Now more than ever, I feel compelled to lend my voice to this cause. I believe in the sanctity of life. I know that we will all die and that death is a part of life. Terminally ill people have control over their lives, so why should they be refused control over their deaths? Why are so many instead forced to endure terrible pain and suffering against their wishes? I have prepared for my death and have made it clear that I do not wish to be kept alive at all costs. I hope I am treated with compassion and allowed to pass on to the next phase of life’s journey in the manner of my choice. Regardless of what you might choose for yourself, why should you deny others the right to make this choice? For those suffering unbearably and coming to the end of their lives, merely knowing that an assisted death is open to them can provide immeasurable comfort. I welcome anyone who has the courage to say, as a Christian, that we should give dying people the right to leave this world with dignity. My friend Lord Carey, the former archbishop of Canterbury, has passionately argued for an assisted-dying law in Britain. His initiative has my blessing and support — as do similar initiatives in my home country, South Africa, throughout the United States and across the globe. In refusing dying people the right to die with dignity, we fail to demonstrate the compassion that lies at the heart of Christian values. I pray that politicians, lawmakers and religious leaders have the courage to support the choices terminally ill citizens make in departing Mother Earth. The time to act is now. |
Ask any music critic what Madonna’s best album is, and you’ll more than likely receive one of two answers. Option A: Like a Prayer (1989), noted for its unprecedented religious commentary, impact and genre-defining hits like “Express Yourself” and, well, “Like a Prayer.” Option B: Ray of Light (1998), viewed as the pop icon’s greatest technical feat—six Grammy nominations, four wins. (RoL is often credited for bridging the gap between electronic music and top 40 radio, a point Madonna fans—this writer included—love pointing out to people who don’t know the Scripture.) Both of these albums are fantastic, culturally potent works that age like fine wine (and George Clooney, to be honest). But there is a case for another more contemporary Madge album as her best work to date. (“Hard Candy?!” you ask, to which I reply, “Good joke.”) Of course, I’m talking about Confessions on a Dance Floor, which came out 10 years ago today. From a superficial point of view, this LP—sitting briskly at 56 minutes—is a triumph. Its cover—shaded in pink and purple hues—shows our queen in her natural habitat: the dance floor. Her back is turned to us—an act of defiance, almost like she’s commanding the music to speak for itself. Commercially, it reached No.1 and platinum status in more than 20 countries. The album’s lead single “Hung Up”—more on its brilliance later—topped the charts in more than 20 countries, too, making it one of Madonna’s most successful songs in her 30+-year career. Warner Bros. And these are just facts and figures. It’s the album’s (M)DNA that truly makes it one for the books. Structured like a DJ set, Confessions throbs from one track to the next with no gaps, pauses and absolutely zero slow jams. (The only tune that remotely resembles a breather is “Push,” and even that pounds on a sweaty synth groove.) Produced by electro maestro Stuart Price, Confessions harkens back—and, honestly, builds upon—Madge’s club glory days. Forget, “Bitch, I’m Madonna” and “My sugar is raw”—Confessions, with its unyielding dedication to the club kids, proves Madonna (at 47, 56, 75, who cares!) can still move with the best of ’em. We open with “Hung Up,” a single so universally addictive and well-liked, it can easily call “Like a Virgin,” “Material Girl” and “Vogue” equitable peers. The song famously samples ABBA’s “Gimme! Gimme! Gimme! (A Man After Midnight),” but its coolest nuance is the relentless ticking of the clock as Madonna coos, “Time goes by so slowly.” It’s the kind of build-up that seeps into your veins, practically compelling you to dance (or at least, ya know, hump something). And as far as chorus goes, pop doesn’t get more pitch perfect than this. Sonically, Confessions gets deeper (and deeper) the further you go. “Get Together” (my favorite track on the album) is a pulsating, true-blue dance hybrid where our girl beckons for closer contact with a nighttime lover. “Sorry” is a discofied ode to putting your money where your mouth is. “Don’t explain yourself, ’cause talk is cheap,” Madge torts as a technicolor beat swirls in the background. Containing elements of’s “I Feel Love,” “Future Lovers” is a dark, grimy electro-pop exploration where Madge whispers totally Madge things like, “In the demonstration of this evidence, some have called it religion.” I’m not quite sure what this means, but damn it, it sure sounds sexy. And Confessions also gets lyrically harder from one song to another. We go from yearning after a boytoy in “Hung Up” to fear of complacency in “Jump” and later religious nods in “Isaac.” We close with the stomping “Like It Or Not,” a deep cut in every sense of the word. “This is who I am. You can like it or not,” Ms. Ciccone pants against a sultry techno whistle. “You can love me or leave me, ’cause I’m never ’gonna stop.” A declarative self-love jam before it became trendy—a quintessential Madonna move. Quintessential. Yes, I’ve explained why Confessions on a Dance Floor is a near-perfect pop record, but why is it superior to the rest of Madge’s discography? It’s catchy, but no song compares to 2000’s “Music.” It’s deep, but nothing as soul-bearing as “Oh Father.” It’s inventive, but does it match up to’s trippy work on the ridiculously underrated American Life (2003)? That’s all up for debate, but for what Confessions lacks in its parts, it makes up for in its sum. Disco goddess is Madonna’s most natural reinvention, and vibey dancehall her most natural aesthetic. The LP stands as the Material Girl’s most instinctual offering, and for that reason it’s effortless. Her most effortless. For a woman who spent the greater part of her career trying on different guises and hats, Madonna’s most shocking transformation was showing us a little bit more of herself. And for this, Confessions is supreme. Madonna’s quite literally letting her hair down this go-around. With each DJ spin, she comes a little closer to us, teasing secrets, desires and fantasies. It’s intimate but dizzying and seismic at the same time. What can I say? I’m hung up on it. |
× Disgruntled man throws cup of bedbugs inside municipal office building in Maine [van id=”van/batchfeed/2017/06/04/wxin_19e1af20-4958-11e7-82a3-d97784282da9″] AUGUSTA, Maine — The city manager in Augusta, Maine, says the municipal office building had to be sprayed for bedbugs after a man threw a cup of the pests onto an office counter and about 100 of them scattered off. City Manager William Bridgeo tells the Kennebec Journal (http://bit.ly/2sySI9f) the man apparently complained Friday, June 2nd to the code enforcement office about bedbugs at his former apartment then left, but returned after he showed the cup of bugs to a manager at his new apartment and was told he couldn’t live there. Bridgeo says the man let the bugs loose in the General Assistance Office where he asked for a form to request assistance and apparently was told he didn’t qualify. Police didn’t immediately release the man’s name or say if any charges would be filed. |
Officials said the attacks were a message from fighters that they could strike anywhere [AFP] Officials said the attacks were a message from fighters that they could strike anywhere [AFP] In another incident, however, two cars parked outside a textile plant in the city of Hillah and laden with explosives blew up as workers were exiting the building, killing at least 36 people and wounding more than 140 others. A car bomb and roadside bomb were also detonated at a market in the city of Suweira, Wasit province, killing eifght people and injuring 29 more. Earlier, a car bomb in Tarmiya north of Baghdad targeting a police officer, killed three people and injured 16. One of the roadside bombs, set off as a patrol passed, also killed two civilians. The rest of the deaths in Baghdad were reported to be security forces. A suicide bomber targeting a police checkpoint also killed two people in the northern city of Mosul. In the western city of Fallujah, four separate bombs killed four people, while 10 police officers were wounded in the western on Monday after explosives were planted outside their homes. Rising violence The attacks on Monday showed a new tactic being used by anti-government fighters in the country, Reuters news agency quoted an interior ministry spokesman as saying. "This was a message to us that they can attack us in different parts ... at the same time because they have cells everywhere," he said. The attacks come just two days after reports that the Iraqi defence ministry was considering building a "security fence"around the capital as a way of curbing violence and controlling the movements of anti-government fighters. Access to the city would be controlled by eight checkpoints, and construction could be completed by mid-2011, reports from local broadcaster Al Iraqiya Television said. Today's attacks undermine US confidence in Iraqi security performance [Reuters] Violence across Iraq has dropped significantly since 2006 and 2007, when the country's sectarian conflict was at its height. But attacks have been on the rise in recent months, particular in Baghdad. National parliamentary elections on March 7left no clear winner, and continuing wrangling by political blocs to form a governable coalition have left an atmosphere of instability in the county. 'Backlash' Security forces have in recent weeks also made a series of arrests of high-profile members of the al-Qaeda in Iraq group, Al Jazeera's Mike Hanna, reporting from Baghdad, said. "Certainly, authorities were predicting a backlash against that, we had seen a number of attacks recently, but this is the most serious in terms, not only of the death toll, but of the sense of co-ordination," he said. "It would be a very strong answer, if indeed it is an al-Qaeda group [behind Monday's strikes], that despite the fact that their leadership is gone, they are still capable of carrying out this type of attack." US withdrawal timetable Today's attacks raise concerns over the withdrawal schedule of US troops, and whether US military commanders would review the competence of Iraqi security forces. "There is no doubt that this type of violence could have an impact on the timetable of the US forces withdrawal timetable," Hanna said. "The whole point of the troops being here in the first place was to guarantee security. They [US military] are expressing confidence that Iraqi security services have the competence to be able to maintain a secure country. But events like today undermine that sense of confidence and undermine that the Iraqi security forces are in fact in place to take over an efficient administration on a security basis of the country as a whole." Police said three of checkpoints fired at on Monday were in the west of Baghdad, with two more in the east and one in the south. The checkpoints that were bombed were in the south and southeast of the capital. |
Sigma relesaed a new firmware update for several new lenses. The new Sigma firmware update for several lenses adds support for the Canon EOS C100 digital cinema camera. The firmware enables auto-focus at any aperture for the Sigma 30mm f/1.4 DC HSM, Sigma 17-70mm f/2.8-4 DC OS HSM “Macro”, Sigma 18-200mm f/3.5-6.3 DC OS HSM “Macro”, Sigma 24-105mm f/4 DG OS HSM lenses when used on a Canon EOS C100. See below for other details and download links. SIGMA Optimization Pro Update Details Autofocus is supported at any aperture value when used with the Canon Digital Cinema Camera EOS C100. Sigma 30mm f/1.4 DC HSM | A Sigma 17-70mm f/2.8-4 DC OS HSM “Macro” | C Sigma 18-200mm f/3.5-6.3 DC OS HSM “Macro” | C Sigma 24-105mm f/4 DG OS HSM | A To update the lens’ firmware you need the Sigma USB Dock and Sigma Optimization Pro software. Download from here. The Canon EOS C100 has been optimized for run-and-gun and one-man-band style shooting, a specialty of event videographers, documentarians and independent filmmakers. Canon C100 currently priced for $4,774 at Amazon. |
Security personnel stand guard outside Fort Lauderdale–Hollywood International Airport, Friday, Jan. 6, 2017, in Fort Lauderdale, Fla. A gunman opened fire in the baggage claim area at the airport Friday, killing several people and wounding others before being taken into custody in an attack that sent panicked passengers running out of the terminal and onto the tarmac, authorities said. (AP Photo/Wilfredo Lee) DALLAS (AP) — The suspect in a deadly shooting at a Florida airport used a gun that he had stored in his checked luggage, raising questions about airport security and whether safety officials need to change the current rules. Esteban Santiago, 26, retrieved his gun from his bag on the carousel, loaded it in a bathroom of the Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International Airport, then emerged shooting in the baggage-claim area Friday, killing five people and wounding eight, authorities said. Transportation Security Administration rules prohibit guns in carry-on bags, but they allow passengers to ship guns if they are unloaded, put in a hard-sided, locked container that only the owner has the ability to unlock, and placed in a checked bag. Explosive or flammable ammunition such as gun powder is banned, but bullets are legal if carried in checked baggage. That means gun owners can’t get to their weapons during a flight but can easily retrieve and load them after claiming their checked bags. “This guy found a way to exploit a weakness in the system,” said Henry Harteveldt, a travel analyst in San Francisco. A ban on shipping guns in luggage would hurt law-abiding hunters, he said, “but I don’t think the TSA and FAA (Federal Aviation Administration) can ignore what happened. How many airline passengers today are worried that they are vulnerable?” This is not the first shooting using weapons in checked baggage. In 1972, three members of the Japanese Red Army terror group retrieved guns and grenades from their bags after landing in Tel Aviv, Israel, and killed 26 people. “This guy followed the script from 1972,” said Jeffrey Price, an aviation-security expert who teaches at Metropolitan State University of Denver. Price said that banning guns in luggage might have prevented Friday’s attack but wouldn’t stop a determined killer. “What’s to stop him from driving to the airport, parking his car, getting his gun and going into the airport and shooting people?” Price said. A TSA spokesman referred The Associated Press to the agency’s current rules but declined to comment further, including on whether Friday’s shooting would lead to a review of those rules. The TSA does not track the number of guns that passengers place in checked bags, but it is not a rare practice. Most airlines detail their gun-carrying policies on their websites. Santiago had flown out of Anchorage, Alaska. So many hunters from the Lower 48 visit Alaska that the state’s Fish and Game Department also describes on its site how to travel with guns. Price noted that passengers wishing to check guns must declare them and show that they are unloaded. He said airlines often have the gun inspected by TSA officers in another part of the airport. It’s enough of an inconvenience, he said, that he tells hunters to mail or use a delivery service to ship the gun to their destination. The TSA has been confiscating more guns from carry-on bags. Screeners took away 2,653 guns in 2015, up 20 percent from 2014. The TSA frequently tweets photos of the arsenal that it scoops up at checkpoints. ___ David Koenig can be reached at http://twitter.com/airlinewriter |
Fate/Extella coming to PC via Steam on July 25 PC version launching alongside Switch version. Fate/Extella: The Umbral Star will launch for PC via Steam worldwide alongside Switch in North America on July 25, XSEED Games announced. The PC version will cost $49.99 / €49.99 / £39.99. The game itself will be sold at a 10 percent off launch discount, and all of the downloadable content at 20 percent off, from July 25 to July 31. The Switch version of Fate/Extella will cost $59.99 and includes over 30 previously released paid downloadable content costumes, along with the exclusive new “Unshackled Bride” outfit. In Europe and Australia, the Switch version will launch on July 21. Here’s an overview of the game, via XSEED: Developed by Marvelous Inc. and expanding upon the extensive Fate universe with an original story from acclaimed series writer Kinoko Nasu (of Fate/stay night fame), Fate/Extella features a diverse cast of 16 playable “Servants” – ancient warriors of legend and imagination, always at the beck and call of their Masters – who survived the Holy Grail War that took place on the Moon. In a future watched over by the all-powerful lunar super computer, “Moon Cell Automaton,” these champions now battle for dominance over this digital realm, known as “SE.RA.PH.” This story takes place after the events described in Fate/Extra, and depicts the world as it appears following that previous Holy Grail War. Players will experience the story of Fate/Extella from the independent perspectives of the three factions wrestling for control over SE.RA.PH. and face off against foes from a variety of Fate productions, including characters from Fate/Extra, Fate/stay night, Fate/Zero, Fate/Apocrypha, and Fate/Grand Order, in fast-paced combat. A new form change battle mechanic called Moon Crux debuts in this entry to match its series-first gameplay style, transforming the player-controlled Servants and granting them considerable powers that allow them to devastate enemies and take formidable challenges head-on. The game will contain the original Japanese voices, with the Nintendo Switch and Windows PC versions featuring game text in English, Japanese, Chinese (Traditional), and Korean. Fate/Extella is developed by Marvelous Inc. and is published in North America by XSEED Games. In addition to standard retail and digital formats for the Nintendo Switch version, the game is available on the PlayStation 4 and PS Vita systems in a limited Noble Phantasm Edition bundle, which contains a 7.5” by 6.3” hardcover art book featuring over 100 pages of high-quality artwork and backstory from the Fate/Extella universe, a pack of sixteen collectible 3” by 5” cards depicting each of the game’s Servants, and a 24” by 17” cloth poster, all housed in a custom collectible box. The PlayStation 4, PS Vita system and Nintendo Switch versions of this title have been rated “T for Teen” by the ESRB. The Windows PC version of the game is not rated by the ESRB. Fate/Extella is currently available for PlayStation 4 and PS Vita. View a new set of screenshots from the PC version (images #1 to #18) and Switch version (images #19 to #23) at the gallery. |
The United States has detained approximately 2,500 people younger than 18 as illegal enemy combatants in Iraq, Afghanistan and Guantanamo Bay since 2002, according to a report filed by the Bush administration with the United Nations Committee on the Rights of the Child. Although 2,400 of the juveniles were captured in Iraq after the U.S.-led invasion in March 2003, only 500 are still held in detention facilities in that country. The administration's report, which was made public yesterday by the American Civil Liberties Union, says that most of the detained Iraqi youths were "engaging in anti-coalition activity." As of last month, 10 juveniles were still being held in Bagram, Afghanistan, out of 90 that had been captured in that country since 2002, according to the report. Eight juveniles were brought to Guantanamo Bay since 2002, having been captured at ages ranging from 13 to 17. Although there are no juveniles at the prison in Cuba now, two people being held -- 21-year-old Omar Khadr and 23-year-old Mohammed Jawad -- were under 18 when they arrived. Both are facing trial by a military commission on charges of attempted murder. Three of the other six juveniles once held at Guantanamo were sent back to Afghanistan in 2004, where they were put into a UNICEF rehabilitation program for child soldiers, according to the report. The last three juveniles were transferred back to their home countries. The ACLU decried what is described as a "lack of safeguards" for youths captured by the U.S. military and "no comprehensive policy in place" for dealing with juveniles. "Juveniles and former child soldiers should be treated first and foremost as candidates for rehabilitation and reintegration into society, not subjected to further victimization," Jamil Dakwar, director of the ACLU's human rights program, said in a statement. In Iraq, where the U.S. military holds more than 20,000 Iraqis in detention centers, the United States reported the average stay of a juvenile as less than a year and said a "majority of juvenile detainees are released within six months." A "very small percentage," however, have been kept for more than a year because the juveniles were "assessed to be of a high enough threat level," the report said. In August 2007, the U.S. military established a juvenile education center in Iraq. At that time, 820 juveniles were held in detention facilities in Iraq. In February, according to the U.S. report, a plan was approved to improve education programs available to juvenile detainees. |
