text:
In recent years the European Union has taken several positive steps to protect the human rights of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people in the world.
The European Parliament takes stock of this progress, and suggests additional action in the coming year.
The European Parliament acknowledges that the EU has consistently stood up for LGBT people's human rights at the United Nations, as well as occasionally in bilateral relations.
The Parliament calls on the Council to change the 'LGBT toolkit', adopted in 2010, into binding guidelines, and reasserts that the EU relationship to the Africa, Caribbean and Pacific group of states entails non-discrimination, including on the basis of sexual orientation.
Ulrike Lunacek MEP, Co-president of the European Parliament's LGBT Intergroup, commented: "The European Union has done praiseworthy efforts for LGBT rights in the world. In particular, the toolkit adopted by the Council Working Party on Human Rights in 2010 has been used efficiently in a number of countries. The Council should now consider upgrading such a useful tool."
Regarding gender identity, the European Parliament repeats its earlier call to the Commission to work with the World Health Organization to withdraw 'gender identity disorder' from the International Classification of Diseases, and seek a non-pathologising reclassification.
Finally, the Parliament also asks that people fleeing persecution because of their sexual orientation or gender identity be granted asylum, and that the Commission produces a comprehensive roadmap against homophobia and transphobia, including in the field of external relations.
Dennis de Jong MEP, Vice-president of the LGBT Intergroup, added: "Of course, the European Union can and should still do more. When it comes to LGBT rights at home, welcoming those who flee genuine persecution in Uganda, Iran or Indonesia is a duty of the EU. We must show international solidarity, and continue improving things at home in the meantime."
Read more:
The report will be linked here once finalised by the European Parliament services. The LGBT-related paragraphs are:
108a. Commends the Council, the EEAS, the VP/HR, the Commission and the Member States on their engagement in favour of LGBT people's human rights in bilateral relations with third countries, in multilateral forums, and through the EIDHR; welcomes the reintroduction by the UN General Assembly of sexual orientation as grounds for protection from extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary execution, and welcomes the EU's efforts to this end; calls on the Commission to advocate the withdrawal of gender identity from the list of mental and behavioural disorders in the negotiations on the 11th version of the International Classification of Diseases (ICD-11) and to seek a non-pathologising reclassification; reasserts that the principle of non-discrimination, also embracing grounds of sex and sexual orientation, must not be compromised in the ACP-EU partnership; reiterates its request that the Commission produce a comprehensive roadmap against homophobia, transphobia and discrimination on grounds of sexual orientation and gender identity, also addressing human rights violations on these grounds in the world; calls on the Member States to grant asylum to people fleeing persecution in countries where LGBT people are criminalised, taking into consideration applicants' well founded fears of persecution, and relying on their self-identification as lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgender;
108b. Welcomes the 'toolkit' adopted by the Council's working party on human rights in 2010 with the aim of helping the EU institutions, the Member States, the delegations and other bodies to react swiftly when the human rights of LGBT people are violated; calls on the Commission to address the structural causes of such violations, and on the Council to work towards binding guidelines in this area;


text:
I spent yesterday moving my friend Ben into his new place that he just got in Back Bay. It's a nice place and I'm pretty jealous of his location. My arms are pretty sore but it's a good sore.
Needless to say I didn't get a lot of Mozilla-related things done. I spent a lot of time last week working on the Mozilla 0.9.1 release. It's turned out to be a really good release. It's pretty stable, pretty fast and people are able to use it for their day to day use. Check it out.

subset: commoncrawl


text:
Louisiana Department of Wildlife and Fisheries (LDWF) Enforcement Division agents participated in a successful search and rescue mission on Bayou Nezpique on the Evangeline and Allen Parish line on Dec. 8.
Agents received a 911 call around 11 a.m. on Dec. 8 about a couple that was stranded in Bayou Nezpique. Agents arrived on scene around 2 p.m. and found Mark Tarver, 26, and Michelle Tarver, 27, both of Elizabeth, along the banks of the bayou.
Agents retrieved the Tarvers in their 15 foot vessel and brought them to a waiting Acadian Ambulance at the Guidry Road Bridge. The Tarvers were treated for severe hypothermia and transported to the Savoy Medical Center in Mamou for further treatment. The Tarvers are expected to make a full recovery.
The Tarvers were canoeing in the bayou when they got hung up in the fast moving water. They were able to get out of the canoe and make their way to the bank, but could only partially get up the side of the muddy bank thus having half of their bodies remaining in the cold water.
The Tarvers admitted to duck hunting and had harvested two ducks. However, the Tarvers were duck hunting in a closed area. Agents subsequently cited the Tarvers for duck hunting in a closed area. Hunting ducks during a closed season brings a $400 to $950 fine and up to 120 days in jail.
Agents participating in the search and rescue mission included Lt. Jesse Savoie and Sgt. Scott Fontenot. Their search area included the bayou waters between the Highway 104 Bridge and Guidry Road Bridge.


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text:
Nicole Rashley and Jerry Drennan, both of Lyons, Ohio, have announced their upcoming wedding.
Nicole is the daughter of Linda Rashley and the late Gary Rashley. She graduated from Evergreen High School in 1998. She is pursuing a bachelor of science degree with dual majors in medical administration and business administration from Lourdes College in Sylvania, Ohio.
Jerry is the son of Terry Drennan of Lima, Ohio, and Sandra Drennan of Lyons, Ohio. He graduated from Morenci Area High School in 1998 and earned a bachelor of science degree in mechanical engineering from Lake Superior State University in 2003. He is employed at First Solar in Perrysburg, Ohio.
The couple is planning a July 11, 2009 wedding.


text:
Barry Hogan is, to many an extent and purpose, the brains behind All Tomorrow's Parties, which this weekend stages its first-ever fans-curated event. Versus The Fans' line-up is built, primarily, of acts voted for by the attendees, by those buying tickets for the three-dayer. Which means DiS didn't get a vote, as we didn't pay. We'd have asked for Battles, Mogwai and Trans Am… what's that? They're all there? Amazing…
Prior to Versus The Fans, DiS found fifteen in its stupidly hectic oh shit we're all going away on Friday schedule to pick said brains, to find out about the concept of Versus The Fans, its place in ATP's future, and just who Barry would have liked to see at the festival.
Additional ATP preview content
For the festival line-up and running order, click HERE
For a fan's perspective on Versus The Fans, click HERE
For a band's (65daysofstatic) perspective on Versus The Fans, click HERE
For our special ATP podcast, click HERE
Just how long has the idea for Versus The Fans been brewing? What made you decide to go for it this weekend?
We've had bands curating, and we've tried different things – we've had the Chapman brothers, and Vincent Gallo, and Matt Groening. The whole thing with ATP is that we ask people to curate that we like the work of, but I was finding that some of the curators liked the same bands, and I didn't want it to become too repetitive. So, we were thinking: who else could we ask to curate? I thought, since it's a fans-orientated event, let's have the fans curate it! At first people thought we were mad – people were telling me that it was a nightmare, and that it would never work – but the outcome has been good! People at the start were up in arms with who we had picked to get things going, but I have to say that the line-up is one of the best ones we've ever had, if not the best.