Fort Pierce, Fla., Waimanalo, Hawaii, Coronado, Calif., and Virginia Beach are the four primary training sites for Navy SEALs and their predecessors, but only one of those cities is without a Naked Warrior monument. The monument, which pays tribute to Navy combat divers and Underwater Demolition Teams (UDT) during World War II, is missing from Virginia Beach. Former Navy SEAL Rick Woolard hopes to change this by bringing the Naked Warrior to the Oceanfront. Woolard, who served on Navy SEAL Team 2 and is now member of the board at the Navy SEAL Museum in Fort Pierce, presented a monument proposal to the Virginia Beach Arts and Humanities Commission Public Art Committee Friday. The monument would consist of a bronze statue of the Naked Warrior enclosed by granite with plaques describing the history of the statue and the city’s relationship with the SEALs, Woolard said. The Naked Warrior statue is named to reflect the bare minimum underwater teams, also called Frogmen, had to protect and equip themselves during missions — fins, a facemask, a knife, and a slate board to record information, according to Woolard. Like other installations across the county, the Naked Warrior would stand atop a horned scully, a W obstacle which was used to impede attacking forces by damaging the undersides of ships. Navy combat divers were tasked with removing these obstacles. Rather than a large or imposing statue, Woolard says the tribute is meant intrude as little as possible. “It would not be a visual impediment, or an intimidating monument,” he said. “We want to keep with the the sight lines of the ocean horizon in a humble, yet venerable way.” In addition to the installation of the bronze monument at the Oceanfront, Woolard said he hopes to include sand from all the different beaches that Navy SEALs have operated on. If approved by the city council, the monument would be erected on the Oceanfront at 38th St, where the current bike path and showers would be relocated to accommodate those paying their respects, Woolard said. According to Rick Kaiser, executive director of the Navy SEAL Museum and a former member of SEAL Team 2, the museum would be responsible for funding the project, and hopes for an unveiling ceremony on Veterans Day of 2017. Mayor Will Sessoms, who strongly supports the proposed project, said it is a way to honor the Navy SEALs of Virginia Beach. “We owe so much to the SEALs for their sacrifices, dedication, and selfless involvement in their country and the Virginia Beach community,” Sessoms said. “I’m helping in any way I can to make sure Virginia Beach finds the best home for the Navy SEALs Naked Warrior Monument.” The mold for the original statue, which is located outside of the Navy SEAL museum in Fort Pierce, was commissioned in 1986 from artist Seward Johnson. Johnson is known for a number life-size and monumental-scale sculptures, including Forever Marilyn and Embracing Peace, a giant depiction of the legendary photo V-J Day in Times Square. Seward created the mold for the Naked Warrior using a photo taken of a former Navy SEAL named Steve Nelson in 1986, according to Woolard. “Nelson had just started working for the museum after leaving active-duty,” Woolard said. “The museum curator had Steve pose wearing some of the UDT artifacts from the museum. The statue is an exact replica of him.” Prior to the commission of the bronze statue, Wollard said the Fort Pierce museum used a manikin, that was often vandalized. Currently, the project is awaiting approval from the city. Before voting on the project, the public art committee will consider input from a number of city departments and organizations. If approved by the committee, the proposal will move to the Virginia Beach city council for a final vote. “It’s a lengthy process, but the hardest part is getting approval and getting the site prepared for it’s arrival,” Kaiser said. “The city has been very helpful in working with us to get it to the right spot. We just want to make sure everyone is happy.” Pohl may be reached at mariah@localvoicemedia.com |
A Hard Brexit is “mission impossible” and the UK could be forced to remain within the European Union’s (EU) single market, subject to unlimited mass migration, the head of Germany’s motor industry association has said. Matthias Wissmann argued that the effects of Britain leaving the single market were so great that the UK should be made to stay inside it, against the will of much of the electorate. “The hard Brexit preferred by Theresa May would have severe side effects”, the president of the German Association of the Automotive Industry (VDA) wrote in German newspaper Suddeutsche Zeitung Thursday. “It remains the hope that in the upcoming exit process the realisation of the nearly insurmountable hurdles prevails. A hard Brexit is indeed a ‘mission impossible’,” he claimed, continuing: “The aim of the talks must be: Britain should remain in the internal market and in the customs union, accept the basic freedoms and make a financial contribution to the EU budget, in return for unimpeded access to the internal market.” The German motor industry is deeply reliant on the British market, with German cars accounting for half of all new cars registered in the UK, which imports 86 per cent of its vehicles. However, British car production has boomed in the last five years, growing by a quarter to 1.6 million vehicles in 2015. Buyers in the rest of the EU purchase some 57 per cent of these British-made cars. Mr. Wissmann explained why many Germans were so desperate to trap the UK in the single market. “They are the voice of market economy, competition, as opposed to representatives of a ‘transfer union’. Without London, it would be even more difficult for Berlin in Brussels to stand up against the desires of other EU countries.” Prime Minister Theresa May has said she will end free movement between the EU and Britain, which means taking Britain outside of the single market. However, MPs and campaigners are currently seeking to use the courts and parliament to stop her doing so. |
Good To The Last Drop [Monday Meeting Notes] Monday Meeting Like our friends in the illustration from V20 Ghouls above by Lawrence Van Der Mewe, it seems like we are waiting for so many things to get to that next stage. Drop by drop… Hang in there, true believers! Mirthful Mike has four books in layout, we have several major projects being edited, we are banging at the gates of the M20 PoD printer, and Exalted 3rd‘s PDF is headed towards CCP for their OK after we made the changes they needed. You folks are going to have a cornucopia of game book choices to make between now and the end of the year. Meanwhile, to mock our impatience at nothing having changed this week from last week, our Onyx Path Monday Meeting was reallllly long. We had two main items on the agenda, and both required more than an hour to discuss. The first was our plans for October, and the Halloween treats we expect to share with you every single day of that month. Then, we took a serious look at how Onyx Path deals with and compensates our freelance developers, writers, and editors. This was a conversation we started earlier in the year, discussed at Gen Con, and which some of our devs and writers have also been discussing with us post-Gen Con. It’s an important thing, and one that I think we are now able to review with a few years of publishing under our belts. Most of the freelance processes we have been using we inherited from our years with White Wolf, and Onyx Path‘s business model (while based on the many things I learned there) continues to evolve. So we need to evolve better methods of compensation as well. None of which might be interesting to our community, and certainly I’m not dropping fascinating insider details on this post as we’re still trying to figure out what form that evolution will take, but this is the sort of thing that rightly matters to those of us that bring you the fun. So we talk about it. A lot. Trying to find the right (Onyx) path forward. It’s a start, and I will let you in on more details once we put things in motion that we’ve figured out. OK- I’m off to send more email screeches about finding and fixing the issues with M20 to our PoD printers, and redesigning the Exalted 3rd PDF/PoD cover with Maria, the EX3 art director, after our original artist bailed. (Don’t worry, fixing that will not hold up the backer PDF). Drip. Drop. ________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ And now, the BLURBS! Vampire 20th Anniversary Edition: The Dark Ages is NOW available in PDF and PoD versions at DriveThruRPG.com! This massive full color tome is part of the V20 line but does not require V20 to play and enjoy. The Pugmire Pamphlet we had available at Gen Con is now ready for PDF download. Read about the world of Pugmire from the enthusiastic and optimistic pen of Princess Yosha Pug, as well as notes from the gruff and worldly hunter Pan Daschund: http://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/153518/Pugmire-Gen-Con-Brochure The sixth and final Pugmire poster for now, Spike Mutt, is on the loose now as a free PDF or $.99 physical poster, suitable for framing: http://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/150845/Spike-Mutt-Pugmire-Poster-6 The fifth Pugmire poster, Pan Dachshund, is ready now as a free PDF or $.99 physical poster, suitable for framing: http://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/150844/Pan-Dachshund-Pugmire-Poster-5 The fourth Pugmire poster, Jack Rat-Terrier, is on-sale now as a free PDF or $.99 physical poster, suitable for framing: http://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/150944/Jack-RatTerrier-Pugmire-Poster-4 The third Pugmire poster, Sgt. Leo Bulldog, is available NOW as a free PDF or $.99 physical poster, suitable for framing: http://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/150843/Sgt-Leo-Bulldog-Pugmire-Poster-3 The second poster, Princess Yosha Pug, is available now: http://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/149750/Princess-Yosha-Pug-Pugmire-Poster-2 And the first poster, Sister Picassa Collie, is here: http://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/148516/Sister-Picassa-Collie-Pugmire-Poster-1 Start spreading the Code of Man! Dread Names, Red List for V20 is now on sale! This collection of the most dangerous Kindred ever called Anathema is available in both PDF and hardcover PoD versions: http://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/150381/V20-Dread-Names-Red-List CONVENTIONS! We’re finalizing plans for a big Onyx Path presence at Mid Winter Con again this year this January in Milwaukee. Big blurb when that is all worked out. I’ll be at Ovino in Milan, Italy signing Magic the Gathering cards on October 2-4, so any of our community in the area that wants to stop by and say “Ciao”, I’d love to see you. More thoughts on that convention next week. http://www.ovinotournament.com/ ———————————————————————————————————————————————————————————— And now, the unchanged new project status updates!: DEVELOPMENT STATUS FROM ROLLICKING ROSE (projects in bold have changed status since last week): First Draft (The first phase of a project that is about the work being done by writers, not dev prep) M20 Book of Secrets (Mage: the Ascension 20th Anniversary Edition) Exalted 3rd Novel by Matt Forbeck (Exalted 3rd Edition) CtL anthology (Changeling: the Lost 2nd Edition) Pugmire Early Access Dark Eras Companion (nWod Dark Eras) Changeling: the Dreaming 20th Anniversary Edition V20 Ready Made Characters (Vampire: the Masquerade 20th Anniversary Edition) Beast Ready Made Characters (Beast: the Primordial) Beast Fiction Anthology (Beast: the Primordial) Cavaliers of Mars |
And the “Flag Attack” rages on! In Arkansas there is a flag battle, but not the one you’ve been reading about. The Bradley County Courthouse has flown an historic flag just below our stars and stripes; it features a simple evergreen tree and the phrase “Appeal to Heaven.” The ATH flag has a rich history, being first commissioned by George Washington to fly over Navy schooners during the Revolutionary War. Washington knew the colonies needed God’s intervention as they battled for freedom – they had no recourse but to call on God. The appeal to heaven ultimately granted America freedom. This is our foundation! And the few who disdain this foundation want the innocent but illustrious flag removed. Special friends, Pastor Dutch and Ceci Sheets, presented me with an Appeal to Heaven flag of my own. It has stirred my heart and will stir millions more once the significance of this flag attack is understood. The angry opposition to the evergreen-emblazoned bolt of cloth spews from those refusing to acknowledge the truth – that the patriots of old knew America’s hope for freedom was rooted in God. And unlike any other, the idea of “America” would be exceptional in that we would dedicate to God this land overflowing with the blessings of liberty. In Bradley County, the ATH flag has flown over the courthouse, until the Freedom From Religion Foundation – a group that spends its funds suing municipalities who don’t see as they do – demanded Judge Keith Neely take down the flag or be sued. The judge found himself in a tough spot, and without the budget to fight out-of-town lawyers, he was advised by the county attorney to remove the historic flag. Well, The Freedom From Religion Foundation rattled the wrong cage. This is an attack on freedom, on honoring accurate history, and is more of the fundamental transformation of America that will render us not only unexceptional, but unrecognizable. But not if we intercede. The solution? Get behind Judge Neely and the good folks in Bradley County who want to Appeal to Heaven for our nation. Religious freedom is what this republic was founded on – why kowtow to the few who threaten that right? I won’t deny our need for God’s grace and miracles to fundamentally restore America. Please join. Write your own “Appeal to Heaven” in the comments below. Press in! And stand strong with those already standing for freedom. This attack on the ATH flag might seem irrelevant in light of all the important things happening right now, but it’s symbolic and symptomatic of the precarious position we’re in when it comes to religious liberty, our entire Bill of Rights, and our need to openly acknowledge the ultimate source of our country’s blessings. May we never doubt that a Providential Hand will always guide us to a better future as long as we are humble enough to seek that help. |
Airbus A380: everything you need to know The Airbus A380 is world’s largest commercial airliner. It was launched in 2007 and it has impressed the world with its spacious and luxurious interior. There are many interesting facts about A380, including the following: The first fact about A380 will surprise you. Many believe that Airbus A380 is the largest plane in the world. It is not! There is one more airplane called Antonov An-225, it is larger than A380. It is russian-made aircraft and built for cargo transportation only. Twenty airports in the world are handling A380 service, meaning that they have long enough runways, wide enough taxiways, and 78,000 square feet available at the boarding gate where the plane can be parked. Airports also need special equipment to handle passengers and cargo, and sometimes even baggage conveyor belts must be lengthened since 500 to 800 passengers means a lot of luggage. Also, the plane always receives priority takeoff clearance as its size is sufficiently large to block the ILS beacon, effectively blinding incoming aircraft navigation radios which are used for auto-land. The internal working temperature of the airplane’s four engines is 3100 degrees. And the engines are of the same lengths as of Mercedes C-series car. Twenty-one flight attendants are assigned to the Lufthansa A380, working in five galleys and using a separate computer system dedicated to cabin activities. They have their own rest compartment with eight beds located below the galley at the rear of the airplane. The Airbus A380 is flown by two pilots. “Actually, there’s no difference between flying 30 passengers and 526,” says Harald Tschira, a Lufthansa first officer. “This airplane is very easy to control, despite its weight, and the handling characteristics are more like a short-range airplane.” The pilots can nap in a sleeping compartment located behind the cockpit on long-haul flights while a second crew provides backup. Inside, the airplane is unbelievably quiet. Not just relative to other aircraft, but absolutely: you simply do not need noise canceling headphones to enjoy movies or music. The Airbus A380 is a pan-European product. The engines and wings are produced in England, parts of the fuselage and the tail in Germany and Spain. Airbus test engineer Fernando Alonso describes the airplane as “a symbol of Europe.” When complete, these airplane sections are shipped by land, air, and sea for final assembly in France. The A380 is fitted with some awesome onboard entertainment: there are video cameras mounted in the nose wheel and at the top of the tail producing footage you can view from your in-flight entertainment system at your seat. The Airbus A380’s wings are the biggest ever created, 2,775 square feet in size and fully 54 percent larger than the wings of a Boeing 747. This is what we call progression – the Wright Brothers’ first flight was shorter than the A380’s wingspan. The A380 is 24.1 meters high, 80 meters wide, and 72.7 meters long, equivalent to 2 blue whales length. The plane weighs approximately 590 tons. Named the Airbus A3XX during its early development, the aircraft soon become known as the super-jumbo, a label which has stuck despite Airbus’s efforts to promote it as the “gentle giant” because of its relatively green characteristics. Emirates Airlines’ custom-made A380 contains a luxurious shower spa and a VIP cocktail lounge for First Class passengers. 22 per cent of the Airbus is made of carbon fibre reinforced plastic. However, designers have stated that an amazing 85 per cent of the aircraft will be recyclable. Each Airbus A380 costs over £200million. Are you an aviation expert? Maybe you know interesting stories or facts about aircraft/pilots/flights? Do you enjoy writing and would like to share it with other aviation fans? If the answer is YES and you know how to write in English fluently, we are looking for you! Click here: AVIATION BLOGGER |
VHP leader Sadhvi Prachi sparked off another controversy on Tuesday saying it is time to make India free of Muslims. Known for courting controversies, the Sadhvi claimed the mission of a Congress-free India has already been “accomplished” and it is now time to rid the country of Muslims. “Now that we have achieved the mission of making a Congress-free India, it is time to make India Muslim-free. We are working on that,” she said in Roorkee where at least 32 people were injured last week in a clash between two communities over forcible evacuation of a scrap dealer’s shop. Khanpur MLA Kunwar Pranav Singh Champion’s house was attacked by members of a community alleging their sacred book was also desecrated by his supporters. The Sadhvi claimed that the attack on Champion’s house was part of a “premeditated” conspiracy. Champion, one of the nine Congress MLAs who revolted against chief minister Harish Rawat, recently joined BJP. On the forthcoming Uttar Pradesh assembly polls, she said if BJP projects Yogi Adityananth as its chief ministerial candidate, it was bound to win 300 seats in the state. Prachi had often been in the news for asking people to boycott films of Bollywood Khans and demanding a CBI probe into all Muslim educational institutions including Aligarh Muslim University and madrasas in Deoband to check anti- national activities. First Published: Jun 07, 2016 20:33 IST |
Humans produce more than 300 million metric tons of plastic every year. Almost half of that winds up in landfills, and up to 12 million metric tons pollute the oceans. So far there is no sustainable way to get rid of it, but a new study suggests an answer may lie in the stomachs of some hungry worms. Researchers in Spain and England recently found that the larvae of the greater wax moth can efficiently degrade polyethylene, which accounts for 40 percent of plastics. The team left 100 wax worms on a commercial polyethylene shopping bag for 12 hours, and the worms consumed and degraded about 92 milligrams, or roughly 3 percent, of it. To confirm that the larvae’s chewing alone was not responsible for the polyethylene breakdown, the researchers ground some grubs into a paste and applied it to plastic films. Fourteen hours later the films had lost 13 percent of their mass—presumably broken down by enzymes from the worms’ stomachs. When inspecting the degraded plastic films, the team also found traces of ethylene glycol, a product of polyethylene breakdown, signaling true biodegradation. Their findings were published earlier this year in Current Biology. Study co-author Federica Bertocchini, a biologist at Spain’s Institute of Biomedicine & Biotechnology of Cantabria, says the larvae’s ability to break down their dietary staple—beeswax—also allows them to degrade plastic. “Wax is a complex mixture of molecules, but the basic bond in polyethylene, the carbon-carbon bond, is there as well,” she explains. “The wax worm evolved a mechanism to break this bond.” Jennifer DeBruyn, a microbiologist at the University of Tennessee, who was not involved in the study, says it is not surprising that an organism evolved the capacity to degrade polyethylene. But compared with previous studies, she finds the speed of biodegradation in this one exciting. The next step, DeBruyn says, will be to pinpoint the cause of the breakdown. Is it an enzyme produced by the worm itself or by its gut microbes? Bertocchini agrees and hopes her team’s findings might one day help harness the enzyme to break down plastics in landfills, as well as those scattered throughout the ocean. But she envisions using the chemical in some kind of industrial process—not simply “millions of worms thrown on top of the plastic.” |
Over the weekend, D.C. United announced an unusually large group of trialists. Normally the Black-and-Red bring in around four or five players at this stage of the preseason. This year, though, there are nine trialists training with United over the next couple of weeks. Throw in United's unsigned draft picks, and you have eleven players battling for a contract offer from a team that only has four open roster spots. These players don't all have an even chance of making the squad though. Some play positions that appear to be comfortably staffed; others simply do not have the sort of playing background that would indicate that they are ready for MLS. Still others will see their odds decreased by the fact that they would take up an international roster spot. We'll start with the long shots, and move on towards players that have a decent shot at getting a deal. United's total number of forwards - or at least, players who are a forward more than they are anything else - is down one thanks to Jairo Arrieta's departure. That would explain adding two forwards to the preseason roster, but it has to be said that both Andrea Mancini and Constantine Kolokotronis appear to have the longest odds of being signed by United. Neither player has a resume that inspires confidence. Both players have a similar background: Lower division soccer in countries that aren't exactly big powers right now (Hungary for Mancini, Greece for Kolokotronis). Both have been free agents for a while, which is unusual for players in their early 20s. Kolokotronis has an edge thanks to his dual Greek-US citizenship, but unless either of these two is the rare sort of player that has somehow gone under-appreciated by multiple clubs and just needs United to show some faith in them, these two are the longest of long shots. We're going to add United's draft picks into this piece, which means we have to discuss Paul Clowes. If Clowes counted as a domestic player in MLS, he'd actually have a pretty decent chance of making the club. Unfortunately for the Manchester City youth product, he'd take up an international roster spot. A further dent in his chances is the fact that United has two other international defensive midfielders looking for a contract that either have CONCACAF Champions League experience (Ariel Rodriguez) or MLS and national team experience (Kevan George). Santiago Dittborn is going to run into a similar road block. United already has at least four wide midfielders on the roster (or five, if you have started to think of Conor Doyle as a defensive wide player first and forward second) as well as the option of using Chris Rolfe there. Dittborn's background with Chilean powerhouse Universidad Catolica is promising, but unless Ben Olsen has decided that Nick DeLeon is going to be playing half of his minutes as a central midfielder, it's hard to see where Dittborn fits into the roster without someone else being cut loose. Paolo Tornaghi is one of the two goalkeepers on trial, and it would be fairly surprising if he ended up earning a contract ahead of Chris Konopka. However, I'd hasten to add that the main reason for skepticism about Tornaghi is just that he hasn't played many MLS games. It's not really his fault that he got stuck backing up David Ousted, who is the only GK in MLS that can realistically call himself a peer of Bill Hamid's in terms of overall ability. His odds are only lower than Konopka's based on experience. United's last pick in the draft, Liam Doyle, has a puncher's chance of getting a contract. Bobby Boswell is about to turn 33, and Steve Birnbaum has at least some kind of chance of playing in the Copa America Centenario. Kofi Opare is also working towards being eligible to play for Canada, who would welcome him with open arms. In other words, United could find center backs scarce this season at times, and the other options include Markus Halsti - who is needed elsewhere - and maybe Sean Franklin (who hasn't played center back outside of emergencies since he was a rookie). Doyle would have gone a round or two sooner if he counted as a domestic player, and he has the potential to play in MLS. Going back to the defensive midfield battle, Rodriguez is an intriguing prospect. He played well against United in the CCL last year, and in losing Perry Kitchen the Black-and-Red really lost their best option in receiving the ball from the back four in possession. Rodriguez happened to do that very well for Alajuelense last year. However, I have doubts about his mobility; he's less of a runner and more of a player that trusts his positioning to get the job done. United needs someone who can cover ground alongside Halsti, and Rodriguez might run into the same awkwardness Kitchen had in pairing with the Finn. Kevan George spent a couple of seasons with Columbus, but could never crack a very good starting central midfield. However, he has pushed his way into a starting role for Trinidad & Tobago as an Occam's Razor sort of midfielder. Simplicity for defensive midfielders is a good quality to have, and George's MLS experience makes him an interesting possibility. The downside? In games I've seen at least, he's also a little too similar to Halsti in playing style. One player who doesn't have that problem is Paul Torres, the former DCU academy product and Maryland Terrapin who is on trial after a couple of years in Sweden and Norway. Torres was always an energetic player at Maryland, though he is as much a right midfielder as he is a central player. A dual citizen - he's Venezuelan-American - Torres has the added advantage of not taking an international spot. He will need to show significant improvement in terms of his use of the ball during his time in Scandinavia to make this roster, though. Due to the logjam in the midfield, Rob Vincent has maybe the best chance of any of the players requiring an international roster spot. Vincent scored 18 goals last year with the Pittsburgh Riverhounds mostly playing as a wide midfielder in their 4231 formation. The role was flexible, though, and Vincent spent time as a forward or on the right as well. It's perhaps more instructive to think of him as an attacker than as a wide midfielder. With United needing another forward, and Vincent finding his way onto the scoresheet so often, it wouldn't surprise me to see the Englishman land a spot on United's roster. His play off the ball would fit in nicely with any of the club's current forwards, and he could play on either flank in the event United needs a goal off the bench. We've talked about Konopka already, and at the moment he seems to be the most likely signing. A 6'5" presence in the box who has won praise for his organizational chops, Konopka would be very stern competition for Andrew Dykstra heading into the season. There's a hint of "late bloomer" around the 30 year old, who bounced around MLS before having his best season as a pro last year for TFC. He might not be a spectacular shot-stopper, but in Hamid's absence United might prefer someone known for his communication and stability. |
Inova Leadership J. Stephen Jones is President and Chief Executive Officer of Inova, the Washington, DC, region’s leading not-for-profit healthcare system that serves more than 2 million people annually in its five hospitals and multiple ambulatory programs. Bio Sage Bolte, Chief Philanthropy Officer and President Inova Health Foundation, leads Inova's efforts to establish a culture of philanthropy across the entire organization. She also oversees development strategies, including major and planned gifts, events, and foundation and corporate giving. Bio Terri Feely serves as Chief People Officer for Inova, leading and overseeing all aspects of the organization’s Human Resources function. Bio Dr. Loring Flint, Chief Physician Executive and High Reliability Officer, is a major contributor to the overall strategic direction and priority setting within Inova and leads the broad areas of clinical strategy, effectiveness and performance. Bio Ben Frank, most recently System Executive Director of Clinical Operations at Cleveland Clinic, joins Inova as Chief Operating Officer and Chief of Staff. Bio John Gaul, Chief Legal Officer / General Counsel is responsible for all legal affairs relating to Inova. Bio Richard Magenheimer is Chief Financial Officer of Inova. Bio Jennifer W. Siciliano is Chief External Affairs and Communications Officer, and oversees all aspects of Inova’s relationships with external stakeholders, as well as Communications and Marketing. Bio Maureen Sintich, Chief Nurse Executive, leads Inova's Nursing Professional Practice team and six Chief Nursing Officers representing Inova's five hospitals and nursing informatics. Bio Inova Hospitals, Region and Executive Officers Deborah Addo is Chief Executive Officer of Inova Loudoun Hospital and Senior Vice President of Inova. Bio Dr. Rina Bansal is the acting Chief Executive Officer and Chief Medical Officer of Inova Alexandria Hospital. Bio Dr. Donald Brideau is Chief Executive Officer and Chief Medical Officer of Inova Fair Oaks Hospital. Bio Susan Carroll, FACHE, MBA, MHA, is the acting CEO, Inova Fairfax Medical Campus. Bio Dr. Mickey Kim serves as the Senior Vice President of Research and Commercialization for Inova, leading and overseeing the Inova Translational Medicine Institute (ITMI), the Inova Office of Research (IOR), and all aspects of commercialization activities for Inova. Bio Dr. John Niederhuber, President and CEO, Genomics and Bioinformatics Research Institute, brings a lifetime of medical knowledge, large organization management experience and vision to his position as head of the GBRI. Bio Dr. Christopher O'Connor, Chief Executive Officer, Inova Heart and Vascular Institute, directs the Inova Heart and Vascular Institute's network of cardiovascular care. Bio Connie Pilot, Chief Information Officer, oversees all aspects of technology services and has been instrumental in leading that division into the future of healthcare. Bio Dr. Joseph Pina serves as the Acting CEO and Chief Medical Officer of Inova Mount Vernon Hospital. Bio |
Patricio Freire is focused on regaining the Bellator featherweight championship, but he already has another champion in mind as well. “Pitbull" will face Daniel Straus for the fourth time in the main event of Bellator 178 on Friday. He’s looking to go 3-1 against the current 145-pound titleholder, then after that, he wants to move up to lightweight to take on champion Michael Chandler. "I don’t want Michael Chandler’s belt. I want his head,” Freire told MMA Fighting. "I don’t want that piece of metal, I want to rip his head off. I want to kill him. That’s the word. For real. I want to beat him up so bad that I want him to have ill aftereffects." "Pitbull" explained that his rivalry with the lightweight talent started after Chandler’s first win over his brother, Patricky Freire, back in 2011. They recently fought a second time, with Chandler winning the vacant belt with a highlight-reel knockout in a little over two minutes. "The first fight was close, and he fought dirty,” Freire said. "He hit my brother with three low blows and wasn’t punished. My brother came back to fight because he’s a man, but it wasn’t fair. It was a close fight before he landed the illegal blows, and then he started going for takedowns with that lay and pray game. He knocked my brother out in the second fight, but I already wanted to fight him before that. I knew it would be a good fight. He does some unnecessary things. He thinks he’s better than everyone, and he’s not. Someone has to stop him, and I’m the one to stop him. "He’s stupid, a jerk,” Freire continued. "Nobody likes him. He can’t stay in one gym, nobody likes him. Not even the promotion likes him, and he knows that. I’ll beat him up. I don’t care if he has the belt or not, I want his head. I want to hurt him.” Chandler is currently slated to defend his belt against undefeated contender Brent Primus at Bellator’s first trip to New York on June 24, and Freire guarantees he’s focused only on Straus now despite calling for a fight with the lightweight kingpin. "Every fight is the fight of my life, and my fight right now is Daniel Straus,” said Freire, who lost the belt in their last bout, via unanimous decision, in Nov. 2015. "He has something that I have to return to my son.” Should he beat Straus later this month, “Pitbull" admits that there are plenty of fighters that deserve a shot at the 145-pound belt, but he would prefer to move up to lightweight before defending the strap. "I respect the division, so I’m obligated to mention a few names here because they are working hard for this,” the Brazilian said. "Daniel Weichel, someone that I have already knocked out, is coming strong. "There’s also Emmanuel Sanchez, Pat Curran, Conor McGregor’s teammate James Gallagher, and A.J. McKee. They are coming off good wins, they are coming up. I don’t know what’s going to happen, if I’m fighting one of these guys or if I’m fighting Michael Chandler,” Freire added. "Chandler said at the press conference in New York that he wants to fight me, and I want the same. If you ask me, I want Michael Chandler after this fight." |
This post is authored by Sean Stevens (HxA’s Research Director) and Jonathan Haidt (Director of HxA). This is our main post on the the “Google memo.” We have also put up two supplemental posts: 1) The Most Authoritative Review Paper on Gender Differences, and 2) The Greater Male Variability Hypothesis. But start here. The recent Google Memo on diversity, and the immediate firing of its author, James Damore, have raised a number of questions relevant to the mission of Heterodox Academy. Large corporations deal with many of the same issues that we wrestle with at universities, such as how to seek truth and achieve the kinds of diversity we want, being cognizant that we are tribal creatures often engaged in motivated reasoning, operating within organizations that are at risk of ideological polarization. Eventually we’ll write a separate post on the broader issue of the value of viewpoint diversity at Google, and in corporations in general. But first, in this post, we address the central empirical claim of Damore’s memo, which is contained in its second sentence. Let us quote the first three sentences: I value diversity and inclusion, am not denying that sexism exists, and don’t endorse using stereotypes. When addressing the gap in representation in the population, we need to look at population level differences in distributions. If we can’t have an honest discussion about this, then we can never truly solve the problem. The heart of Damore’s memo is a section titled “Possible non-bias causes of the gender gap in tech.” Damore argues that there are “population level differences” between men and women in some psychological or behavioral traits that might influence people’s career choices, and their success in those careers. He illustrates his basic framework for looking at potential “population differences” with this figure: Damore challenges the way that Google is currently pursuing diversity–with a heavy emphasis on implicit bias training–and its assumption that gender gaps necessarily show the existence of some form of bias. Damore argues that a company that was completely free of bias and discrimination would not end up with a 50/50 gender split in all job functions because there are population differences in some traits that might influence the jobs men and women seek out and succeed at. His memo is structured as an argument against a position he refers to as “the extreme stance that all differences in outcome are due to differential treatment.” Is Damore correct that such “population level differences” exist? It’s very hard to evaluate empirical claims about politicized topics because everyone can “cherry pick” the studies that support their side (for longer discussions, see here and here). The best way to establish the truth in such cases is to examine meta-analyses, which are studies that integrate the findings from many other studies. We list all the relevant meta-analyses and large sample studies we have found so far in section 2, below, along with their abstracts. But first, in section 1, we collect all the commentary we can find from experts who are writing about the Google memo specifically. And finally, in section 3, we give our own views about how to make sense of the complicated and conflicting set of research findings. If you think we have left out any major experts or meta-analyses, please let us know in the comments at the end, and if appropriate we will add it to this list. We intend this post to be a living document that brings together in one place the best empirically grounded arguments on all sides. It will be updated regularly. We focus here on research on sex differences in interests, traits, and abilities that might be related to coding/engineering/STEM. We do not address Damore’s claims about sex differences in traits said to be related to leadership abilities. Leadership is a messy topic, in part because there are many styles of leadership. See Eagly & Johnson, 1990, for a review of sex differences in that literature, and Eagly, Johannesen-Schmidt, & van Engen, 2003 for a meta-analysis of gender and leadership style. In this review, we also do not address Damore’s claims that some gender differences are rooted in biological factors, such as the effect of prenatal hormones on brain development. Meta-analyses cannot tell us the origins of differences. Most researchers studying these questions assume that biology, childhood socialization, and current context interact in complex ways, and most psychologists know that pointing to a biological contribution (such as a genetic or hormonal influence) does not mean that an effect is “hard wired,” unmalleable, or immune to contextual variables (see Eagly & Wood, 2012; this is a point that Damore did not acknowledge). In this review we focus only on whether “population level differences” exist. (See this essay on why it is mostly claims other than this one that have generated most of the outrage.) A company like Google must hire from the existing population of adults. Google and other tech companies can surely take steps that will influence the next generation of boys and girls, but to make progress toward its diversity goals Google must have an accurate understanding of the current population of men and women from which it is trying to recruit. Do population level differences exist between men and women? 1) CURRENT COMMENTARY ON DAMORE’S MEMO A) GENERALLY SUPPORTIVE Here are the experts who have said that Damore’s main assertions about gender differences are, for the most part, correct (and backed up their arguments with citations). B) GENERALLY CRITICAL Here are the experts who have written that the memo’s assertions about gender differences are, for the most part, wrong (and backed up their arguments with citations): C) IN BETWEEN Here are the experts who have written that the memo’s assertions (that gender differences exist and that biology plays a role) are correct, but are interpreted overly simplistically to reach incorrect or premature conclusions. 2) META-ANALYSES AND LARGE SAMPLE STUDIES OF GENDER DIFFERENCES Meta-analysis is a method of examining the effects found (or not found) in dozens or hundreds of studies, converting the effect sizes to a common scale, and then finding the average across all the studies. It’s a very powerful technique that allows researchers to examine questions such as: Does the effect get larger or smaller as we limit our analysis to only the best-done studies? What broad statements can be made about a body of literature? Although meta-analysis is a powerful technique, it is not perfect (for an overview of strengths and weaknesses see Rosenthal & DiMatteo, 2001). It would be ideal if a researcher could not only identify, but also obtain all of the relevant data on the phenomenon of interest. However, this is an impossible task for any single meta-analysis to achieve. Statistically significant findings are more likely to be published (see Rosenthal, 1979), and thus included in meta-analyses, compared to null findings which often remain unpublished. No single meta-analysis will be able to identify all of the relevant studies. This is why we have decided to bring together many meta-analyses in one place. We have included relevant meta-analyses on sex differences in interests, personality traits, behaviors and abilities that might be related to coding/engineering from 1990 to the present. We also included large cross-national empirical investigations (N > 15,000) and large sample empirical investigations (N > 10,000) of gender differences. Again, we acknowledge that the evidence we present is incomplete; this is a first pass, which we will update with the input and help of others. (Please add citations in the comments section, or email them to stevens at heterodoxacademy dot org). We show findings that generally support Damore’s claims in green, and findings that generally oppose his claims (or support his critics) in red. Effect sizes (d) are measures of how far apart two group means are, expressed as a proportion of the standard deviation (averaged between the two groups). By convention, an effect is considered trivially small if d is below .20, small if d is greater than or equal to .20, medium if d is greater than or equal to .50, and large if d is greater than or equal to .80. 