And the reaction to Versus The Fans appears to have, generally, been really positive…
We've had such a great response, but it does take so much time – this has given the fans a real insight into the work that goes into arranging ATP. It's a long, drawn-out process – we're not like other festivals who'll say, "We want you to play – you've 48 hours to confirm or fuck off". If someone is on our wish-list, we'll pursue them and try to get them to the event. I chased Public Enemy for eight months, and it was totally worth it! The best thing was seeing Flavor Flav walking around Camber… the night before we did a show at The Forum, with Public Enemy and Kool Keith, and he had a really small clock. I was like, "Flav, what's up with that clock?" He's Flavor Flav, so he's meant to have this huge thing around his neck. The next day he'd changed it, and he had this enormous clock, walking around going, "Check this shit out, boi". He was in the pub on the site, and it was really funny to see him swanning around a holiday camp. But that's the magic of it – at the Dirty Three weekend just gone, Nick Cave was walking around but people got used to seeing him and left him alone. He had the time of his life, and saw more music than he'd ever seen in his life. He wrote to us afterwards saying ATP had restored his faith in music and that it was a great honour to be a part of the event. For us, that's such a huge accolade. You don't get much bigger than that. We're as happy as pigs in shit!
Are there any bands that you really wanted at Versus The Fans, but haven't made the cut for whatever reason?
I really wanted The Silver Jews to play, as they're real favourites of mine and American Water is one of my favourite albums. It was a shame that they couldn't do it, but they're taking some time out. I know the fans wanted loads of bands we couldn't get, but we did have to go for who was available, and who we could afford. Some people, I think, wasted their votes – yeah, I'd love Tom Waits to play, but he wouldn't in a million years! We simply couldn't afford him. If we put the ticket price up then the fans would probably be setting fire to my testicles! I'd love Radiohead to play, but they're not really within our budget. It's nice that people can reach for the sky, but when your votes are Radiohead, Bob Dylan and Tom Waits, you've wasted your votes! There's a long list of acts we'd have loved to have at the event – I really wanted De La Soul, and there's loads of newer acts… but, there is always room to do this again. We're talking about doing part two, The Fans Strike Back. If we did do that, we might change the rules: you can only vote for bands that haven't played ATP before. That way it keeps the festival fresh. I think people thought I was goading them this time by asking, "Why are you picking all this shit that's played before?" But there I am, contradicting myself, by putting Slint and Shellac on! Any chance to see Slint or Shellac… but that's just me. But we are pleased with the line-up – we're always let down by some people, and do get strung along. One of the band's people wanted to play was Interpol, but they said they weren't available, yet they played in London last night! You need to say to them, "What the fuck?" No, maybe their schedule didn't work out… But we're lucky, as we can do multiple events, so you never know…
And this part two, when do you envisage that happening?
I don't know when the part two would be, as we've got the rest of this year and next year planned. But I don't see why it can't happen, as the response to this one has been really favourable. The thing is, now, if we do a part two it'll have to be better – we've set the bar so high that we'll need to bring people back from the dead, Miles Davies and Nina Simone. When people ask me who is playing this festival, I sometimes forget – when I go out I get stuck and go, "Fuck, I can't remember". It's because I deal with hundreds of bands. Arcade Fire are a band the fans were after, but we couldn't get. The funny thing is that we tried to get them on the Slint ATP bill (in 2005), and if we'd held the event a week later they'd have played it. That was before they blew up, and now I doubt we could afford them.
Surely some acts get into the spirit of the event, though, and would therefore appear for a little less?
Yeah, maybe… we do pay good fees, but some people get better offers from bigger festivals, and it's this that you're up against. We used to be seen as primarily the only alternative festival that was outside of the festival season, but now it seems that there are hundreds of them, and some we seem fairly similar to. We could well have influenced them, but they do take away from our market… That said, our audience is flourishing: we moved to this new site and now we've sold 11,000 tickets over two weekends, which is double what we used to do.
The new site has split ATP-goers a fair bit, hasn't it?
The intimacy isn't the same – some people feel that Camber is more intimate, but it is something of an abandoned playground. That's the best way to describe it. Minehead has better facilities, though – the chalets are much better, and there's a swimming pool, not that I have time to use it since I'm always running around. There are more food options, too – I don't know if Pizza Hut and Burger King are what people want, but if you've had ten pints of lager and it's three in the morning, a Whopper always goes down a treat! It's quite far, Minehead, and we do have people on the fence – there was a campaign after the December event (the first at Minehead) to have ATP switched back to Camber. We had teething problems, which I think we've overcome really well. At Christmas, we didn't expect so many queues – the bigger bands seemed to be the biggest draws, and the crowds weren't spaced out evenly. I thought people would be checking out smaller bands, like they used to at Camber. Some people were saying how they'd been cheated, just because there were queues, but the small room at Camber would often fill up – like when Clinic played, and Lightning Bolt. So… there were queues all over the Bowlie Weekender. We are only human, and we admit that. We come from a D.I.Y. background, and although we've become professional promoters, people need to know that this is an alternative to other events. We're not ramming sponsorship down peoples' throats – what we want is for the event to keep changing, and for it to keep getting better for people. We want to offer people the most value for money. I don't know where else you'd get three nights accommodation for £140, and all those bands.
Is there any chance of ATP returning to Camber in the future?
We have talked about putting some events on at Camber again, but what might be a good idea is to have a questionnaire to find out what the fans really think. People are split on what they want – some people hate Minehead, but others love the new site. People would probably be sat on the website all day, though, calling me a wanker.
I'm fairly used to that, working at DiS… before you go, just how much time do you get 'off' at ATP, to actually enjoy the event you've shaped?
I do go and see bands – last time I caught quite a few. But it is hard: every five minutes someone's on to me because they need paying, and I am always on call. I don't mind, as I'm happy to do it… the thing with ATP is it's like making a cake: you spend all day making it and then you're too busy to eat it, and enjoy it. But there's a fresh one made every hour!
For more information on Versus The Fans, and upcoming ATP events, click to their official website, here.


text:
Today I turn 30. It's a nice round number don't you think? I am expecting much more authority and credibility with this age, but lets face it... 30 really isn't that old, now is it ;-)
The last year of my 20's has certainly been one of the most memorable years so far. We travelled to Japan and Finland, I had a career change, we got engaged and now we are one major step closer to owning a new home (keep those fingers crossed!). Needless to say I have high expectations for my first year of the 30's too, but since I am highly superstitious, I won't jinx anything just yet...
As celebrating my birthday goes, some of you may have seen on Twitter that I turned down an offer to dine at Sydney's famous Tetsuya's restaurant. Why? Because I can think of a million better ways to use that money, and I really prefer something much lower key. It's a rainy day here in Sydney too - looks like Mother Nature decided to remind me that I am indeed an Autumn baby, not a Spring baby like the Australian calendar is trying to make me believe :-)
So I decided to make myself a tradition Nordic cake for the day. Voileipäkakku or smörgåstårta (literally sandwich cake) is often served at Christenings, birthdays and pretty much at any celebrations across the Nordic countries. The cake can be layered with a variety of savoury fillings, but I've made it vegetarian and introduced some new flavours in the way of sun-dried tomatoes and tzatziki. I've kept the traditionally heavy cake (which uses mayonnaise and cream in the filling) light by using wholemeal bread, Greek yoghurt and light ricotta. There are a few steps in preparing this cake, but I think it makes it all the more satisfying and special.