3) OUR CONCLUSIONS The research findings are complicated, as you can see from the many abstracts containing both red and green text, and from the presence on both sides of the debate of some of the top researchers in psychology. Nonetheless, we think that the situation can be greatly clarified by distinguishing abilities from interests. We think the following three statements are supported by the research reviewed above. [we have put in bold the text that has changed since our initial version of this post] 1. Gender differences in math/science ability, achievement, and performance are small or nil. (See especially the studies by Hyde; see also this review paper by Spelke, 2005). There are two exceptions to this statement: A)Men (on average) score higher than women on most tests of spatial abilities, but the size of this advantage depends on the task and varies from small to large (e.g., Lindberg et al., 2010). There is at least one spatial task that favors females (spatial location memory; see e.g., Galea & Kimura, 1993; Kimura, 1996; Vandenberg & Kuse, 1978). Men also (on average) score higher on mechanical reasoning and tests of mathematical ability, although this latter advantage is small. Women get better grades at all levels of schooling and score higher on a few abilities that are relevant to success in any job (e.g., reading comprehension, writing, social skills). Thus, we assume that this one area of male superiority is not likely to outweigh areas of male inferiority to become a major source of differential outcomes. B) There is good evidence that men are more variable on a variety of traits, meaning that they are over-represented at both tails of the distribution (i.e., more men at the very bottom, and at the very top), even though there is no gender difference on average. Thus, the pool of potentially qualified applicants for a company like Google is likely to contain more males than females. To be clear, this does not mean that males are more “suited” for STEM jobs. Anyone located in the upper tail of the distributions valued in the hiring process possesses the requisite skills. Although there may be fewer women in that upper tail, the ones who are found there are likely to have several advantages over the men, particularly because they likely have better verbal skills. 2. Gender differences in interest and enjoyment of math, coding, and highly “systemizing” activities are large. The difference on traits related to preferences for “people vs. things” is found consistently and is very large, with some effect sizes exceeding 1.0. (See especially the meta-analyses by Su and her colleagues, and also see this review paper by Ceci & Williams, 2015). 3. Culture and context matter, in complicated ways. Some gender differences have decreased over time as women have achieved greater equality, showing that these differences are responsive to changes in culture and environment. But the cross-national findings sometimes show “paradoxical” effects: progress toward gender equality in rights and opportunities sometimes leads to larger gender differences in some traits and career choices. Nonetheless, it seems that actions taken today by parents, teachers, politicians, and designers of tech products may increase the likelihood that girls will grow up to pursue careers in tech, and this is true whether or not biology plays a role in producing any particular population difference. (See this review paper by Eagly and Wood, 2013). In conclusion, based on the meta-analyses we reviewed and the research on the Greater Male Variability Hypothesis, Damore is correct that there are “population level differences in distributions” of traits that are likely to be relevant for understanding gender gaps at Google and other tech firms. The differences are much larger and more consistent for traits related to interest and enjoyment, rather than ability. This distinction between interest and ability is important because it may address one of the main fears raised by Damore’s critics: that the memo itself will cause Google employees to assume that women are less qualified, or less “suited” for tech jobs, and will therefore lead to more bias against women in tech jobs. But the empirical evidence we have reviewed should have the opposite effect. Population differences in interest and population differences in variability of abilities may help explain why there are fewer women in the applicant pool, but the women who choose to enter the pool are just as capable as the larger number of men in the pool. This conclusion does not deny that various forms of bias, harassment, and discouragement exist and may contribute to outcome disparities, nor does it imply that the differences in interest are biologically fixed and cannot be changed in future generations. If our three conclusions are correct then Damore was drawing attention to empirical findings that seem to have been previously unknown or ignored at Google, and which might be helpful to the company as it tries to improve its diversity policies and outcomes. NOTE: This is a living blog post. We are updating it every few days in August, as commenters and colleagues guide us to new studies and offer us thoughtful criticisms. Our conclusions have changed slightly since our initial post. To reduce confusion, we have created a Google Doc that gives the original version of the post and then shows the major substantive changes we have made, particularly to the conclusions. ======================= For further reading: ======================= Notes and Responses to Reader Comments: 1. The authors thank Alice Eagly for helpful comments and criticisms on our first draft. 2. *We will soon address the issue of different variances in test scores between men and women, which was the key point of controversy in Larry Summers’ remarks in 2005. See the Pinker/Spelke debate for clear and conflicting presentations on that question. For a more recent analysis see Machin & Pekkarinen, 2008 and, especially, the supplementary materials (for an ungated summary click here). 3. The Morris (2016) study was added after a suggestion by Marco Del Giudice. 4.The most critical reactions to Damore often focus on his invocations of biology, particularly this line: ”I’m simply stating that the distribution of preferences and abilities of men and women differ in part due to biological causes and that these differences may explain why we don’t see equal representation of women in tech and leadership.” We cannot review the enormous literature on biology, culture, and gender in this post; we will link to appraisals by biologists when we find them. But we do think it important to make one comment: Nearly all academic psychologists who study personality, cognitive abilities, and interests, including gender differences, say that nature (biology) and nurture (childhood socialization, social norms, social roles) are both essential for explaining development, even if most researchers tend to focus their own work on one or the other (see Halpern, 1997; Halpern & LaMay, 2000; Neisser et al., 1996; Nisbett et al., 2012). Here, for example, is Eagly and Wood (2013): “Is nature or nurture the stronger influence on sex differences and similarities? If asked, most psychologists would probably reply that the question is misguided. Obviously, both are influential. (p. 1)…” “We believe that the future of science pertaining to gender and sex differences lies in overcoming ideological and identity biases and formulating theories that effectively integrate principles of nature and nurture into interactionist approaches.” (p. 12) 5. Zell, Krizan, & Teeter (2015) metasynthesis was added after a suggestion by Elena Zinova. 6. Del Giudice, Booth, & Irwing (2012) was added after reviewing literature on multivariate effect sizes. 7. Hyde et al (2008) was added to the research table after a suggestion by Alice Eagly. 8. Stoet & Geary (2013) was added to the research table after suggestions by Alice Eagly and David Geary. 9. Miller, D.I. & Halpern, D.F. (2014). The new science of cognitive sex differences. Trends in Cognitive Science, 18(1), 37-45, was added to the further reading section after a suggestion by Alice Eagly. 10. Hall, J.A. (1978). Gender effects in the decoding of verbal cues. Psychological Bulletin, 85(4), 845-857, was added to the further reading section after a suggestion by Alice Eagly. 11. Stefanie Johnson: What the Science Actually Says About Gender Gaps in the Workplace was added to the Generally Critical section after a suggestion by Adam Grant. 12. Links (highlighted) added to this sentence: Furthermore, because women get better grades at all levels of schooling and score higher on a few abilities that are relevant to success in any job (e.g., reading comprehension, writing, social skills)… . 13. Both Diekman et al. (2011; 2016) papers added to the further reading section. 14. Uttal et al. (2013) added to the research table after a suggestion by Alice Eagly. 15. Our follow-up post was published September 4, 2017: The Greater Male Variability Hypothesis – An Addendum to our post on the Google Memo. This post explores the greater male variability hypothesis (see note 2). 16. Conclusions revised September 4, 2017. Opinions expressed are those of the author(s). Publication does not imply endorsement by Heterodox Academy or any of its members. We welcome your comments below. Feel free to challenge and disagree, but please try to model the sort of respectful and constructive criticism that makes viewpoint diversity most valuable. Comments that include obscenity or aggression are likely to be deleted. |
The Lies of Locke Lamora is a 2006 fantasy novel by American writer Scott Lynch, the first book of the Gentleman Bastard series. Elite con artists calling themselves the "Gentleman Bastards" rob the rich of the city of Camorr, based on late medieval Venice but on an unnamed world.[2] Two stories interweave: in the present, the Gentleman Bastards fight a mysterious Gray King taking over the criminal underworld; alternate chapters describe the history of Camorr and the Gentleman Bastards, in particular protagonist Locke Lamora. Plot summary [ edit ] The Gentleman Bastards are masters of deception, disguise and fine cuisine. Father Chains, their "garrista" (leader), is a priest of the Crooked Warden, the god of thieves. He buys troublesome youth Locke for his gang. Through a series of confidence tricks on the rich, they defy the Secret Peace, an unspoken agreement between the criminal underground and the Duke’s government which allows for the existence of organized crime with the understanding that the peerage and the servants of justice are off limits. After Chains' death, Locke becomes garrista of the group, consisting of Jean Tannen, an expert fighter; Calo and Galdo Sanza, jack-of-all-trades identical twins; and Bug, a young apprentice. Their wayward female associate Sabetha is mentioned, but resides elsewhere during the events of the novel. The criminal underworld of Camorr is ruled with an iron fist by the Capa Barsavi, who collects a commission on all criminal activity under his purview. Under Locke's leadership, the Gentleman Bastards are known as a small gang of gentrified but petty thieves and pickpockets, and their dues, though regularly paid, are relatively small. Secretly, the Bastards have actually been using elaborate schemes to swindle various nobles out of large sums, and have amassed a considerable fortune; they purchase the trinkets they pass on to Barsavi as tribute, in accordance with their small-time reputation. What little is spoken of their operations is credited to the shadowy "Thorn of Camorr." Locke pretends to be Lukas Fehrwight, a merchant from Emberlain,[3] to con Don Lorenzo Salvara and his wife. Meanwhile, a mysterious criminal calling himself the Gray King has been killing Barsavi's most trusted garristas; fearing for his safety, Barsavi has sequestered himself in his ship-fortress, the Floating Grave. Locke finds himself face to face with the Gray King and his hired Bondsmage "The Falconer", who somehow know what the Gentleman Bastards have been up to; Locke agrees to impersonate the Gray King in an arranged meeting with Barsavi in exchange for the Gray King's silence, as well as the Bondsmage's magical protection from Barsavi's wrath during the meeting. The Gray King murders Barsavi's daughter Nazca and delivers her body to the Capa in a barrel; Locke is forced to continue with the plan, even though he knows that now Barsavi will never negotiate. At the meeting, Barsavi manages to circumvent a disguised Locke's magical protection, having him severely beaten and left to drown in a barrel. Jean and Bug save him, but they realize that the Gray King has double-crossed them; they return to their secret lair and find their wealth stolen and the Sanza twins brutally murdered. An intruder kills Bug and nearly Jean and Locke, who swear revenge. Locke goes to the Floating Grave in disguise, where Barsavi is celebrating the Gray King's supposed death. Suddenly two of Barsavi's trusted bodyguards, the fierce Berengias sisters, turn on him and cut down Barsavi and his two sons. The Gray King (whom Locke deduces is the brother of the Berengias twins) appears, introduces himself as Capa Raza and claims Barsavi's empire as his own. Left without resources and needing funds to somehow strike back at Raza, Locke tries to complete the con against the Salvaras. Meanwhile, Jean investigates the after-dark activity of Raza's minions and realizes that the new Capa is secretly loading his newfound wealth onto a ship supposedly quarantined for plague. Before Jean can tell Locke, he is ambushed by the Berengias sisters. He manages to kill both, but is seriously wounded himself. The Duke's "Spider", Camorr's secret spymaster who is actually the elderly Doña Vorchenza, has learned that the Salvaras are being conned by the mysterious "Thorn of Camorr." She and the Salvaras lure Locke to the Duke's annual celebration, and he barely escapes. Returning to their hideout, Locke finds Jean incapacitated by the Bondsmage's sorcery, which relies on the use of Jean's true name. Locke, whose real name is not known, overpowers the Falconer and tortures him for information. Wary of revenge by other Bondsmages should he be killed, Jean and Locke remove his fingers and tongue so he cannot gesture or speak spells, leaving him alive but insane. Capa Raza has planned his revenge against Barsavi and the nobles of Camorr since childhood, when his parents were murdered as collateral damage from the Secret Peace. To destroy the peers, he gives the Duke of Camorr four sculptures, actually time bombs filled with a substance that will cause all of the nobles and their children present at the celebration to slide into permanent mindlessness. Locke races back to the tower from which he escaped and manages to convince Vorchenza and the Salvaras of the danger, and the devices are defused. He next coerces the Spider to set him free to kill Raza, and not put him on trial for theft as a reward for saving their lives. Vorchenza agrees when Locke has shared the location of the stolen money; he tells her that Raza has hidden his treasure on a waste barge, and instructs her to destroy the plague ship and its crew before Raza can use it to infect the city. Locke faces Raza in mortal combat even though he is outmatched by the Capa's skills with a sword, and is nearly killed before managing to distract Raza for the split second he needs to finally slay him. When no treasure is found on the barge, Vorchenza realizes that the Thorn tricked her into destroying the ship filled with Raza's fortune, which is now an offering to the god of thieves for Locke's murdered friends. Later, Jean and Locke, recovering from their injuries, sail away to a new life. Film adaptation [ edit ] Warner Brothers bought the film rights soon after the book's release in 2006. The brothers Kevin and Dan Hageman were to write the screenplay, with Michael De Luca and Julie Yorn to produce.[4] However, the film rights lapsed in April 2010. [5] |
HBO has released this week’s batch of photos from Sunday’s new episode of Game of Thrones, titled “No One.” The season’s eighth episode will feature more action at the siege of Riverrun, and a long-promised confrontation in King’s Landing. Photos (and spoilers) below the cut! 6/9: Updated with more photos! Official episode synopsis: While Jaime (Nikolaj Coster-Waldau) weighs his options, Cersei (Lena Headey) answers a request. Tyrion’s (Peter Dinklage) plans bear fruit. Arya (Maisie Williams) faces a new test. Cersei will finally be choosing violence in episode 8. Will it be directed immediately and fatally at Lancel? Her cousin/former lover/enemy certainly is risking his life by trying to take on Cersei and the Mountain. Brienne is back in action this week! With a Lannister flag behind her, you’ll note, which suggests that she’s arrived at Riverrun. A tense reunion with Jaime Lannister is overdue. Tyrion and Varys have been missing as well these last couple weeks. Here we see them strolling the streets of Meereen, looking very much the noblemen this time. Everything looks pleasant and fairly calm, so clearly something terrible is about to happen in this place. We see that Brienne and Pod have arrived at Riverrun. The inevitable meetup between Jaime and Brienne is one fans have been looking forward to for ages. Cersei with her backup (The Mountain and Qyburn) look to be approaching the throne. Will we finally get official news or plans about that trial Cersei has mentioned so often? Going by the marks on the Mountain’s armor, it looks like this takes place after the likely altercation with the Faith Militant. Tommen on the throne with uncle Kevan and Grand Maester Pycelle by his side: A similar shot of Lancel to one further up, when someone’s choosing violence and someone else will not be having a good day: We’re back to Meereen this week, checking in with Missandei, looking rather serious: Another new red priestess on the scene in Meereen this season, played by Melanie Liburd. Earlier this season, the High Priestess Kinvara agreed to send more of her followers out to preach the word of Daenerys: Tyrion and Varys are walking through the square where the priestess is preaching. Is Tyrion not a fan of her words? Between Kinvara, the red priest, and the Volantis priestess last year, it seems as though all the followers of R’hllor have unsettled Tyrion. The Waif and her bloody knife, after her attempt on Arya’s life last episode. She doesn’t look confident or smug anymore: |
Let’s check out some assorted notes from around the AFC… Following his tenure with the Packers , veteran cornerback Charles Woodson inked a contract with the Raiders . Woodson admitted that his agent had reached out to the Lions during the 2012 offseason, but there was little interest from the franchise. “I was kind of throwing some lines out there to see where the interest was,” Woodson said (via ESPN.com’s Michael Rothstein). “Most teams, coming out of Green Bay, everybody thought I was pretty much done. Washed up. Couldn’t run anymore. I heard all of the adjectives to describe me…They were one of those teams that probably thought that.” , veteran cornerback inked a contract with the . Woodson admitted that his agent had reached out to the during the 2012 offseason, but there was little interest from the franchise. “I was kind of throwing some lines out there to see where the interest was,” Woodson said (via ESPN.com’s Michael Rothstein). “Most teams, coming out of Green Bay, everybody thought I was pretty much done. Washed up. Couldn’t run anymore. I heard all of the adjectives to describe me…They were one of those teams that probably thought that.” Michael Oher was just one of many offseason additions that didn’t work out for the Titans in 2014, writes ESPN.com’s Paul Kuharsky. Linebacker Wesley Woodyard lost his job to a rookie, running back Dexter McCluster made little impact offensively, defensive lineman Al Woods ultimately settled into a backup role and linebacker Shaun Phillips was cut in November. was just one of many offseason additions that didn’t work out for the in 2014, writes ESPN.com’s Paul Kuharsky. Linebacker lost his job to a rookie, running back made little impact offensively, defensive lineman ultimately settled into a backup role and linebacker was cut in November. In a series of tweets, Jason Fitzgerald of Over the Cap partially attributes the Patriots cap-conscious approach to the team’s inability to keep running back Curtis Martin . The franchise’s lack of cap flexibility during the 1998 offseason had a lasting impact on the organization, and the team vowed to never be in that kind of situation again. cap-conscious approach to the team’s inability to keep running back . The franchise’s lack of cap flexibility during the 1998 offseason had a lasting impact on the organization, and the team vowed to never be in that kind of situation again. Count Browns defensive coordinator Jim O’Neil among those who’d like to see defensive back Buster Skrine back with the team next season. “Buster is one of my favorite guys on the defense,” O’Neil previously said (via Kevin Jones of ClevelandBrowns.com). “He embodies ‘Play Like a Brown.’ I don’t ever want to let good players walk out the door.” |
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EA shut down Visceral Games on October 17, 2017. The studio was most famous for bringing life to the Dead Space franchise. While this news came as a shock to many, it’s nothing new. This is just one in a long list of studios EA bought and then shut down over nearly 20 years. Here are all of the studios killed off by the publisher listed in order of the dates they were shut down. 1. Bullfrog Productions (1987 – 2001) UK-based Bullfrog Productions was founded in 1987 by Les Edgar and Peter Molyneux. Since then, they made a name for themselves creating smash hit games like Populous, Syndicate, Theme Park, and Dungeon Keeper. Populous is especially important as many credit it with creating the “God game” genre. Bullfrog had been a strategic partner with EA in designing and developing games for seven years before EA acquired them in January 1995, according to AllBusiness. Molyneux was made Vice President of Electronic Arts and head of their European studio, but after growing frustrated with the position he decided to resign in July 1996 according to GameSpot. He would go on to found Lionhead Studios before moving on from that to 22Cans. Edgar became Vice President of the European studios and Bullfrog’s Chairman, but stepped down in 1999. Bullfrog tried developing Genesis: The Hand of God and Dungeon Keeper 3 but both projects were cancelled. In 2001, Bullfrog was merged into EA UK, effectively ending its existence. The final title to bear the company’s logo was Theme Park Inc. Other employees of Bullfrog would go on to form other studios such as Mucky Foot Productions (Blade II) and Media Molecule (LittleBigPlanet). Many game franchises created by Bullfrog would later be rebooted under EA, but we’ll get to that later. 2. Westwood Studios (1985 – 2003) In 1985, Louis Castle and Brett W. Sperry founded Westwood Associates in Las Vegas, Nevada. It was renamed Westwood Studios in 1992 when the company merged with Virgin Games (Later known as Virgin Interactive Entertainment). According to an old GameSpy interview with Castle, the “Westwood” part of the name was inspired by the “entertainment meets professional” character of Westwood, California. Westwood Studios are best known for the Command & Conquer series, one of the first and most popular real-time strategy games at the time. In 1998, EA acquired the company as well as Virgin Interactive’s development studio in Irvine, California for $122.5 million dollars, as reported by CNN Money. However, the studio was shut down in March 2003 because Command & Conquer: Renegade failed to meet expectations, according to GameSpy. Ex-employees of Westwood Studios would go on to create Petroglyph Games, known for Star Wars: Empire at War. 3. Origin Systems (1983 – 2004) Origin was founded in 1983 by Richard and Robert Garriott in Austin, Texas. Richard was developing games since high school and started the company with $70,000 in family money, according to The Escapist. The company’s slogan was “We create worlds,” and that’s exactly what they were known for. The company was best known for the Ultima series, with Ultima Online being often credited with popularizing and laying the groundwork for massively multiplayer online role playing games. Ultima Online won eight world records in the Guiness World Records: Gamer’s Edition 2008 including “First MMORPG to reach 100,000 players” and “Longest running MMORPG.” Ultima Online also won the GDC Online Awards Hall of Fame during the 2010 Game Developers Choice Online Awards and Lead Designer Raph Koster won the Online Game Legend Award during the 2012 Game Developers Choice Online Awards. Origin Systems are also well known for their Wing Commander and Crusader franchises. They also published the original System Shock which was developed by Looking Glass Technologies. Warren Spector worked at the company from 1989 to 1996 working as a producer for Ultima Underworld and System Shock before joining Ion Storm Inc. to create Deus Ex. John Romero worked as a programmer for the company for a year before co-founding id Software, creators of Doom. Origin was acquired by EA in 1992 for $35 million in stock, according to The Escapist. After the success of Ultima Online, EA decided that Origin would be an online-only company. After the poor critical and commercial reception of Ultima IX, however, EA cancelled Origin’s new development projects including Ultima Online 2, Privateer Online, and Harry Potter Online. Richard left to found Destination Games in 2000 with a lot of the team from Ultima IX and Ultima Online joining him, according to an interview. Origin was then made to support Ultima Online and develop other online games such as Ultima X: Odyssey set to be released in 2004. The studio was disbanded in February 2004. EA would use the trademark for Origin it acquired when it purchased Origin Systems for its digital distribution software Origin which launched in February 2013. Origin would go on to court controversy after controversy including making Crysis 2 an exclusive and removing it from Steam, account bans, security weaknesses, and accusations of spying. Destination Games became the American branch of the Korean online game studio NCSoft, according to The Escapist. The studio released one game, Tabula Rasa, which failed to meet sales expectations. Richard left the studio in 2008 and the studio closed in February 2009. 4. NuFX (1990 – 2007) Chicago-based NuFX was incorporated in 1990 by Lou Haehn and Patrick Quinn. EA published 15 of their games including the popular NBA Street series and in February 2004 the publisher acquired them, according to GameSpot. Gamasutra reported that their name was then changed to EA Chicago. The studio closed down in November 2007. 5. Pandemic Studios (1998 – 2009) Pandemic Studios was founded in 1998 by an equity investment by Activision and had offices in Australia and California. Their first two games, Battlezone II: Combat Commander and Dark Reign 2, were both sequels to games published by Activision. Pandemic would continue to create hit games such as Mercenaries: Playground of Destruction, Destroy All Humans!, and Full Spectrum Warrior. Full Spectrum Warrior is especially unique because not only was it commissioned by the US Army to help train soldiers but the University of Southern California and the Institute of Creative Technologies adapted the game to treat post traumatic stress disorder. But the games Pandemic would be most known for was Star Wars Battlefront and its sequel, third-person, team-based multiplayer shooters set in the Star Wars universe. In 2005, Pandemic partnered with BioWare in a $300 million deal by Elevation Partners, a private equity firm lead by former EA President John Riccitiello as reported by Eurogamer. The two studios were then acquired by EA in 2007 when they purchased VG Holding Corp which owned both studios, according to Giant Bomb. According to YouTube channel DidYouKnowGaming?, Pandemic’s acquisition by EA meant that they could no longer work on Star Wars games with LucasArts, which lead to issues when developing the eventually cancelled Star Wars Battlefront III. Pandemic then got to work on a licensed game based on the Batman film The Dark Knight. Pandemic began work even without any info about the movie, and the game switched from a more linear adventure title to a more ambitious open world one as development progressed according to DidYouKnowGaming?. However an overestimation of the power of the game engine led to the first playable build of the game struggling to run and even crashing development kits, causing members of the studio to leave. The game would never be able to make it in time for the movie’s release on July 2008, but could make the blu-ray release in December 2008. Development would continue to be plagued by technical issues and pressure to release the game would only increase when actor Gary Oldman revealed the game’s existence to G4. The $100 million project was cancelled in October 2008. EA closed the Brisbane, Australia offices for Pandemic on Christmas, 2008 and completely shut down the studio in November 2009, laying off over 200 employees according to DidYouKnowGaming?. According to Kotaku, the closure was also part of EA’s plans for cost-cutting at the time, which included the elimination of 1,500 jobs, cutting a dozen games, and closing facilities. EA would reboot the Star Wars Battlefront franchise in 2015 with the help of Battlefield developer DICE. However the reboot was widely criticized for a lack of content, most notably the lack of a single player campaign. EA’s Patrick Soderlund admitted in an investor broadcast that the game didn’t include a single player campaign because they wanted to release the game in time for the release of The Force Awakens, as Eurogamer reported. Star Wars Battlefront II in 2017 was even more controversial. While EA included the promised single player campaign, the game was eviscerated by the community for its loot box system. The Star Cards included in the loot boxes granted noticeable gameplay advantages to players including healing HP after kills or having lower cooldowns for abilities, as IGN reported. By spending real money on loot boxes, players could achieve superiority over others even if they barely touched the game. The game also deliberately made player progression feel like a grind to get loot boxes and credits to make the loot boxes more appealing, with one Reddit user figuring out that it would take 40 hours to get the 60,000 credits needed to unlock Luke Skywalker or Darth Vader through normal play and without buying loot boxes. EA responded to the backlash this caused on Reddit by saying that the intent was “to provide players with a sense of pride and accomplishment for unlocking heroes.” That response received over -668,000 points on Reddit making it the most downvoted comment in the website’s history. EA would later temporarily remove the ability to purchase premium currency in the game as well as reduce the cost of heroes while also reducing the credits awarded for completing the campaign. These changes came not only from the backlash but reportedly because of pressure from Disney executives who grew upset over the backlash according to the Wall Street Journal. At the time, EA told investors that turning off the microtransactions would have no material impact on the game’s projected earnings according to PC Gamer. The game sold over nine million copies by January 2018, which was one million fewer than EA projected according to the Wall Street Journal. The publisher then reintroduced microtransactions in April 2018 while only letting players buy cosmetic items according to Engadget. The controversy led to many government entities around the world investigating the effects of loot boxes on players and whether or not they could be considered gambling and regulated as such, including the Belgium Gaming Commission who declared loot boxes to be gambling according to BBC. Hawaii State Representative Chris Lee called Star Wars Battlefront II “an online Star Wars-themed casino designed to lure kids into spending money.” The Hawaii state legislature is now considering two sets of bills that would prohibit retailers from selling games with loot box systems to people under age 21 and would require publishers to disclose the odds of finding certain items in loot boxes, according to Ars Technica. 6. PlayFish (2007 – 2013) Playfish was founded in 2007 by Kristian Segerstrale, Sebastien de Halleux, Sami Lababidi, and Shukri Shammas. The London-based studio developed games on Facebook and was one of the first developers to attract millions of users to their games on the platform. In 2009, EA acquired the company for $400 million, according to The Guardian. In 2011, Playfish revealed that its games are played by over 55 million people every month, as reported by Gamasutra. However, by February 2013 all four founders left the company. Lababidi and Shammas left to found Mindshapes, a studio developing educational games for toddlers. Segerstrale left to return to the world of start-ups, according to Tech Crunch. Segerstrale is now the CEO of mobile game developer Super Evil Megacorp according to his LinkedIn page, which is behind the popular mobile MOBA Vainglory. According to Halleux’s LinkedIn page, he is the COO of Saildrone, Inc. a company designing wind and solar powered ocean drones. Playfish was shut down in 2013 and all of their games were retired by September 2013. The last game to be retired was Madden NFL 13 Social. The studio would be one of four others closed by EA in 2013. 7. Black Box Games (1998 – 2013) The Canadian developer Black Box Games was founded in 1998 by former employees of Radical Entertainment. The studio worked for publishers SEGA, Midway Games, and EA. EA acquired the studio in 2002 and renamed it EA Black Box as it was working on Need for Speed: Hot Pursuit 2, as reported by GameSpot. As well as working on Need for Speed titles, the studio also worked on the Skate series. In 2008, after EA laid off 10 percent of its worldwide workforce, the publisher closed EA Black Box’s office facilities and moved them to EA Canada’s offices as reported by GameSpot. This comes after the underperformance of several of EA’s games including Mirror’s Edge and EA Black Box’s Need for Speed Undercover. In 2012, EA confirmed yet more lay-offs for EA Canada and EA Black Box, citing a need to transform the studios towards “high-growth digital formats, including online, social gaming and free-to-play,” a spokesperson told Eurogamer. The studio was then renamed Quicklime Games. In April 2013, the studio was closed along with PopCap Vancouver, according to Game Informer. 8. DreamWorks Interactive (1995 – 2013) DreamWorks Interactive was established as a joint venture by Microsoft and DreamWorks SKG in 1995. The studio was led by Steven Spielberg and created a number of licensed games. Following the success of Medal of Honor, which was published by EA, the publisher bought the company in 2000, merged it with EA Pacific and EA Westwood, and then renamed it to EA Los Angeles. In 2003, EA moved EA Los Angeles along with other studios from Bel Air, California to a new building in Playa Vista, California, as reported by IGN. The studio would go on to create not only more Medal of Honor games but also The Lord of the Rings, James Bond, and even Command & Conquer games. In order to compete with Activision’s massive cash cow Call of Duty, EA rebranded EA Los Angeles yet again to Danger Close Games in 2010 so that they could make new Medal of Honor games, according to Engadget. Unfortunately, while the 2010 reboot did alright, 2012’s Medal of Honor: Warfighter performed well under sales expectations as it received mediocre reviews. The game series that once pioneered the modern military first-person shooter was now desperately trying to follow Call of Duty’s shadow. The controversy behind the decision to let you play as the Taliban in the 2010 reboot didn’t help matters. After the reception of Warfighter, EA decided to take the game “out of rotation,” effectively killing the series as reported by PC Gamer. Faced with no game IP’s to work on, Danger Close Games was made a division of EA DICE in May 2013 and was rebranded to DICE Los Angeles where it would go on to make post launch content for entries in EA’s far more successful military shooter series Battlefield 4 and Battlefield 1. 9. Phenomic Game Development (1997 – 2013) The German development studio Phenomic Game Development was established in 1997 by Volker Wertich, known for the major role he played in the Settlers series. The company is known for the SpellForce franchise. In 2006, EA acquired the studio and renamed it to EA Phenomic. The studio would focus on real time strategy games for EA, according to Eurogamer. The studio would go on to develop BattleForge, Lord of Ultima, and Command & Conquer: Tiberium Alliances. However the studio was closed in July 2013 as part of EA’s restructuring, according to GamesIndustry.Biz. 10. Victory Games (2010 – 2013) EA launched Victory Games in 2010 to continue the Command & Conquer series, according to an interview with Vice President of Strategy Games for EA Jon Van Caneghem. The new game would be free-to-play. However, the game was cancelled in October 2013 because of the negative reception from players of the closed alpha test, according to an official statement from Victory Games. The Los Angeles-based studio was then shut down. During E3 2018, EA announced that the next Command & Conquer game, a mobile title known as Command & Conquer: Rivals, will release in late 2018. 11. Mythic Entertainment (1995 – 2014) Mythic Entertainment, first known as Interworld Productions, was created in 1995 when game companies Adventures Unlimited Software Inc. and Interesting Systems Inc. joined forces. Their name was changed to Mythic Entertainment in 1997. The studio is best known for Dark Age of Camelot, a well-reviewed MMORPG that far surpassed sales expectations. In 2003, Mythic sued Microsoft for trademark infringement over their MMO Mythica. After the game was cancelled, Mythic settled the lawsuit and Microsoft agreed not to use the word “Mythica” or similar words for future online games, to drop its US applications to register the word as a trademark, and to give all trademarks and domain names related to the word to Mythic. In June 2006, EA acquired Mythic so it can produce MMORPGs for them in order to compete with World of Warcraft, according to GameSpot. They also renamed the studio to EA Mythic. Under EA, they released Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning to critical and commercial success. In June 2009, EA merged Mythic with BioWare to create one big RPG/MMO group known as BioWare Mythic as part of a restructuring plan, as reported by Kotaku. BioWare’s Co-founder Ray Muzuka took the lead of the studio with the other Co-founder Greg Zeschuk becoming Group Creative Officer as Mythic Co-founder Mark Jacobs left. Mythic’s other Co-Founder Rob Denton stepped up as general manager. In 2012, the studio was changed back to Mythic Entertainment. Mythic’s career ended after the release of Dungeon Keeper, a 2014 mobile game of the series created by Bullfrog. Dungeon Keeper would go on to be one of the worst games of that year, with critics panning the game’s obscene wait times that could have players wait days for a cavern to be dug out unless they pay to speed it up. Critic Jim Sterling said that it was “one of the worst examples of a cancer that is eroding the market and has already destroyed the credibility of the once promising mobile game sector.” In May 2014, EA shut down the studio. However, Dark Age of Camelot will continue to be supported by former Mythic employees under the new studio Broadsword, which also maintains Ultima Online. 12. Maxis Software (1987 – 2015) California-based Maxis Software was founded in 1987 by Will Wright and Jeff Braun in an effort to publish their Commodore 64 game SimCity on the PC, according to Kotaku. While their SimCity games would go on to become blockbusters, their numerous other Sim games wouldn’t sell nearly as much. Facing significant losses, Maxis agreed to be acquired by EA in July 1997. The acquisition was valued to be at $125 million, according to The New York Times. After the release of SimCity 3000, the team got to work on what many considered a major gamble in the game market at the time: The Sims. The interactive dollhouse game would go on to sell 11.2 million copies, making it one of the best-selling PC games of all time just under Diablo III’s 12 million, World of Warcraft’s 14 million, Terraria’s 20 million, and Minecraft’s 27 million. It was so successful that a separate studio was established just for the games and their sequels and expansions, according to Kotaku. Unfortunately, a long list of controversies secured the death knell for Maxis. Maxis’ next massive project, Spore, was released in 2008 to critical disappointment as well as a negative reaction to the game’s DRM measures, Kotaku reported. Wright left the company in 2009. The next game to court controversy was the SimCity reboot in 2013, with its always online requirement preventing tons of players from playing the game at launch due to server issues. It took a week for EA to get the game working, with the company disabling a bunch of features in order to do so as reported by Kotaku. Eventually an offline mode was created. The Sims 4 had similar problems and while it was made by a different studio the blame was still put on Maxis. In March of 2015, EA shut down the main Maxis studio in Emeryville, California. EA said that they would consolidate Maxis IP development to their studios in Redwood Shores, Salt Lake City, Helsinki, and Melbourne locations. The consolidated team was them moved in September 2015 to work alongside EA Mobile. 13. EA Salt Lake (1992 – 2017) EA Salt Lake began as Headgate Studios, which was founded in 1992 by Vance Cook in Bountiful, Utah according to profiles on Moby Games and Gust. Cook was a programmer for Access Software, Inc. (later known as Salt Lake Games Studio, then Indie Studios, and then Indie Bult, Inc.), according to Moby Games. Access Software was known for their golfing simulators according to Giant Bomb, and Cooks experience led to Headgate Studios becoming one of the premiere golf simulator developers creating many well-reviewed entries in the Front Page Sports Golf, PGA Championship Golf, and Tiger Woods PGA Tour franchises. However their first product was the much more humble PentaCalc Pro, a scientific calculator for windows computers. The studio was purchased by Sierra Entertainment in 1996 but then resold to Cook around 2000 according to Gust. That year the studio began publishing the Tiger Woods PGA Tour series through EA Sports, according to the studio’s website. Then in November 2006, EA announced that it has purchased Headgate Studios, renamed it EA Salt Lake and refocused the company to develop games exclusively for the explosively popular Nintendo Wii, as GameSpot reported. The studio would coordinate its efforts with EA’s development teams in California along with the Madden series developers EA Tiburon in Florida. Cook would oversee the studio as executive producer while reporting to EA Redwood Shores and Maxis general manager Nick Earl. The studio would produce spin offs and expansions for The Sims 2 and The Sims 3 as well as many games licensed by toy company Hasbro including Nerf N-Strike, Littlest Pet Shop, Monopoly Streets, and Hasbro Family Game Night 4: The Game Show. In July 2010, EA Salt Lake moved from their home in Bountiful to a new office building in downtown Salt Lake City, Utah, according to The Salt Lake Tribune. Cook reportedly left the studio in 2010 according to Gust. He went on to create Bivy, a mobile app used to track outdoor trails and climbing spots, in 2012. The app is owned by Headgate Studios, according to the app’s website. On January 30, 2014, IGN learned that EA laid off employees at EA Salt Lake. A source told the publication that 40 former employees migrated to Maxis in California while around 35 other employees were laid off, 20 of which were part of EA’s All Play label which was dedicated to digital games with a focus on mobile and social games according to GameSpot. A representative from EA told IGN that EA Salt Lake was “becoming largely focused on mobile development, including The Sims and other projects. Recent shifts unfortunately resulted in the reduction of a few teams. As we look to match skills with opportunities, some staff will be offered other positions at EA, while others will leave the company.” EA shut down EA Salt Lake in April 2017. 