And PS. Don't worry, there will be another sweet birthday treat to follow later this weekend ;-)
Wish you all a great weekend ahead!


text:
Thanks so much for the brilliant support we received for our last challenge, over 550 entries!!! And what entries they were! We had such a job narrowing down the top 3 that we landed up resorting to Mr Random to select the Top 3 for this week. And they are:
Congratulations ladies, please can you pick up the Top 3 blinkie in the side-bar.
Our randomly selected winner of Challenge 3's prize chock full of floral deliciousness is Lorraine. Congratulations, please email us to claim your prize
This week we have a two fab prizes up for grabs, not only is Wild Orchid Crafts going to sponsor us with a fabulous floral prize, we also have Lili of the Valley as one of our regular sponsors and they have supplied 4 stamps from the new Christmas release. So we will have two winners from the entries this challenge.
Prize 1
Prize 2
This week the challenge is Make it Sparkle, so we want to see lots of sparkles on your creations.
You don't have to use Wild Orchid Crafts products to enter, but if you do that would be wonderful. You can combine our challenge with any other challenges of your choice and as long as you follow the theme for this challenge and you link back to Wild Orchid Challenge blog you will qualify to be in the draw for the fab prize. NO back linking, new projects/cards only please.
Please link your card or project (not your blog) in Mr Linky 8pm UK time Sunday 5th September.
And here's some inspiration from the DT
Please turn off comment verification if you want the DT to leave you a comment, Due to the sheer numbers of entries, it is impossible to get through all the entries when we have comment verification to content with. There are step by step instructions in the side bar on how to turn it off and enable moderation (which allows you to screen the comments left).
Please link your card through Mr Linky and not in the comments box. Please link your BLOG POST and not just your blog to save us having to hunt for your entry. Entries that are not linked to the actual post will unfortunately not qualify to be in the draw for the prize.


text: The history of encryption is a tale of broken secrets. But some mysteries remain unraveled. Among the thousands of broken codes and ciphers solved by cryptologists from the NSA and the KGB to amateurs at home, there are the few elusive codes that no one has ever managed to crack. What makes these ciphers even more intriguing are the people who supposedly wrote them: an estranged lover; a serial killer who sent encrypted letters in a kind of twisted mind game; an esoteric 15th century alchemist for reasons still unknown today. Some of the codes turned up in the pockets of dead men: some unidentified to this day, others who were murdered by strangers for no discernible reason why. Some may even be hoaxes. But even figuring out which ciphers are real and which are not can be nearly insurmountable. And even if we can spot the authentic codes amidst the hoaxes, some of these rare and challenging codes may still be impossible to solve, in our lifetimes at least. We've asked Kevin Knight – the University of Southern California computer scientist who recently helped crack the 250-year-old Copiale cipher – to walk us through seven of the most confounding codes and give us an idea of what makes these things so tough to break. Above: The Voynich Manuscript (1400-1500s) Few encrypted texts are as mysterious – or as tantalizing – as the Voynich manuscript, a book dating to either 15th- or 16th-century Italy and written in a language no one understands, about a subject that no one can figure out, and involving illustrations of plants that don't exist. Plus it's got Zodiac symbols, astrological charts, illustrations of medicinal herbs, and drawings of naked women bathing while hooked up to tubes. The manuscript's 246 calfskin pages were perhaps meant for alchemy or medieval medicine, but no one knows for sure. What we do know is that it's written in a language distinct from any European language, and follows a pattern unique to its own. The alphabet ranges from 19 to 28 letters, with an average word length consistent with Greek- or Latin-derived languages, but is missing two-letter words while repeating words at a much higher rate than other European languages. All told, the book has 170,000 characters in it, written from left to right, and there are no punctuation marks. William Friedman, one of the 20th century's greatest cryptographers, couldn't figure it out and suspected Voynich was a constructed, artificial language. (With no Rosetta Stone to help translate.) German computer scientist Klaus Schmeh suspected a hoax, and also suggested the manuscript's original language could have been encoded in a much larger set of "meaningless filler text." But there's no system for separating out the real text from the junk. Linguist and computer scientist Gordon Rugg also concluded the manuscript was a hoax. Knight has been wrestling with Voynich for the better part of a decade, on and off. Recently, he and University of Chicago computer scientist Sravana Reddy discovered that the word length and frequency (.pdf) and the seeming presence of morphology – or the structure of word forms – "and most notably, the presence of page-level topics conform to natural language-like text." The problem is that no one seems to know where to go next. Photo: D.C.Atty/FlickrThe Beale Ciphers (1885) "Solving this cipher would yield little of historical or scientific interest, just a big pile of gold," Knight explains. Wait ... a big pile of gold? That's right, if the whole thing isn't a hoax. This question or real-or-fake has dogged cryptoanalysts ever since these ciphers first appeared in an 1885 pamphlet called The Beale Papers, which recounts a fantastic story of buried treasure. According to the pamphlet, a man named Thomas Jefferson Beale (who has never been proven to exist) discovered the gold during an 1816 expedition into the American West. The treasure, as the story goes, was then transported to Bedford County, Virginia, and buried. The gold's secret location was allegedly provided by three cryptograms, of which one was already cracked. Unfortunately, the cracked code only detailed what kind of treasure there is, and not a location more specific than Bedford County. To find out anything more specific would involve cracking the two other ciphers. The problem is that figuring it out requires comparing them to unknown historical texts. The decrypted cipher, for example, used the Declaration of Independence. The first number, 115, corresponds with the first letter of the 115th word in the Declaration: "instituted." That means 115 stands for "I." So what are the translation texts for the other two ciphers? No one knows, and they may very well not exist at all. There are also questions over whether the other ciphers may just be unintelligible, as if the whole thing was made up by the pamphlet's author decades after the gold was supposed to have been discovered. Photo: WikimediaDorabella (1897) In 1897, a 40-year-old composer named Edward Elgar sent this encrypted letter to 23-year-old Dora Penny, the stepdaughter of one of his friends. "What coded message does a man send to a woman half his age?" asks Knight. Good question. Is it a mushy and sorta-creepy love note? Is it encrypted music notation? To figure it out would involve deciphering 87 characters all made of strings of semi-circles oriented in different directions. But attempts at translating the cipher have turned up something more than gibberish, but less than the actual solution. "The cipher is very short," Knight explains. "Short ciphers are always harder to solve." In a longer substitution cipher, you can always find the unusual letter or letter pair – the equivalent of Q and U. "But in a short cipher, say 100 letters, there may only be one 'Q,' or maybe none, so that trick no longer works." Another theory has it that the code is an example of a distinct private language shared only between Penny and Elgar. If that's the case – or not, since the code is so short anyways – then solving it may be simply impossible, since no one but them would understand the references. Photo: WikimediaTaman Shud (1948) What makes a cipher inherently more interesting is when it's found in the pocket of a dead man. On Dec. 1, 1948, the body of a well-dressed but unidentified person – popularly known as the Somerton Man – was found near a beach in Adelaide, Australia, with no discernible signs of trauma. It's unknown how he died to this day, and he was in excellent physical shape. (He was possibly killed by an undetectable poison.) His clothes had no tags. For all practical purposes, he did not exist. This led to speculation that the Somerton Man may have been mentally disturbed and committed suicide, or even a Soviet spy who was discovered and assassinated. Now it gets even weirder. Within a smaller pocket – a fob pocket inside one of the man's larger pants pockets – was a scrap of torn paper with the words "Taman Shud," meaning "ended" in Persian. The scrap was later traced to a copy of The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam, itself discovered in the back seat of an unlocked car on the presumed night of the murder, near a location where the dead man is believed to have visited before his death. In the back of the book were five lines of coded letters, written in pencil. Even worse, "[it's] a short cipher, so statistical analysis doesn't reveal very much," explains Knight. "You would hope that the cipher could be connected with text in The Rubaiyat book." Photo: WikimediaThe Zodiac Killer Cipher (1969) In the 1960s and early 1970s, a serial killer terrorized Northern California. He left behind two cryptograms: the 408-character code was broken in a matter of days; The 340-character one was remains a riddle, more than four decades later. The Zodiac has never been apprehended. "On television, the serial killer usually makes a mistake and gets caught," Knight says. "This guy got away with it. So there's a certain fascination there, and a desire to beat him at something." But to understand how hard it is to crack the code, consider the sheer number of possible combinations. We know there are 340 characters made up of 63 symbols, but we don't know what they stand for. Are they letters of the alphabet? Do any of them stand for punctuation marks, spaces or numbers? Or even entire words? Let's assume each symbol represents a letter. That leaves 26 possible solutions raised to the 63rd power, or 139098011710742195590974259094795403842655842142490330518716727403333474672708595090456576. The best we can do is infer, and use clues found elsewhere in other, previously cracked codes the Zodiac killer left behind, such as the Z408 cipher (.pdf). But "repetitions in Z340 don't support it being written left-to-right, top-to-bottom, like Z408," Knight explains. "So we can't even take that for granted." Photo: FBIKryptos (1990) "If you want to get the CIA's attention, solve this cipher," Knight tells us. Located on the grounds of the CIA's headquarters in Langley is the sculpture "Kryptos," created as an outdoor installation for the agency by artist Jim Sanborn with the help of former CIA cryptographer Ed Scheidt. The sculpture's cipher contains four sections, with 869 encrypted characters in total. Three of them have been solved (it took the agency's analysts seven years). The fourth section with its 97 characters, known as "K4," is still a mystery. *Wired'*s Steven Levy explored the brain-busting techniques used to create the codes, involving letter substitutions, intentional misspellings, and jumbled letters that can only be un-jumbled with complex mathematical formulas. What do the messages say? One plate paraphrased Egyptologist Howard Carter's account of opening Tutankhamen's tomb. Another spoke about mysterious information stored underground, and revealed coordinates to a location inside the CIA headquarters. Poetic embellishment, of course. And good luck solving the final plate. "K4 should be easy, because it's almost certainly a standard cipher type, or a combination of standard cipher types," Knight tells us. "But it may be encoded with an especially difficult method. If so, then serious computational power may be needed to solve such a short cipher." A crowdsourcing effort through a Yahoo Group has been working since 2003 on cracking the remaining characters. But Sanborn knows the answer, and he's still alive. If you think you have the answer too, you can submit it to his website. But you probably don't know. The CIA doesn't. Photo: WikimediaMcCormick (1999) The FBI wants your help solving a murder. In June 1999, the body of 41-year-old Ricky McCormick was found partially decomposed in a field in eastern Missouri. The man was unemployed, disabled and an ex-convict, with two encrypted notes found inside his pockets. At the time, medical examiners didn't suspect that McCormick was murdered, and he was known to have written coded notes since he was a boy. There were no suspects, no likely motives, and McCormick had a number of serious health problems. There was nothing terribly suspicious except for the two notes' crazily complex system of letters, numbers and symbols arranged in 30 lines. Do the notes reveal his last location? Or some other information leading to his death? Perhaps. In March 2011, the FBI suddenly announced that McCormick's death was suspected to be homicide, and revealed the existence of the notes. "Even if we found out that he was writing a grocery list or a love letter, we would still want to see how the code is solved," Dan Olson, the chief of the agency's Cryptanalysis and Racketeering Records Unit, said. "This is a cipher system we know nothing about." The FBI has asked the public to help crack the code by crowdsourcing a solution over the internet. The response was so strong, the FBI even created a website for it. Have an idea? Let the agency know. But you'll be working with a paltry amount of data. "The FBI worked on this cipher for years," Knight notes. "You'd need to see something they didn't." Photo: Wikimedia/FBI


text:
Reposted from June 20, 2009 with a statistical update from August 17, 2010
Have you read an article like this …..
US swine flu cases now exceed 21,000; 87 deaths
ATLANTA – The national count of swine flu cases has risen to 21,449 cases and the number of deaths have nearly doubled to 87.
The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention released the number of confirmed and probable cases Friday morning. The tally is up from the last week's count of 18,000 cases and 44 deaths
The United States is a Country of 300,000,000 plus (300 Million plus) people. The percent of the population that has contracted the much hyped Swine Flu stands at .00007 %, or in other words, 1 person in every 10,700 has contracted the flu since the Government inspired "panic", complete with school and business closings, started 4 months ago.
The odds are much better that you'll be struck by lightning, at some point in your lifetime, than of catching the Swine Flu. (The odds of being struck by lightning, assumming you live to be 80, is 1 in 5000 – http://www.lightningsafety.noaa.gov/medical.htm ).
It is estimated that 100 individuals a year die from bee stings in the U.S. (http://www.webmd.com/a-to-z-guides/bee-and-wasp-stings) , over 8,000 people are bitten by poisonous snakes each year. http://www.whmentors.org/saf/snakes.html .
On average, 15 children die every day due to preventable accidental injury in the US. http://www.usa.safekids.org/tier3_cd.cfm?content_item_id=24791&folder_id=300 . During the time period when the US has experienced 87 flu related deaths mentioned in this article, 1800 children have died in preventable accidents.
Relief agencies estimate that 10,000 displaced people are dying from disease and malnutrition every month in Dafur's refuge camps. A condition that has existed since 2003. http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/2008-03-28-2046054389_x.htm
While the flu related deaths, like any death, are regrettable, I don't understand the continued hype. Is it possible the Government is trying to create a distraction from the real crisis, like the US ecomony? Is the CDC and WHO acting out of a "self serving" interests … we need to follow the money … who is manufacturing the vacinations?