14. Visceral Games (1998 – 2017) Visceral Games began as EA Redwood Shores in 1998, developing games at the same site location as EA’s corporate headquarters in Redwood Shores, California. Throughout the years they would develop a number of decently received games such as CyberTiger, The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King, MySims, and The Simpsons Game. But they wouldn’t be put on the map until the release of Dead Space, one of the most beloved horror games of all time regularly appearing on top 10 lists across publications big and small. The studio then changed their name to Visceral Games in 2009, as Kotaku reported. Dead Space was so successful that EA wanted to turn it into a multimedia brand complete with comic books and even an animated film made by Simpsons studio Film Roman, according to Wired. However, neither the film nor its follow up were well received. But what really sealed the fate of Visceral was the release of Dead Space 3 in 2013. The game was one of the first to employ the controversial practice of incorporating free-to-play elements into full-priced games in order to get players to spend more money on microtransactions. Many agreed that the game was inferior to its predecessors, with the microtransactions being a common complaint. The game failed to meet sales expectations, with EA’s Frank Gibeau saying that the game needed to sell five million copies in order for the franchise to survive. The room temperature reception of Visceral’s next game in 2015, Battlefield Hardline, didn’t help the company. EA shut down the studio in October 2017. Kotaku reported that the studio was working on a story-based, linear action-adventure title set in the Star Wars universe directed by former Uncharted director Amy Henning, but it will be reworked and moved to a different studio. EA’s Patrick Söderlund said in a blog post that due to feedback from players about “what and how they want to play” as well as “fundamental shifts in the marketplace,” they are going to pivot the design so that players could come back to and enjoy the game for a long time. EA later confirmed to Kotaku that development of the game will shift to a development team from across Worldwide Studios led by the EA Vancouver team. They will use much of the work made by Visceral. As for Henning, EA told the publication that they are “in discussions with her about her next move.” Visceral’s development of their Star Wars game, code-named Ragtag, was marred by many problems as Kotaku’s Jason Schreier reported. The studio’s morale dived as half of the staff worked on Ragtag while half worked on expansion packs for Battlefield Hardline. “It was made very clear that the development team MVPs were the ones creating Star Wars magic while us lowly mortals slaved away on Hardline DLC,” one developer told Kotaku. The team was also understaffed with only 30 people working initially. The plan was to have the people working on Hardline DLC join later but even then the studio only had under 100 employees when a project of this caliber had teams of over 200. Not helping matters was the high cost of the studio’s San Francisco location as well as difficulties using the Frostbite engine, disagreements with EA over how to represent Star Wars, and clashes with the publisher in general. EA started laying off staff in May 2016. After many more turbulent months, the studio was shut down. |
Three naval ships of the People’s Liberation Army Navy (PLAN), a missile destroyer, a missile frigate, and a replenishment ship, visited Denmark, Finland, and Sweden in the past two weeks on goodwill visits. By paying a visit to Northern Europe, modern Chinese warships demonstrate versatile technical capabilities, as well as China's interest in the Arctic region, website The Diplomat reported. According to China’s Ministry of Defense, PLAN Fleet 152 is on a “round-the-globe voyage” after finishing up a four-month anti-piracy mission in the Gulf of Aden. On their way home, the Chinese naval fleet decided to ‘drop by’ for a visit to Denmark, Finland, and Sweden. The countries were the third, fourth, and fifth stops (respectively) for the fleet, led by the guided-missile destroyer Jinan. The first two stops were Sudan and Egypt. © AP Photo / Xinhua, Li Tang Will Chinese Aircraft Carriers Become a 'Nightmare' for US Navy? IHS Jane’s Navy International provided additional details on the three vessels, identifying them as “the Type 052C Luyang II-class guided-missile destroyer Jinan (152), the Type 054A Jiangkai II-class guided-missile frigate Yiyang (548), and the Type 903 Fuchi-class replenishment ship Qiandao Hu (886).” Jinan and Yiyang are among the PLAN’s most modern ships, having been completed in late 2014. The Qiandao, meanwhile, was commissioned a decade earlier, in 2004; The Diplomat reported citing Finland’s YLE News. The fleet is currently in Sweden and plans to spend five days there, after having arrived there on September 30. Wang Jianxun, the fleet commander and general commander of the Jinan, said that “We are going to have signatory visits and organize cultural and sports activities. The ships will be open to the public, [and] the Chinese naval servicemen and their Swedish counterparts will visit each other,” The Diplomat reported. |
Is this how unwanted Internet regulation passes? When enough popular web-based/tech corporations support a bill that’s potentially as damaging as SOPA, causing their legion of followers to accept the inevitable? If so, there’s a really good chance the backlash SOPA experienced could be a thing of past, at least in regards to the Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act (CISPA). The question is, which corporations are supporting the bill, making is such a viable option to its SOPA/PIPA predecessors? Thanks to the openness of the U.S. Government, we have a list of CISPA supporters, and after the SOPA backlash, some of names might surprise you: AT&T Boeing BSA Business Roundtable CSC COMPTEL CTIA – The Wireless Association Cyber, Space & Intelligence Association Edison Electric EMC Exelon Facebook The Financial Services Roundtable IBM Independent Telephone & Telecommunications Alliance Information Technology Industry Council Intel Internet Security Alliance Lockheed Martin Microsoft National Cable & Telecommunications Association NDIA Oracle Symantec TechAmerica US Chamber of Commerce US Telecom – The Broadband Association Verizon The links go to the individual letters of support, and as you might’ve noticed, Facebook, a company that was outspoken against SOPA, is on the CISPA supporters list. Their letter of support includes the following: Effective security requires private and public sector cooperation, and successful cooperation necessitates information sharing. Your legislation removes burdensome rules that currently can inhibit protection of the cyber ecosystem, and helps provide a more established structure for sharing within the cyber community while still respecting the privacy rights and expectations of our users. Through timely sharing of threat information, both public and private entities will be able to more effectively combat malicious activity in cyberspace and protect consumers. As you can see, Facebook’s rationale for supporting CISPA is protecting consumers and combating malicious Internet activity. Furthermore, there letter of support does not mention intellectual property protection or protecting the entertainment industry from piracy. With that in mind, does this mean CISPA is nothing like SOPA and the reaction against it is misguided? Not exactly. On surface, CISPA focuses on the sharing of important cybersecurity information between government officials and companies the information could effect. But, the bill goes further, including portions about protecting intellectual property that remind some of SOPA and PIPA. An example from the actual bill (H.R. 3523): (2) CYBER THREAT INTELLIGENCE- The term `cyber threat intelligence’ means information in the possession of an element of the intelligence community directly pertaining to a vulnerability of, or threat to, a system or network of a government or private entity, including information pertaining to the protection of a system or network from– `(A) efforts to degrade, disrupt, or destroy such system or network; or `(B) theft or misappropriation of private or government information, intellectual property, or personally identifiable information. And this is far from the only mention of IP in the bill. If an IP thief is considered a threat to cyber security and intelligence, can anyone foresee a scenario where a website like The Pirate Bay would be viewed as a threat and blocked from U.S. web users, if not altogether taken down by a multinational task force? Or, as Andrew Couts described it in his “CISPA is not the new SOPA: Here’s why” article: CISPA is a terrible piece of legislation, one that very well could result in the government blocking access to websites on the basis of copyright infringement, or sites like Wikileaks under the guise of national security. With that in mind, perhaps CISPA is more like SOPA than we first thought. The big difference is, companies like Facebook and Microsoft are not opposed to CISPA like they were PIPA/SOPA. Does that kind of support change your view about these kinds of bills or are you against any kind of “cyberspace” regulation that gives more control to the U.S. government? I know what Julia O’Dwyer’s answer would be… |
TRUMP WAS RIGHT=> Protesters at DC Speech Were Code Pink Democratic Operatives Yesterday in Washington DC angry anti-Trump protesters interrupted Donald Trump’s speech at the Faith and Freedom Convention. Medea Benjamin, co-founder of Code Pink and a Democrat operative, is removed from the Faith and Freedom Conference in Washington DC. The leftists started screaming when Trump mentioned radical Islam. Trump blamed Democrats for sending in their radical agitators. “Very sad. Very sad what’s happening. Very, very sad. What’s happening in our country is so sad. We’re so divided. It’s such a shame. And by the way these are professional agitators folks. They come in. They are sent here by the other party. Believe me.“ Trump was right. As reported earlier by Kristinn Taylor at The Gateway Pundit Code Pink is directly tied to the Obama administration and Democrat Party. Medea Benjamin and Code Pink leaders met with Valerie Jarrett and Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson in the White House. |
SANTA CLARA — Earthquakes star Chris Wondolowski trotted off the field on a warm Saturday evening feeling the brunt of an eight-month season that ended just short of the MLS Cup playoffs. Despite a 2-1 victory over FC Dallas in front of a sell-out crowd of 10,525 at Buck Shaw Stadium, the quixotic dream of scoring 13 goals proved too big an obstacle to overcome. But they tried — just like their scoring leader. Wondolowski scored his 11th goal of the season, a far cry from his MLS-tying record of 27 goals last year. It also was well below his 16 and 17 goals that he scored in 2010 and ’11. But it might have been Wondolowski’s greatest performance because he played much of the year with a broken right foot. Wondolowski had not disclosed the injury until asked about it Saturday by this newspaper. He expects to have surgery in the offseason but also wants to be ready to play for the U.S. national team. The man they call Wondo scored 13 goals in all for San Jose, and added six more for the United States. “A lot of players probably wouldn’t have played,” interim coach Mark Watson said. “He just got on with it.” Wondolowski’s resilience highlighted a team that proved to be one of the league’s best in the past two months, a team that went unbeaten over nine games in all competition since a 3-0 defeat to the Los Angeles Galaxy on Aug. 31. How did the Danville striker persevere while often wearing a cast? “A lot of adrenaline,” Wondolowski said. “I get fired up out there. Pain is the last thing on my mind.” The pain he felt Saturday was the sting of missing the playoffs a year after the Quakes won the Supporters’ Shield title with a team-record 72 goals. San Jose (14-9-11) needed to score at least 13 goals to be in position to win a tiebreaker in case Colorado loses Sunday in a shutout. But at least the team gave Ramiro Corrales a fond farewell in his last Major League Soccer game. The Salinas native played in San Jose for 12 seasons and is the last active player from MLS’ inaugural season in 1996. Watson started him to pay tribute to a stellar career. Corrales rode off on the shoulders of Victor Bernardez and Steven Lenhart in the 71th minute when protege Rafael Baca replaced him. “I’ve never seen that before,” Watson said the piggyback ride. The Earthquakes’ Walter Martinez scored in the 27th minute for the only goal of the first half. The Earthquakes now ride into a busy offseason with the primary objective of hiring a coach. Watson, who replaced Frank Yallop in June, posted the best record in the second half of the season. He is considered a strong candidate to take interim off his title. “I really believe they have a good one in Mark Watson,” said Schellas Hyndman, who coached his final game for Dallas after six seasons. Once they hire a coach the Quakes can get to the business of roster changes. The absence of midfielder Marvin Chavez on the 18-man roster Saturday could signal the end of his Earthquakes’ tenure. Chavez played a small role the past two months as the Earthquakes got rolling. His last start was Aug. 31 in Carson, his last appearance came as a 71th-minute substitute Sept. 29 against Chivas USA. |
You know all of those things that annoyed you about Destiny? Bungie's aware of them. In addition to revamping the game's leveling system for The Taken King and a host of other changes, the developers are "pivoting" from how they've conveyed Destiny's story in the past. With a reinvigorated focus on quest givers and cutscenes sprinkled throughout the experience, The Taken King is hoping to tell a focused and direct story for fans of Bungie's universe. We spoke to The Taken King's creative director Luke Smith and executive producer Mark Noseworthy about lessons from Destiny's past, the importance of Cayde-6, and the changes to Ghost. Remember that you can always learn more about the changes in The Taken King by reading our full cover story. Watch the video interview with Smith and Noseworthy below to learn more about the "100 little things" that Bungie is doing to change Destiny's storytelling strategy. To learn much more about Destiny: The Taken King, click on the banner below to enter our constantly-expanding hub of exclusive content. |
A 24-year-old Baltimore man has been sentenced to four years in prison, followed by three years of supervised release, for the burning of a CVS pharmacy in West Baltimore during April's unrest, according to Maryland U.S. Attorney Rod J. Rosenstein. Raymon Carter, who pleaded guilty in September to committing arson during the act of rioting, also will have to pay $500,000 in restitution under the agreement. Damage to the building was estimated at $1.1 million. The deal helped him avoid a separate federal arson charge that could have put him behind bars for five years. Carter was charged after community members helped officials with the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives identify him from surveillance video images, officials said. Video showed Carter arriving at the corner of North and Pennsylvania avenues — where the burning of the CVS became an indelible image of the spring rioting — and entering the CVS, which looters had breached an hour earlier, according to his plea agreement. Store surveillance video showed him attempting to break into a safe inside the store, then repeatedly returning to a corner of the store that held paper towels and toilet paper until a flash of light, believed to be the ignition of the fire, caused looters to flee, according to the agreement. Carter's attorney, public defender Premal Dharia, said in September that Carter "is incredibly remorseful" for his actions, and noted that the prison sentence Carter received Tuesday would be his first. "He intends to spend this period of incarceration reflecting on his actions, and on ways to return to this community as an upstanding member," Dharia said at the time. "This was an uncharacteristic error in judgment on a day in which many in the city became carried away by their frustration and caused damage to the very communities in which they live." The pharmacy building, gutted by the fire, was demolished, but is being rebuilt by CVS. Officials said they are continuing their investigation into the CVS fire and others that broke out across the city on April 27. Anyone with information is asked to call the ATF hotline, 1-888-ATF-FIRE. The agency is offering a reward of up to $10,000 for information leading to an arrest and conviction of anyone responsible for the fires. krector@baltsun.com twitter.com/rectorsun |
MMAFighting.com Quinton “Rampage” Jackson is taking his talents to Bellator. Jackson, who did not re-sign with the UFC following his unanimous decision loss to Glover Teixeira in January, has signed an exclusive contract with Bellator, according to sources with knowledge of the situation. According to those same sources, Jackson’s new deal will be similar to the one “King” Muhammed Lawal signed with the promotion last year, which gave him the opportunity to appear on TNA Impact Wrestling programming on Spike TV. Jackson has flirted with the idea of pursuing a pro wrestling career in the past, and it seems as though he will soon get a chance to showcase himself as a sports entertainer. Jackson’s Bellator debut has yet to be finalized, but a fall date appears to be a possibility. Bellator would not confirm the new contract when contacted by MMAFighting.com. Jackson tweeted Monday night, “Big news coming real soon.” The 34-year-old Jackson, a 14-year veteran of the sport, enters Bellator with a 32-11 record. He leaves the UFC as former light heavyweight champion and a 7-5 record inside the Octagon. I seem to be thinking the opposite of the public opinion on this one, most of the Internet community seems to think that Rampage should have kept his mouth shut and remained with the UFC, I personally think signing with Bellator/TNA was a good career move for Rampage. He has lost his last three fights in the UFC and at 34-years-old was past his prime. I do not want to call Rampage washed up, but he no longer has what it takes to compete with the likes of the UFC’s top light heavyweights such as champion Jon Jones and Glover Teixeria. Rampage already plays a character, with his chain and trademark howl, he is essentially pre-packaged to be a professional wrestler and should excel in TNA. Let Rampage and King Mo Lawal either feud with each other or form a tag team together. It would be extremely entertaining. When it comes to Bellator, hopefully Rampage fares better than King Mo, who was knocked out by Emanuel Newton in his second fight with the promotion, in the semifinals of the Light Heavyweight Tournament. Rampage cannot take Bellator lightly though, the promotion is loaded with talented and hungry young fighters, who would love to finish a legend. |