McAuleys World Update: Single response directed to the 26 irate Obama supporters to send the same response to this blog today: 1) Reference the sited article before you make the ridiculous claim that the stats that I sited are out of date – what a miserably weak responce – the Associated Press report is dated Friday June 19, 2009 – yesterday. The statistics, quoted in the article as coming from the CDC, are obviously correct and current. 2) You are all Political Science majors correct – because it is obvious none of you are handy with math.
Maybe it's an Obama thing? His math is fuzzy too.
All 26 claim, incorrectly, that the death toll associated with the swine flu in the U.S. is now 150. As if the alleged increase from 88 to 150 would suggest some sort of statistical significance in evalauting the Swine Flu as a national threat. While the deaths are a tragedy for the families that are directly involved, from the perspective of a national medical emergency, the Swine Flu is a non-event. The school and business closings have been unnecessary and wasteful. Even assuming 15o deaths associated with the Swine Flu, 150 is something less than one person out every 2 million (2,000,000). Let me help you out with your math …… heard the term "a shot in a million", dying from the swine flu is twice as rare.
Thanks for the comments anyway …… do you all work in the same "blogging office"? Is there a supervisor that writes your responses for you? It simply isn't statistically possible to receive 26 responses, all claiming Friday's stats from the CDC, are out of date, without sometype of coordinated activity taking place.
Update 08/17/2010
Chicken Little over swine flu: Learning from the H1N1 scare
Last year's scare over a potential H1N1 flu epidemic was a bust, the WHO now indicates. With reports of another scare over a "superbug" supposedly from India, officials and media need to act with caution and restraint without stoking fears.
Some media outlets are making much of reports that Westerners seeking low-cost medical treatment in India might have returned carrying a drug-resistant bacterial infection. But that news should be seen in light of another, less noticed news item this week: As a potential pandemic, the H1N1 flu virus was a bust.
The World Health Organization (WHO) says H1N1, also known as swine flu, is not eradicated, but it has lost its "superbug" status, becoming just another flu variant among many.
Fourteen months ago dire predictions swirled through the news media about the possible effects of H1N1. Hundreds of thousands of deaths were possible, and perhaps 40 percent of the US work force could be affected, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) estimated. (The CDC had already declared the H1N1 public health emergency over by June 23.)
Nothing remotely close to those predictions came about. The WHO estimates the number of deaths from H1N1 in 2009 at 18,500, [world wide] though it says that number is almost surely underreported. Still, it is a figure far lower than the hundreds of thousands of deaths worldwide attributed to other strains of influenza every year. Why did the pandemic fizzle? "Pure good luck," WHO Director-General Margaret Chan says, that it didn't mutate into a more troublesome form.
European governments and medical groups have criticized the way the WHO handled the H1N1 outbreak, saying it caused unnecessary expense, including stockpiling of unneeded drugs, and undue public alarm.
Dr. Chan has defended the organization's actions, pointing out that from the start the WHO had termed H1N1 as "a pandemic of moderate severity" from which "most people" would recover – many without receiving any medical treatment.
But is that the impression that was left on most people?
"The number of victims of H1N1 fell far short of even the more conservative predictions by the WHO," said an investigative article in BMJ (British Medical Journal) in June. The authors' "investigation has revealed damaging issues. If these are not addressed, H1N1 may yet claim its biggest victim – the credibility of the WHO and the trust in the global public health system."
Questions have also been raised about the secret "emergency committee" that guided the WHO's policies on H1N1.
This week the WHO released the names of the emergency committee, several of whom had ties to drug manufacturers as advisers or received support for their research from the industry.
Fighting an infectious disease is a serious matter. Public health organizations and governments can face tough calls in trying to pass along sensible information about possible health problems. They must share helpful information without creating undue panic or alarm. Chan suggested that "perhaps we need more flexibility in our future pandemic planning." In the future the organization might offer "a best-case, an intermediate-case, and a worst-case scenario … to allow flexibility and adjustment as we track the evolution of the pandemic."
The news media bear a responsibility, too, in not sensationalizing a public health story in order to grab reader attention. But today formal news organizations are less the "gatekeepers" of such news than ever before. People share their own versions of what's happening via social media: e-mails, Facebook, Twitter, and the like. Chan acknowledged as much, noting that "we need to adapt the way we do communication, and learn how to work with social media and social networks."
Perhaps some of these lessons can be applied to the "superbug" now being traced to India. The H1N1 pandemic that never was may provide a useful history lesson in that regard.
Another United Nations Group discredited for it's self serving manipulation of scientific inquiry … an inquiry that netted a tremendous amount of money to "policy makers" whose decisions are made behind closed doors …. Move over UN IPCC (United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change), you are clearly not alone ………
Filed under: Barack Obama, CDC, Swine Flu, United Nations, WHO, World Health Organization | Tagged: CDC, H1N1 Update, Swine Flu Update, United Nations, United Nations World Health Organization | 1 Comment »


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htty is a console application for interacting with web servers. It's a fun way to explore web APIs and to learn the ins and outs of HTTP.
See what's changed lately by reading the project history.
It couldn't be much easier.
$ gem install htty
You'll need Ruby and RubyGems. It's known to work well under OS X against Ruby v1.8.7, v1.9.2, v1.9.3, v2.0, v2.1, and v2.2.
- Intuitive, Tab-completed commands and command aliases
- Support for familiar HTTP methods GET, POST, PUT, and DELETE, as well as PATCH, HEAD, OPTIONS and TRACE
- Support for HTTP Secure connections and HTTP Basic Authentication
- Automatic URL-encoding of userinfo, paths, query-string parameters, and page fragments
- Transcripts, both verbose and summary
- Scripting via stdin
- Dead-simple cookie handling and redirect following
- Built-in help
The things you can do with htty are:
- Build a request — you can tweak the address, headers, cookies, and body at will
- Send the request to the server — after the request is sent, it remains unchanged in your session history
- Inspect the server's response — you can look at the status, headers, cookies, and body in various ways
- Review history — a normal and a verbose transcript of your session are available at all times (destroyed when you quit htty)
- Reuse previous requests — you can refer to prior requests and copy them
Here are a few annotated htty session transcripts to get you started (terminal screenshots shown here are also available in textual form).
Querying a web service
This simple example shows how to explore a read-only web service with htty.
You can point htty at a complete or partial web URL. If you don't supply a URL, http://0.0.0.0/ (port 80) will be used. You can vary the protocol scheme, userinfo, host, port, path, query string, and fragment as you wish.
The htty shell prompt shows the address of the current request.
get command is one of seven HTTP request methods supported. A concise summary of the response is shown when you issue a request.
You can follow redirects using the
follow command. No request is made until you type a request command such as
get or
You can tweak segments of the address at will. Here we are navigating the site's path hierarchy, which you can do with relative as well as absolute pathspecs.
Here we add query-string parameters. Notice that characters that require URL encoding are automatically URL-encoded (unless they are part of a URL-encoded expression).
headers-response and
body-response commands reveal the details of a response.
There was some cruft in the web service's response (a horizontal line, a passage reference, verse numbers, a copyright stamp, and line breaks). We eliminate it by using API options provided by the web service we're talking to.
We do a Julia Child maneuver and use the
address command to change the entire URL, rather than add individual query-string parameters one by one.
Exit your session at any time by typing
quit or hitting Ctrl-D.
Working with cookies
The next example demonstrates htty's HTTP Secure support and cookies features, as well as how to review and revisit past requests.
The https:// scheme and port 443 imply each other, just as the http:// scheme and port 80 imply each other. If you omit the scheme or the port, it will default to the appropriate value.
Notice that when cookies are offered in a response, a bold asterisk (it looks like a cookie) appears in the response summary. The same cookie symbol appears next to the Set-Cookie header when you display response headers.
cookies-use command copies cookies out of the response into the next request. The cookie symbol appears next to the Cookie header when you display request headers.
An abbreviated history is available through the
history command. Information about requests in the history includes request method, URL, number of headers (and a cookie symbol, if cookies were sent), and the size of the body. Information about responses in the history includes response code, number of headers (and a cookie symbol, if cookies were received), and the size of the body.
Note that history contains only numbered HTTP request and response pairs, not a record of all the commands you enter.
reuse command makes a copy of the headers and body of an earlier request for you to build on.
Understanding complex HTTP conversations at a glance using history
Now we'll look at htty's HTTP Basic Authentication support and learn how to display unabbreviated transcripts of htty sessions.
Assume that we have the following Sinatra application listening on Sinatra's default port, 4567.
require 'sinatra'
get '/all-good' do
[200, [['Set-Cookie', 'foo=bar; baz']], 'Hello World!']
put '/huh' do
[404, 'What?']
delete '/hurl' do
[500, 'Barf!']
post '/submit-novel' do
redirect '/all-good'
This application expects GET and POST requests and responds in various contrived ways.
When you change the userinfo portion of the address, or the entire address, the appropriate HTTP Basic Authentication header is created for you automatically. Notice that characters that require URL encoding are automatically URL-encoded (unless they are part of a URL-encoded expression).
When userinfo is supplied in a request, a bold mercantile symbol ( @ ) appears next to the resulting Authorization header when you display request headers (see below).
body-set to enter body data, and terminate it by entering two consecutive blank lines, or by hitting Ctrl-D. The body will only be sent for POST and PUT requests. The appropriate Content-Length header is created for you automatically (see below).
Different response codes are rendered with colors that suggest their meaning:
- Response codes between 200 and 299 appear black on green to indicate success
- Response codes between 300 and 399 appear white on blue to indicate redirection
- Response codes between 400 and 499 appear white on red to indicate failure
- Response codes between 500 and 599 appear flashing black on yellow to indicate a server error
As with the abbreviated history demonstrated earlier, verbose history shows a numbered list of requests and the responses they elicited. All information exchanged between client and server is shown.
Getting help
You can learn how to use htty commands from within htty.
help command takes an optional argument of the abbreviated or full name of a command.
Report defects and feature requests on GitHub Issues.
Your patches are welcome, and you will receive attribution here for good stuff. Fork the official htty repository and send a pull request.
After cloning the repository,
bin/setup to install dependencies. Then
rake to run the tests. You can also
bin/console to get an interactive prompt that will allow you to experiment.
To install this gem onto your local machine,
bundle exec rake install. To release a new version, update the version number in lib/htty/version.rb, and then
bundle exec rake release, which will create a Git tag for the version, push Git commits and tags, and push the .gem file to RubyGems.org.
News and information
Stay in touch with the htty project by following @get_htty on Twitter.
You can also get help in the #htty channel on Freenode.
The author, Nils Jonsson, owes a debt of inspiration to the http-console project.
Thanks to contributors (in alphabetical order):
- Dillon Benson (dibenso)
- Pascal Borreli (pborreli)
- Rob Dawson (ephox-rob/rojotek)
- Bo Frederiksen (bofrede)
- Johannes Gorset (jgorset)
- Alex Gusev (presskey)
- Gabriele Lana (gabrielelana)
- Carson McDonald (carsonmcdonald)
- Sam Nguyen (dtjm)
- Robert Pitts (rbxbx)
- Matt Sanders (nextmat)
- Pepijn Van Eeckhoudt (pepijnve)
- vijay-v
Released under the MIT License.


text:
about us
"Love this app! Use it every morning. Honestly believe it helps with my memory!"
Michael on Memory Trainer
"Best/smoothest UI I've seen of any app yet. Great info displayed in a unique interface. Fantastic!"
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Bria Baby or Lady on Retro Camera)
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"Kewl app.."
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"I'm in love! Takes amazing vintage pictures, lots of options, and works perfect."
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"very fun works great on my htc the vintage and retro photos look great thanks!"
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"Best camera app out there. It can't get better than that."
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"Great concept and well executed. The unobtrusive advertisements are interesting to camera buffs. The polaroid is dead on."
mashtun on Retro Camera
"One of the best apps on Android, brilliant UI! If only all apps looked and performed as well as this."
Michael on Factbook
"Beautiful app, perfectly executed, highly recommended."
Beaupedia on Factbook
"Amazing. Best designed application currently on the market. Kudos to the dev."
larry on Factbook
"Fantastic UI. Very refreshing. Very impressed."
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"it's really good and imho the best google reader/rss app so far! Exactly the kind of apps that android needs badly, good looking and highly useable."
foffen on A Good Reader
"Retro Camera Plus – Die Hipstamatic-Killer-App!"
iPhoneografie on Retro Camera
Urbian, Inc. © 2010


text:
AWS services or capabilities described in AWS Documentation may vary by region/location. Click Getting Started with Amazon AWS to see specific differences applicable to the China (Beijing) Region.
Explicitly convert DynamoDBEntry to UInt16
Namespace: Amazon.DynamoDBv2.DocumentModel
Assembly: AWSSDK.DynamoDBv2.dll
Version: 3.x.y.z
public virtual UInt16 AsUShort()
.NET Standard:
Supported in: 2.0, 1.3
.NET Framework:
Supported in: 4.5, 4.0, 3.5
Portable Class Library:
Supported in: Windows Store Apps
Supported in: Xamarin Android
Supported in: Xamarin iOS (Unified)
Supported in: Xamarin.Forms
Supported Versions: 4.6 and above
Supported Platforms: Android, iOS, Standalone


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A Male on Females on Female Characters
Pages PREV 1 2 3 4 5 NEXT
PC is table-top shorthand (that has been adopted by cRPGs, especially MMORPGs) for "Player Character" - a character played by a player - as opposed to NPCs, "Non-Player Characters", which are all those people portrayed by the GM (or the computer).
Really what's wrong with females showing skin even as a main character. I find people complaining as much misoginistic as those who actually believe women=kitchen. Having freedom of choice means not beeing judged for what you do and not doing what it's supposed to be equal or special. So of course a woman won't feel ashamed by a women object as long as that's not an universal thought. On the same way as misoginist bigots will refuse to acknoledge that a free thinking women can choose to be an object woman.
Oh poor, benighted betas and omegas...(I include you Shamus.)