In a bizarre twist to a macabre story, Austin Flake, a son of Republican Sen. Jeff Flake, was supposed to be watching nearly 30 dogs in a sketchy-sounding Arizona canine boarding house when the AC broke down in the shed where the dogs were held, and 20 of them died from the heat. The operators of that boarding house, which supposedly was meant to hold far fewer dogs, went on vacation and put Flake and his wife in charge over the weekend—then, when the dogs died, the boarding-house operators lied to the canines' owners, telling them that their loved ones had run away, according to comments by Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio, reported in the Washington Post: Flake and his wife were put in charge of the Green Acre facility while the owners, Todd and MaLeisa Hughes, were out of town in Florida. "I learned of this tragic accident yesterday. I can't imagine the devastating loss these families are experiencing. My heart goes out to the owners who lost their beloved pet," the Senator said in a statement. On Saturday morning, pet owners, who had initially been told by the Hughes that their pets had gone missing, arrived at the facility to find a horrific scene of as many as 20 dogs dead or dying in a small shed next to the Hughes' home. "That was a lie," Arpaio said. "They didn't run away. The dogs are dead."... The Maricopa County Sheriff's office initially said that one of the dogs chewed through the air conditioning unit cord which caused the unit to stop working. The dogs, which were among 28 that were believed to have been in the small shed, died of heat exhaustion they said, according to KSAZ. Arpaio's officers apparently didn't find any wrongdoing on first encountering the scene at the dog shed, but conflicting reports to the dogs' owners left them frustrated and clamoring for an investigation. Arpaio has pledged to determine whether criminal neglect or abuse charges are appropriate. Many of those owners had picked Green Acres on the basis of its now-defunct website, where it reportedly promised "love, play time and attention" to no more than eight dogs at a time, who would supposedly have the run of the property and the operators' house. ABC 15 Arizona posted a picture to Facebook purported to be the kennel area where the dogs were held, with the chewed electrical wire visible at left: This is not the first time one of Jeff Flake's sons has been under media scrutiny. Last summer, his youngest son Tanner came under fire for using the online screen name "n1ggerkiller" to bash Jews, "faggots," and Mexicans (whom he called the "scum of the earth"). The senator tersely and quickly apologized for that episode. As for the owner of the boarding house who put Austin Flake in charge while she was away, she struck a defiant tone with the press. "The owners were full aware that these dogs would be in that room every single owner knew that. You guys understand this is a foster child I'm holding, right?" she said, outside her house in the raw interview above from Fox 10 Phoenix. After an exchange with one reporter, she added: "You can take that up with Senator Flake and Governor Brewer, when her face is on TV… you guys aren't gonna bully me. We provide an awesome business here. Nobody's reporting all our happy customers, all the customers who have come to our defense… nobody has the backbone or the integrity to print anything that's true." Meanwhile, families of the dogs have set up a Facebook page for support and information sharing, which includes a gallery showing dozens of photos of the dogs and their families. The gallery is titled "Innocent Victims." |
CMake support in Visual Studio 2017 – what’s new in the RC.2 update In case you missed the latest Visual Studio news, there is a new update for Visual Studio 2017 RC available. You can either upgrade your existing installation or, if you’re starting fresh, install it from the Visual Studio 2017 RC download page. This release comes with several enhancements in Visual Studio’s CMake experience that further simplify the development experience of C++ projects authored using CMake. If you’re just getting started with CMake in Visual Studio, a better resource will be the overview blogpost for CMake suport in Visual Studio that will walk you through the full experience including the latest updates mentioned in this post. Additionally, if you’re interested in the “Open Folder” capability for C++ codebases that are not using CMake or MSBuild, check out the Open Folder for C++ overview blogpost. This RC update adds support to the following areas: Opening multiple CMake projects You can now open folders with an unlimited number of CMake projects. Visual Studio will detect all the “root” CMakeLists.txt files in your workspace and configure them appropriately. CMake operations (configure, build, debug) as well as C++ IntelliSense and browsing are available to all CMake projects in your workspace. When more than one CMake project uses the same CMake configuration name, all of them get configured and built (each in their own independent build root folder) when that particular configuration is selected. You also are able to debug the targets from all of the CMake projects that participate in that CMake configuration. In case you prefer project isolation, you can still create CMake configurations that are unique to a specific CMakeLists.txt file (via the CMakeSettings.json file). In that case, when the particular configuration is selected, only that CMake project will be available for building and debugging and CMake-based C++ IntelliSense will only be available to its source files. Editing CMake projects CMakeLists.txt and *.cmake file syntax colorization. Now, when opening a CMake project file, the editor will provide basic syntax colorization and IntelliSense based on TextMate. Improved display of CMake warnings and errors in Error List and Output Window. CMake errors and warnings are now populated in Error List window and double-clicking on one in either Error List or Output Window will open the CMake file at the appropriate line. Configuring CMake Cancel CMake generation. As soon as you open a folder with a CMake project or operate changes on a CMakeLists.txt file, the configuration step will automatically start. If for any reason, you don’t expect it to succeed yet, you can cancel the operation either from the yellow info-bar in the editor or by right-clicking on the root CMakeLists.txt and selecting the option “Cancel Cache Generation” Default CMake configurations have been updated. By default, VS offers a preset list of CMake configurations that define the set of switches used to run CMake.exe to generate the CMake cache. Starting with this release, these configurations are “x86-Debug”, “x86-Release”, “x64-Debug” and “x64-Release”. Note that if you already created a CMakeSettings.json file, you will be unaffected by this change. CMake configurations can now specify configuration type (e.g. Debug, Release). As part of a configuration definition inside the CMakeSettings.json, you can specify which configuration type you want the build to be (Debug, MinSizeRel, Release, RelWithDebInfo). This setting is also reflected by C++ IntelliSense. CMakeSettings.json example: All CMake operations have been centralized under a “CMake” main menu. Now you can easily access the most common CMake operations for all the CMakeLists.txt files in your workspace from a central main menu called “CMake”. Use “Change CMake Settings” command to create or edit the CMakeSettings.json file. When you invoke “Change CMake Settings” from either the main menu or the context menu for a CMakeLists.txt, the CMakeSettings.json corresponding to the selected CMakeLists.txt will be open in the editor. If this file does not exist yet, it will be created and saved in the same folder with the CMakeLists.txt. More granular CMake cache operations are now available. Both in the main menu as well as in the CMakeLists.txt context menu, there are several new operations available to interact with the CMake cache: Generate Cache : forces the generate step to rerun even if VS considers the environment up-to-date : forces the generate step to rerun even if VS considers the environment up-to-date Clean Cache : deletes the build root folder such that the next configuration runs clean : deletes the build root folder such that the next configuration runs clean View Cache : opens the CMakeCache.txt file from the build root folder. You can technically edit the file and save, but we recommend using the CMakeSettings.json file to direct changes into the cache (as any changes to CMakeCache.txt are wiped when you clean the cache) : opens the CMakeCache.txt file from the build root folder. You can technically edit the file and save, but we recommend using the CMakeSettings.json file to direct changes into the cache (as any changes to CMakeCache.txt are wiped when you clean the cache) Open Cache Folder: Open an Explorer window to the build root folder Building and debugging CMake targets Build individual CMake targets. VS now allows you to select which target you want to build in addition to opting for a full build. CMake install. The option to install the final binaries based on the rules described in the CMakeLists.txt files is now available as a separate command. Debug settings for individual CMake targets. You can now customize the debugger settings for any executable CMake target in your project. When selecting “Debug and Launch Settings” context menu for a specific target, a file launch.vs.json is created that is prepopulated with information about the CMake target you have selected and allows you to specify additional parameters like arguments or debugger type. Launch.vs.json: [js]{ "version": "0.2.1", "defaults": {}, "configurations": [ { "type": "default", "project": "CMakeLists.txt", "projectTarget": "tests\\hellotest", "name": "tests\\hellotest with args", "args": ["argument after argument"] } ] }[/js] As soon as you save the launch.vs.json file, an entry is created in the Debug Target dropdown with the new name. By editing the launch.vs.json file, you can create as many debug configurations as you like for any number of CMake targets. What’s next Download Visual Studio 2017 RC.2 today, try it with your favorite CMake project and then share your experience. We’re interested in hearing both about the good and the bad as well as how you see this experience evolving beyond the upcoming Visual Studio 2017 RTM release. We hope you enjoy these updates and you’ll keep the feedback coming. |
About a decade ago, biologists set out to count river dolphins along a murky, meandering stretch of the upper Amazon River between Colombia and Peru. Although these distant freshwater cousins of seagoing whales face growing threats from pollution, dams, and hunting, the results seemed to suggest they were doing well. By the end of the 2007 survey, the team had spotted 116 groups of pink river dolphins (Inia geoffrensis), as well as 220 groups of a second species, the gray river dolphin or Tucuxi (Sotalia fluvia). Those numbers are higher than in two prior tallies done in 1993 and 2002. But because the tallies had all been done differently, conservation scientists could not say for sure whether the dolphin populations were growing, merely stable, or already in dangerous decline. Now, researchers have used a 250-year-old statistical approach to draw firmer—and potentially worrisome—conclusions about the dolphin population trends. Researchers count the dolphins by standing in a boat and scanning the vast river—dozens of kilometers wide in places. But techniques varied among the three surveys: One used just a single observer, for example, while others used two. The surveys were also done at different times of the year and at varying water levels. That’s problematic because the dolphins might bunch up during some seasons, making them easier to count, but swim deep into the Amazon’s flooded forests when the water is high, making them nearly impossible to find. “It’s a pretty frustrating situation, because you really need to know how the animals are doing if you want to do effective conservation,” says marine mammal scientist Rob Williams, who got involved in studying the dolphins in the early 2000s, while at the University of St. Andrews in the United Kingdom. But Williams, who has expertise in statistics, saw a potential solution: Call on the talents of the Reverend Thomas Bayes, an English Presbyterian minister who in the 1750s outlined a flexible statistical approach that enables researchers to combine and analyze disparate types of information—such as surveys done in different ways. It wasn’t until the advent of modern computers, however, that Bayesian methods became widely practical; since then, they’ve swept through the sciences. Now, Bayes has helped Williams and his colleagues extract some potentially meaningful trends from the messy dolphin data. The message is decidedly mixed, they report in this month’s Biological Conservation: Although there is a 75% probability that the gray dolphin population was stable or increased between 1993 and 2007, there’s an equal probability that pink dolphin numbers declined. The study represents “a really nice” example of how conservation scientists can cope with problematic survey data, says fisheries biologist Trevor Branch of the University of Washington, Seattle, who was not involved in the research. The researchers “were quite careful” in their analysis, he says, but notes that there are other possible interpretations: for instance, some dolphin populations may have declined and then rebounded, rather than simply increased. The authors agree that more work is needed to confirm the decrease in pink dolphins. But the trend “could be a warning sign of a significant problem that we need to understand better,” says co-author Fernando Trujillo, the scientific director of the Fundación Omacha, a conservation group in Bogotá. It could signal, for instance, that pink dolphins are being killed in substantial numbers by Amazon fishers, who sometimes see the animals as competition for fish, or use their flesh as catfish bait. (Brazil recently took steps to end that practice.) “Once you have trend data, you are able to look for the causes of the trend,” Trujillo says. But without data, he adds, “it is hard to persuade people to make changes or take needed action.” (Click here to see a video on Amazon dolphin research and conservation efforts.) Cheaper, better, faster? Designing and fielding relatively cheap and easy surveys that can help shape conservation strategies is a challenge. “It’s a really common problem in conservation biology,” says Williams, now a Pew Fellow in Marine Conservation and co-leader of the Oceans Initiative in Seattle, Washington. “There’s rarely enough money to rigorously monitor populations … especially in developing nations, so you are often dealing with very sparse data.” It would be prohibitively expensive to survey and monitor South America’s four species of freshwater dolphins using traditional “gold standard” methods, Williams notes. “So if we aren’t going to see a dramatic increase in spending for that kind of monitoring—and it is likely we won’t—we need to decide what a ‘silver’ or ‘bronze’ standard looks like.” To that end, the new study lays out a potentially doable strategy for keeping tabs on the dolphins. It calls for a single, streamlined abundance survey every 5 to 10 years, with smaller low-cost surveys every few years that focus on other issues, such as how the animals move seasonally. And it urges the use of Bayesian methods to strengthen the statistical power. “The math can be hard,” Williams says, “but that isn’t an excuse for ignoring the problem.” Trujillo notes that more than 150 dams are now proposed for the Amazon, and that coming up with workable methods for understanding how these and other projects are affecting the mammals will be critical. “The dolphins are a good indicator of the health of the whole river system,” he says. “So we need to assess how they are responding—before it is too late.” |
Suntech Power predicts that the cost of building large-scale solar PV plants could match the cost of coal-fired generation in China by 2016, a development that will “completely transform” the energy market in the world’s second-biggest economy. Eric Luo, the CEO of Suntech, which was recently bought out by Shunfeng Photovoltaic International, says that solar PV is rapidly catching up to the cost of coal-fired generation. (China is the world’s largest consumer of coal.) “The levelized cost of generation is still coming down,” Luo said in a telephone interview this week. “We are not far away from the cost of production for conventional energy. We are sure that by 2016, or at the latest, 2017, the levelized cost of solar PV will be the same as coal-fired generation in China,” he said. “It is going to completely transform the energy market in China,” Luo added, noting that environmental concerns would also accelerate that transformation. “China is investing a lot of money into the environment to clean up the energy production process. This is a major opportunity.” Luo predicted that the annual installation rate of solar PV in China would top 25 gigawatts by 2020. It could even be more if the regulations and the modeling around distributed generation are resolved. This would involve leasing and other financing models. Battery storage would also have a significant impact on the solar market. “If the model is right, then [distributed generation] will be flying in China,” Luo said. It was one of Luo's first interviews following the recapitalization of Suntech, once one of the world’s biggest and best-known solar brands, following its collapse under the weight of its debts a year ago. Luo describes the new company as a much leaner organization. The number of managers has been reduced from 300 to fewer than 100, and the company’s focus is now on repositioning itself as an “integrated clean energy service provider.” That is why it has recently invested in an inverter company and a battery storage developer. The company is also focusing on downstream projects, following a similar transition by other major solar manufacturers. “We want to focus on the entire value chain,” Luo said, speaking of developing capabilities in design, engineering, manufacturing, construction, finance, insurance, operation and maintenance. Suntech expects to quickly ramp up to its stated annualized manufacturing capacity of 2.5 gigawatts of solar modules by the end of this year -- more than its peak in 2011. This won’t bring it back to the top of the solar market, but it will regain its position among the top ten manufacturers. Luo said Japan remained a very strong market with rapid growth for the company and that the U.S. is also promising, although Europe had declined. Luo describes Australia, where the company has invested heavily in solar PV research projects, as one of its “traditional markets.” He said the company would focus on household and commercial-scale solar installations, but it would also be a base for an increasing presence in the Pacific islands, particularly in French Polynesia. However, Luo said he was concerned about the anti-dumping investigation brought by Australia, at the behest of Adelaide-based Tindo Solar. “We are very upset about it, because we don’t understand how it could happen. In Australia, there is no manufacturing of solar cells or modules. It is not like SolarWorld's [claims] in the U.S. where there is very visible manufacturing." He added, "We hope it will be amicably resolved. We still believe this is just a little...distraction.” *** Editor's note: This article is reposted from RenewEconomy. Author credit goes to Giles Parkinson. |
Eros Now, the digital streaming service from Eros International, has said that it has 1.1 million unique paying active users at the end of the June quarter (Q1FY17) and has over 49.6 million users registered users across app, WAP and web. The company said that it is looking to get 2 million paid users by the end of FY17 and 5 million users at the end of FY18. Eros Now has a 5-year target of at least 15-20 million subscribers worldwide with a blended annual ARPU of $5 from India and $30 internationally with 80 percent of the target subscribers from India and the remaining 20% internationally. The company had registered digital revenues of $14.1 million, growing 135%, from $6 in the same quarter last year. On a sequential basis, digital revenues at Eros decreased 32.21% from $20.8 million. Eros’s digital businesses also includes YouTube channel, and more significantly, it’s distribution via cable based VoD services called “Bollywood Hits On Demand” with Cox, Rogers, Cablevision and Time Warner, apart from services in the UK and Middle East. Financials: Overall revenues increased 42.2% to $71.1 million for the quarter, from $50 million revenues in the same quarter last year. Net profit stood at $3.49 million for the quarter, down from $3.77 million in the same quarter last year. Theatrical revenues: Theatrical revenues increased 11% to $37.4 million for the quarter, from $33.7 million revenues in the same quarter last year. Note that these revenues are significantly dependent on number of film releases in a quarter. The company released three high budget movies, two medium budget movies and nine low budget movies. Total number of films released in the quarter stood at 14 compared to 16 in the same period last year. The segment accounted for 52.6% of Eros International’s quarterly revenues, up significantly from 27.5% contribution in the preceding quarter. Television syndication revenues: The television syndication revenues were at $19.6 million for the quarter, up 90.3 from $10.6 million in the same quarter last year. The segment accounted for 27.56% of the Eros International’s quarterly revenues. Regional segmentation of revenues – India: For the quarter, revenues by customer location in India increased 28.6% to $42.7.million for the quarter, from $33.2 million in the last year. – North America: Revenue by customer location in North America decreased 56.3%to $1.4 million for the quarter , from $3.2 million last year. – Europe: Revenue by customer location in Europe increased 9.8% to $4.5 million compared to $4.1 million last year. Other developments – Last month, Eros Now tied up with Reliance Jio (RJio) to make available old and new movies including Bajrangi Bhaijaan, Bajirao Mastaani, Tanu Weds Manu Returns, Prem Ratan Dhan Payo on the JioOnDemand service. – Eros Now is in the process of acquiring 10,000 more films to add to its existing library of 5,000 films and launching its original series in the second half of FY 17. Download: Press release and earnings |