You simply don't understand (or refuse to accept the power of) economics or sexual politics. There are only three things you need to know:
1. Supply and demand.
2. What women say they want is rarely what they really want.
3. Accurate representations of females in video games would make people angry, bored, or both.
PC == Player Character
True, studios in other countries bang out the generic American male lead all the time. This is the easy option. America is a massive market, a game doing well in America has done well.
In the UK we have American TV shows, Baywatch has been around the world, Friends, 2 and a Half Men, ER, Seinfeld, Heroes, Boardwalk Empire, I could go on. We will accept other cultures and go with it. A good TV show is a good TV show, no matter where its made right?
Apparently not in America. When a British show is "good enough" for America it is remade with an all American cast like The Office, Shameless, Skins, Being Human, Who's Line is it Anyway?, Topgear, Dr Who... Even shows without British people in, like Teletubbies and Thomas the Tank Engine have the narrator replaced with an American. You missed out on Ringo by the way. Yes, Hugh Laurie is British and the lead in House but he has to pretend to be American, even during his audition to get the part. His accent is pretty good. House could have been any nationality, Medical Doctors find foreign work permits easy to come by, but they went with American. How refreshing.
So it appears Americans struggle with anything other than Americans in their media. As the rest of the world is not thrown off its axis by an American in the same way, a none offensive, bland, American male is the best way to alienate as few people as possible. Even for a European studio.
Please don't take this as an American bashing post. I lived in texas for over 2 years and found the people welcoming and hospitable. I do like the place but there are huge culture differences that are not right or wrong, just different. I for one would like to play a Prince of Persia who is actually Persian, I found it refreshing to be British in COD4 but only because it is so rare. A good game will work with an amorphous alien, woman, Elderly, ,Black, Arachnid, homosexual or even *gasp* Muslim lead if executed well.
According to actual industry demographic surveys, anywhere from 30 to 40% of the gaming population is female. Here's one from 2010:
No, that's not including casual games-- toss those into the mix and men become the minority. Are women playing games where you get to shoot and/or stab things? Yeah, a lot of them do. I play with them all the time in L4D (and for whatever reason, both of my regular Warhammer co-opers are women).
I don't think they're quite at that 40% mark, but game companies are starting to take notice. And it doesn't take much in the way of "concessions" to get women to buy and like those games. Dragon Age is a good example (for all the big breasted women) Look on the Bioware/DragonAge forums and read the Alistair gush thread. Estrogen flowing like Niagra there, I tell ya.
Very good post, I agree! :)
Maybe it's not a game, but I've always seen the character of Kaylee from Firefly as a good example. She's a mechanic and knows everything there is to know about ship engines and doesn't mind getting her hands dirty, but can also get excited by wearing a huge yellow(?) dress.
Ill admit im abit of a Mass Effect fan but I still think the general resentment some have for Miranda is abit mislead. Shes so sexualised because she was DESIGNED to use sexuality as a weapon. I know that theres not much excuse for the "angle" shots, e.g above pic, as sexual fanservice is not Mass Effects style when it comes to normal camera shots, like for instance Bayonetta, although you could proberly argue it helps emphasise an over lying aspect of her character but now im starting to sound like a twat and its not like I care really, im a Tali man.
...he got quarian fever, he got quarian fever...
I agree, this constant parade of--to paraphrase Yahtzee--shaved bear protagonists needs to stop. When I can play as a competent, well-spoken 5' 2" woman whose father was a Polish Jew and whose mother was a Malaysian Muslim, then I will be satisfied. DEVELOPERS, MAKE IT HAPPEN.
Garbage. No methodology, no raw data, no explanation of variables.
Yeah, I'm not familiar with anyone ever using "PC" for player character, nor have I ever used it myself (and yes, I've played PnP RPGs for years). I couldn't for the life of me figure out what you were saying, but I knew you couldn't be talking about your computer.
3 Questions To Ask Yourself When Viewing Any Movie Or Video Game (that contains cinematic elements):
1) Is there more than one woman?
How many movies or video games can you think of that pass this test?
It's not the only study, just one that I thought was presented accessibly. I you're curious about the subject, just google "gaming demographics". Lowest estimate I've seen was 26% of console gamers (women generally don't buy consoles, other than the Wii). The guys who are betting millions of dollars on the next release are using this data, and data from studies with similar conclusions. Feel free to disbelieve, but even if all those research firms are wrong, in a sense it's not important; the companies believe in those numbers are responding what they perceive as a growing female demographic.
The combat themed games are still fairly male dominated, but not entirely. Blizzard estimates that 40% (that number again!) of its WoW players are women, for example. Do the social aspects of MMOs make them more popular with the XX chromosone set? Don't ask me, I'm a guy. Lots of women around we could ask, though. And the smarter companies are starting to ask those kinds of questions.
I'd at least like for 3rd person shooters to give you the option of playing a female character, so you don't have to stare at a dude's ass for 12 hours. That's the entire reason I play a female in Mass Effect.
I can't disagree with this article. It's obnoxious when you play game after game and never get to see or play as your own gender - it's even worse when you're given the option to play as a female but are penalized for doing so (eg: can't enter the Arena in Fallout: New Vegas if your character is female).
And honestly, it's insulting to males to say that they need to play as white males in order to project onto or connect with the character. I'm a shy 5'2, 19-year-old blond girl, aka, the antithesis of "manly" - if I can connect with John Marston as a character then male gamers can connect with female game protagonists.
"...hungry for an experience that let them behave in a heroic way without requiring them to change genders. And if they did have to play as a man, they would at least prefer to not be humiliated by having the female support character be a useless doormat while all of the heroics and witty one-liners go to the man."
As A Female Gamer I can totally Relate to this Article! I don't really Mind playing a Game as a guy (though it would be nice to have a strong leading lady once in a while) its usually the support characters that really annoy me... They're usually the type of females who need protecting or rescuing at every turn or act like complete girly Stereotypes! :/
Your sweeping generalization really inspires my confidence in your understanding of sexual politics.
So you're saying that real women tend to make you either angry and/or bored? That's what I'm getting out of this. I'd love some clarification on this one thnx.
Can someone tell me why relating to a character is important? Is this some kind of projection thing that my 2D limited vision can't perceive? Am I missing something by just wanting to watch the plot unfold and the characters interact in between killing shit?
Being able to invest yourself emotionally in the character so that you're actually interested in what happens to them in necessary for a good game. Being able to project yourself onto the character or see yourself in them isn't quite as important. Honestly, the average human being doesn't make for a very interesting character, so to limit yourself to characters that reflect the average demographic for your game (18-35 white males) greatly restricts the possibility for depth in your game.
Unfortunately, game companies don't seem to understand this.
Really? I hear it all the time when I'm around the PnP crowd, I used to play a bit too. It's yours it a character so its a player character. What else would you call them?
I dislike that term. To clarify, are you saying connecting or relating?
If it's the latter, Michelle Orange had a good piece on it.
If it's the former, Michelle Orange still has a good piece on relatability.
The emotional investment is fine, but the differentiation must be clear between investing and relating.
Relatability sucks.
Characters as agents of the plot versus characters that are interesting in themselves.