Why Spider-Man: Homecoming’s Director Can’t Wait For Infinity War By Conner Schwerdtfeger Random Article Blend The Marvel Cinematic Universe has come a long way since Tony Stark (Robert Downey Jr.) donned his first Iron Man suit, and the introduction of Spider-Man to the rest of the Marvel heroes is arguably one of the most important moments in the entire franchise. With that in mind, Jon Watts has done something special with the recent release of Spider-Man: Homecoming, and many have even begun to hail it as one of (if not THE) best Spider-Man movies of all time. However, Watts is not resting on his laurels yet, as he recently revealed that he cannot wait for The Avengers: Infinity War because that film will tell him where he can take Peter Parker during his next solo MCU adventure. Watts explained: For me it's one movie at a time. I can't wait to see Infinity War because I know what they're doing but I don't know the specifics. I feel like with Tom and with Spider-Man in this Marvel universe we're just scratching the surface of what we can do. Arguably the biggest takeaway from Jon Watts' recent comments to EW is the fact that he's not confirmed for Homecoming 2 just yet. The Spider-Man: Homecoming director is very clearly taking this "one movie at a time," and that means the release of The Avengers: Infinity War will give him a much firmer understanding of where he can take this overarching narrative in the long run if he opts to come back. He has a general understanding of where Peter Parker will find himself during the events of Infinity War, but he cannot really get down business on the next Spider-Man film until he knows exactly how the next major Marvel ensemble pans out. The relationship between the Spider-Man movies and The Avengers films seems like it will become a growing theme within the greater Marvel Cinematic Universe. Not only will Infinity War allow Jon Watts to know where he can take Spidey in Homecoming 2 (or whatever it ends up being called), but it was also recently revealed that the next Spider-Man movie would take place minutes after the fourth Avengers film. Although he was once an outsider, our friendly neighborhood Spider-man has become a major player in the MCU, and he has handily become one of the brand new lynchpins for the entire Marvel franchise -- alongside fellow newcomers Black Panther (Chadwick Boseman), and Doctor Strange (Benedict Cumberbatch). It's a great time to be a Marvel fan, isn't it? Spider-Man: Homecoming is now in theaters everywhere, so make sure to check it out! Beyond that, Peter Parker will make his next major appearance in the Marvel Cinematic Universe when The Avengers: Infinity War debuts on May 4, 2018. Here's everything that we currently know about the upcoming Avengers film. WATCH: The Avengers: Infinity War Gag Reel - Blu-ray Bonus Feature Blended From Around The Web Facebook Back to top |
Hi, welcome to Gender Analysis. There’s a certain genre of cisgender opinion piece that pops up from time to time, in which they explain to other cis people why they don’t date trans people, sleep with trans people, or find trans people attractive, all while taking pains to announce that this absolutely does not make them transphobic and protesting that nobody can “force” them to have sex with trans people. Clearly there are some dense layers of different issues wrapped up in this topic, and their often ham-handed take on this can be a real rollercoaster. A recent video by cis lesbian vlogger Arielle Scarcella, “I’m Transphobic Because I Like Boobs & Vagina”, is a representative example of the style and hits all the key elements note for note. (Note that this person runs a channel largely consisting of mad-libs headline grabbers such as “Gay Couple (Cut & Uncut) Shows Lesbian Their Penises” and “Lesbian Virgin Sees Naked Woman For First Time”, so keep in mind that this is the level we’re operating on here.) “I’ve been told I’m transphobic because I like boobs and vaginas and not penises. Who I date is not up for debate. . . . Body parts is what people are attracted to in the physical sense. Can we also be emotionally, mentally and spiritually attracted to somebody? Yes. Do I believe that trans women are ‘real women’? Yes. Can I be attracted to a trans woman who is pre-op? On hormones, yes, because when a trans woman goes on hormones, they tend to have more feminine secondary sex characteristics. Should I then be forced to accept having sex with a partner that has a penis because I’m attracted to her overall? No. . . . If a lesbian does not want to date or fuck me, does that invalidate me being a woman? No. And the same goes for any transgender person. If someone does not want to fuck you, it does not invalidate your identity. Nobody, and I repeat nobody, should be coerced into having sex with anybody. It is our individual choice and prerogative who we want to date or fuck regardless of sexual or any type of attraction to them. Dating naturally is discriminatory. You are not entitled to sex. Guilt-tripping someone to want to date or fuck you is manic and manipulative. If I was straight and thought some dude was fucking hot, does that mean that he has to expect sex with me, does that give him the right for him to force it upon me? No.” Where do we even start with all of this? How about: Who is calling you transphobic? Who is trying to debate who you date? Who is trying to force you to have sex with someone who has a penis? Who is being coerced into having sex? Who is acting entitled to sex? Who is guilt-tripping someone into dating or fucking them? Is any of this actually happening at all? An important aspect of this to keep in mind from the outset is just how performative these pieces tend to be. They consist of cis people declaring all of this to other cis people, typically without any actual trans people in the loop – only imaginary or theoretical trans people. Who is harassing poor Arielle Scarcella in the aforementioned ways? In the absence of any actual trans people in the course of this one-sided argument, audiences are invited to project these nefarious motives onto all trans people generally. There is no real trans person doing any of this – just a faceless, ravenous trans fuckbeast apparently intent on coercing cis lesbians into unwanted sex. The topics of attraction, relationships, and sex further serve as a venue for cis people to reiterate to one another just how unattractive they consider trans people to be, within a realm that’s considered largely unquestionable and sacrosanct – after all, how can you argue with what someone happens to be attracted to? Once this framing is established, any attempt to question the panoply of assumptions being made here can then be cast as confirmation that trans people are indeed attempting to convince uninterested cis people to have sex with us. As a trans woman, I’d like to point out that essentially none of this is accurate, helpful, or conducive to a useful understanding of what it’s like to be in a relationship with a trans person. First: This isn’t about whether you’re “transphobic” or not – that is a distraction. The typical opening volley, that a cis person has been terribly wronged and falsely accused of the high crime of Being Transphobic, serves to establish the cis person as a Good Ally™ who has been unfairly set upon by those oversensitive trans people. The audience is thus invited to comfort and reassure the cis person that of course they aren’t transphobic – who could possibly accuse them of such an awful offense? If anyone does attempt to dispute this, the discussion will usually descend into endless and unproductive arguments over whether someone “is transphobic” or “isn’t transphobic”, with little critical examination of what the term specifically means or implies in a practical and concrete sense. Whether or not a cis person who’s not attracted to trans people is “transphobic”, trans people themselves are likely to be more concerned with the practicalities of this. Strike the word “transphobic” from your vocabulary for the moment, and take a look at the actual substance of how this person conducts themselves: Implying that someone is trying to force her to have sex with trans women Implying that trans women believe their identities as women are contingent upon whether they fall within the desires of cis lesbians Implying that trans people believe they’re entitled to sex with cis people and that they engage in guilt-tripping and manipulation to this end Everything else that sends up flaming red flags here “Transphobic” or not, trans people can definitely observe that these kinds of viewpoints often do correlate with very unsupportive attitudes toward us, or at least attitudes that we simply want nothing to do with. We encounter these very same arguments frequently enough to observe that, on the whole, such people typically aren’t very positive in their view of us. We are not basing our judgment on whether that set of behaviors happens to carry the label of “transphobic” or “not transphobic” – swapping those labels around would change nothing, because we are concerned with the behaviors themselves. No amount of arguing that you’re not transphobic will necessarily make trans people any more comfortable with what you’re bringing to the table. Second: We don’t want to sleep with people who have issues with our transness or our bodies. To me, this has always been perhaps the most glaring issue with these cis assumptions: Why would I want to be intimate with someone who is explicitly disinterested in me? This isn’t something I can even contemplate – there would be nothing remotely enjoyable about that. Even in fantasy, it simply doesn’t get off the ground; this carries no appeal whatsoever. But even if one of us were attracted to a disinterested cis person, transphobic attitudes are still very unattractive to trans people. It would be hard to think of a set of other personal traits or features that would be sufficient to outweigh the repulsiveness of transphobia. It’s confusing and bizarre when cis people seemingly assume that they would be desired by us in spite of all this. We deal with transphobia from the rest of the world all the time – why would we opt to have to deal with this in an intimate relationship as well? Also: As trans people, we are very aware of the conflicts cis people have over whether they consider us attractive – and the paradoxes and contradictions that often ensue. Nearly all of us have experienced the disconcerting phenomenon of a cis person praising our beauty and attractiveness before they know we’re trans, and then loudly announcing how revolting and disgusting we are once they find out. We’ve seen this happen enough times to understand that “attraction” often means more than just attraction itself, and also ties into elements such as moral judgment and personal insecurity. So we have ample reason to be a bit skeptical when someone declares that they don’t find trans people attractive – these are often the very same individuals who do express attraction to us initially. That attraction is real even if it is later overridden by other factors. Finally: We don’t need cis people to sleep with us. Many trans people have made note of the difficulties that can come with a sexual relationship with some cis people. This can include challenges like coaching them through their personal hang-ups over what our bodies imply about their sexuality and identity, during a time that should be intimate and enjoyable for all involved. Sex is a site of intense personal vulnerability for nearly anyone, and trans people can additionally face the struggles of finding affirmation in our genders and confidence in our bodies. Having all of this called into question in the bedroom as we hold an impromptu therapy session for a cis partner is simply not a recipe for good sex. Plenty of trans people have realized that this situation just isn’t something they need to be subjected to at all, and have instead chosen a better option for themselves: dating and sleeping with other trans people. Relationships between trans people are extraordinarily common, and come with advantages such as typically having at least a baseline understanding of each other’s life experiences and the challenges faced in the course of living as our gender. There’s no need for awkward 101s on transness and gender before being able to relax and have some fun with a loving partner, and being close to someone with a body like your own can be incredibly affirming and comforting. Most cis people just can’t offer this. Those who perpetuate an image of trans people as relentlessly and desperately pursuing disinterested cis people would do well to remember: we can just as easily cut you out of the loop, too. |
Jan 30 Posted in Battery Technology | Energy Inventions | Photovoltaic Cells | Solar Power Currently silicon-based solar cells are flooding the market. Industry pundits can foresee a hopeful future for low-cost, flexible solar cells. If we can make solar devices other than silicon based materials then they can be used for all sorts of applications beyond just the traditional solar panels on house rooftops. It will be great if we can have solar cells for portable electronic devices too. Luping Yu, Professor in Chemistry, and Yongye Liang, a Ph.D. student, both at the University of Chicago , and five co-authors are working to develop a new semiconducting material called PTB1, which converts sunlight into electricity. The University accredited the patent rights to the technology to Solarmer last September. The license covers numerous polymers under development in Yu’s laboratory, confirmed by Matthew Martin. He is a project manager at UChicagoTech , the University’s Office of Technology and Intellectual Property. A patent is pending. Solarmer Energy Inc. is spreading its wings in this direction. They are willing to incorporate technology invented at the University of Chicago. The commercial-grade prototype will be completed at the end of this year. It will be of eight square inches (50 square centimeters) and lifetime of three years. This plastic solar device will have the efficiency of eight percent. This eight percent efficiency will give an edge to the Solarmer Energy Inc. over its competitors. Dina Lozofsky, vice president of IP development and strategic alliances at Solarmer states, “Everyone in the industry is in the 5 percent to 6 percent range.” Engineering expertise of Solarmer’s device with Yu and Liang’s semiconducting material, push the material’s efficiency even higher. Solarmer is based in El Monte, Calif., and was founded in 2006. They come forth to commercialize the technology developed in Professor Yang Yang’s laboratory at the University of California, Los Angeles. The company is developing flexible, translucent plastic solar cells that generate low-cost, clean energy from the sun. The active layer of PTB1 is around 100 nanometers in thickness and the width is nearly 1,000 atoms. If we want to produce a small amount of the PTB1 material it will take considerable amount of time, and the whole procedure will be multi-step process. But still the biggest advantage of this technology lies in its simplicity. Several products are being synthesized in other laboratories in the USA but the competitive advantage lies in the steps of production too. Other devices need far more extensive engineering work for commercial viability. “We think that our system has potential,” Yu said. “The best system so far reported is 6.5 percent, but that’s not a single device. That’s two devices.” |
Image caption There have been rumours about Garcia Marquez' memory losses The brother of Gabriel Garcia Marquez says that the Colombian writer and winner of the 1982 Nobel Prize for Literature is suffering from dementia. Jaime Garcia Marquez told students at a lecture in the city of Cartagena that his brother, who is 85, phones him frequently to ask basic questions. "He has problems with his memory. Sometimes I cry because I feel like I'm losing him," he said. He says the author has stopped writing altogether. The BBC's Arturo Wallace in Colombia said there have been rumours about Mr Garcia Marquez' memory problems. Jaime Garcia Marquez, his younger brother, is the first family member to speak publicly about it. Invited to talk about his relationship with Gabo, as the writer is affectionately known in Colombia, Jaime said he could not hold back from talking about his illness anymore. "He is doing well physically, but he has been suffering from dementia for a long time," he said. "He still has the humour, joy and enthusiasm that he has always had." The 1967 masterpiece of magic realism, One Hundred Years of Solitude, begins with the story of a family unable to care for their senile grandfather. "It is a disease that runs in the family," said Jaime Garcia Marquez. Gabriel Garcia Marquez currently lives in Mexico and has not made many public appearances in recent years. His novels include Love in the Time of Cholera, Chronicle of a Death Foretold and the The General in His Labyrinth. He is best known for One Hundred Years of Solitude, which has sold more than 30 million copies and been translated into more than 30 languages . |
Hey everyone, Here’s the straight and dirty: on Dec 1st when you submit a ticket to us here in Player Support, [you’ll need to enter your LoL credentials first](https://support.riotgames.com/hc/en-us/articles/206316536). If you haven’t verified the email on your account, you won’t be able to log on. So make sure to verify your email address! On the other hand, you won’t need to login if you are submitting a ticket about: * Account Recoveries * Chargebacks/Unauthorized Charges ***NOTE: If your account is banned/suspended, you ***CAN*** still sign on to submit a ticket*** > #***WTF? Why?*** Because Stone Cold said s-- Actually, because having two accounts is stupid. There is no reason to have a special support account when we all already have a League of Legends account. This should make things easier for all of you as well as us. If you have any further questions, feel free to drop a reply! Title Body Cancel Save |
First of all, there's good news for much of the world's population: On average, you are more likely to live longer than your ancestors. Life expectancy is rising even in some of the world's poorest countries, according to a new study by the University of Washington's Institute for Health Metric and Evaluation (IHME). Within 23 years, from 1990 until 2013, life expectancy for both men and women rose 6.2 years, from 65.3 to 71.5. Estimations of life expectancy are frequently thrown around to make all kinds of arguments: Politicians use them to advocate health-care systems, opponents of the tobacco industry tell you how much each cigarette shortens your life, and yoga teachers refer to them to explain how much longer meditation will help you live. But what if life expectancy isn't the actual unit we should measure? IHME suggests an alternative measurement: counting the years you will spend living free of disease and disability on average. When the researchers calculated the world's average life expectancy per country and compared them to the average years lived being healthy, they were surprised: Despite the fact that people around the world are living longer, they are also expected to spend more time suffering from diseases and other conditions. This interactive charts allows you to compare countries. Although life expectancy increased on average, the rates in some countries stagnated. "The increase in healthy life expectancy has not been as dramatic as the growth of life expectancy, and as a result, people are living more years with illness and disability," the study's authors explained. The researchers used the concept of HALE, which measures healthy life expectancy at birth and takes into account "nonfatal conditions and summarizes years lived with disability and years lost due to premature mortality." Health loss was primarily associated with "heart disease, lower respiratory infections, stroke, low back and neck pain." Men are more at risk of suffering road injuries, while women are disproportionately affected by psychological disorders. What is particularly striking is that in some countries, such as Botswana, Belize and Syria, healthy life expectancy stagnated or even dropped, as was also the case in South Africa, Paraguay, Belarus, Lesotho and Swaziland. People in countries such as Nicaragua and Cambodia have experienced dramatic increases in healthy life expectancy since 1990, 14.7 years and 13.9 years, respectively. The reverse was true for people in Botswana and Belize, which saw declines of two years and 1.3 years, respectively. Why is there so much variation? Reasons why people get sick around the world differ, of course. However, the University of Washington researchers said several factors played a disproportionately big role, including "per capita income, population age, fertility rates, and years of schooling." These factors alone can explain more than half of the cross-country variation, according to the study. Although those factors can be used to predict differences regarding maternal disorders, they do not apply in cases of cardiovascular diseases and diabetes. In the latter cases, access to health-care systems, diets or average working hours could provide further insights. Will the average time spent in health catch up with life expectancies? Health has improved significantly around the world, "thanks to marked declines in death and illness caused by HIV/AIDS and malaria in the past decade and significant advances made in addressing communicable, maternal, neonatal, and nutritional disorders," the study's authors concluded. However, as the following chart shows, the gap between average life expectancy and years spent without illness or disability continues to grow. So, what's the study's lesson for the future? "The challenge is to invest in finding more effective ways of preventing or treating the major causes of illness and disability," professor Theo Vos of IHME was quoted as saying in a publication released by the university. Also read: The world’s languages, in 7 maps and charts Where Europe is growing and where it is shrinking The best (and worst) countries to be a mother These are the world’s least religious countries |
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