I listened to the PAX Panel on Female Characters and was immensely disappointed in what the panelists had to say. They don't mind if "she" is sexy, but at the least they want "her" to be interesting. As the gold-standard, they prop up Ripley and The Boss. Those characters need no introduction.
I define depth by the number of simple sentences required to adequately describe that character. Personally, I hold Kreia to be the greatest female character of all time. Observe:
She hates the Force.
That fourth line might even exist as an extension of the third line. But you see where I'm going: I'm not writing Kreia's biography, I'm just giving the facts about her, so anyone coming across her has the key bullet-points. Let's do Ripley:
Acts to protect her surrogate child.
Ok. I equate depth with the number of simple sentences it takes to adequately describe that character. It is hard for me to have patience for characters that are extremely likable, but fundamentally shallow. And then I happened to read an article about simple characters becoming the most popular (ie Chuck Norris) because the audience is able to get a handle on them much quicker. The point that author was making, is that the sooner the audience can understand a character, "oh they have that schtick, that's cool, I like them" then popularity will occur.
So do we like Ripley because her struggles are interesting, or because James Cameron is really good at creating tension, with exciting music, a bad-ass villain, and then it just so happens that Sigourney Weaver was the star?
Another character, brought up during the Q&A, was Sylvanas from WoW. She needs no explanation - a long time ago Blizzard stopped treating her like a character and regulated her to an instrument of the plot. A long time ago, she stopped making decisions for herself, and now she just does whatever the Blizzard devs need from her. That's all. Think about it: when was the last time you ever heard of Thrall or Garrosh consulting her opinion? She's a bit player in a wider drama that only peripherally concerns her - the wider drama only peripherally concerns her because she doesn't matter. If Blizzard could drop her entirely to cut down on the exploding cast size, they would. But she has a following, and it costs Blizzard nothing to keep her hanging around, so they've kept her.
And this is the point I'm trying to make: if you want female characters that are relevant, that don't just have a schtick, and they don't only exist as part of a plot that doesn't really concern them, then start writing and stop complaining.
Kreia has a radical position that you wouldn't expect from someone of her profession: a Jedi that hates the Force? That's interesting... tell me more. I want to know more about her. What's her agenda, and what does she plan to do about it? She's also an Enchani, and believes that through combat, a people find themselves or find themselves lacking? Ooh, that's a complex idea. I wonder if her plan will involve testing Force-users in combat, to see if their Force powers will allow them to survive. Maybe she thinks that if a Force-user dies in combat, they weren't worthy to use the Force in the first place. But that sounds like a Sith idea. Wait, she also used to be a Sith Lord? Oh wow, so that means that at some point, she fell to the Dark Side? You mean she was always like this, and during her time with the Jedi Order, her colleagues suspected her of deviant tendencies... because her apprentices always turned Dark Side. So then that makes it sound like her personal politics were tainting her work. Kind of like a self-fulfilling prophecy.
What does it take to write an interesting female character? The same things it takes to write an interesting male character. If you're disappointed with the lack of ripe fruit, then don't despair: this is hard to do, and the artists and writers who can do it aren't in command of the ship. RPGs are a niched genre. Bioware is attempting to expand that niche by bastardizing their RPGs into action-schlops. I'm sure many of you observed how similar Mass Effect 2 played like a sequel to Gears of War.
So here's my advice: if you want a story, with real characters, read a book. If you want fun gameplay, play a game. Game developers only create as deep a story as they need to facilitate gameplay, and they often fail at that simple task. If you think you could do better - then guess what, I think I could too.
Edit: You know what annoyed me the most about Mass Effect 2? Liara becoming a stupid run-of-the-mill action girl. Her transition from archaeologist and intellectual into Cold War-era spy was so forced, so out-of-character, so stupid, and then she had her own DLC, which just reinforced my own negative opinion on her change.
If you were provided the list of female characters from ME1, and told that ONE of them would be an action hero in the second game, which of them would be most likely? Well, Ashley's already a war-hero, so the change wouldn't be a surprise. Tali would be a cool action-girl. But definitely not Liara, she just doesn't have it in her.
NOPE! Action-schlop, HO!
A good article, I tend to agree with it.
This may be splitting hairs, but, as I seem to be pointing out a lot recently, games that pander to women do, in fact, exist (and are almost all made in Japan). They just don't take the form that you, are perhaps even a Western audience in general, seem to expect. What I mean is, there are actually quite a few games (Sengoku Basara is probably the best example, as its director has actually admitted as much in interviews) which pander to women not by creating more or stronger female characters for them to identify with, but by giving them a bunch attractive men in revealing outfits to drool over. The English language audience can be easily excused for forgetting this because a lot of these games don't leave Japan. I wouldn't necessarily call it a step in the right direction, but if nothing else it proves some portion of the industry is aware they have a female market to sell to and it technically is a move towards equality.
"...BioWare gets points for letting us choose the appearance and gender of our protagonist in Dragon Age and Mass Effect, but then they lose those points by making the default box-cover characters a couple of generic white dudes. If nothing else, it would make sense to try and make a dude that didn't look like all the other box-cover dudes on the shelf."
My three Shepherds so far have been two lady people and a male I made to explore other romance options, and tried to make look like Temuera Morrison because Commander Shepherd is in my personal pantheon of favourite sci-fi characters, alongside Jango Fett and others, and deserves to look more awesome than the box art guy. My DA:O character is of the lady persuasion too, as was my KOTOR character, my Saints Row 2 character and most of the MMO characters I've ever made. And yes, I'm a white, early 20s, middle-class male.
Obviously there are a range of factors that go into why I choose to play more often as a female when I get that choice in games. I'm not going to deny that on some level there is a degree of sexualisation, on the level that, since the examples I've listed are actually all third person games, I'd rather be watching a female behind than a man's.
But at the same time, there is also a sense that I'm bucking the trend, whether intentionally or not, which gives me something of a positive buzz. For example, there are the Bioware stats that show that only 18-20% of Commander Shepherds in Mass Effect 2 were female, which makes me sad because Jennifer Hale's FemShep is the superior vocal performance in my opinion and that of others, and apparently many many people are missing out on it.
And while there are some great female characters, and plenty of women in your gang and the rival ones, murderising hordes of civilians, police officers and other gangsters in quite vicious ways in Saints Row 2 was, I think, more satisfying as a petite, purple haired girl with glasses than it would've been as the beefy standard male protagonist you sometimes see in the game's loading screens. Defying expectations and stereotypes is fun.
Shamus, you are a wonderful man, and I would willingly do your taxes for you.
And it's a sad measure of how frustratingly sexist the gaming world can be when a guy grasping the basic foundations of "Games are only making one heroic-type and it really is NOT one-size-fits-all" seems like a shining and miraculous beacon of light in the darkness.
Don't take this as disagreement that there should be more women protagonists (Given the chance, I'll play a female, so....), but I think the major problem isn't so much whether the industry likes women or even whether or not they think men are their target audience specifically, but the fear that their bread-and-butter players are actually repelled by female leads.
At that point, it's no longer playing to the majority. It's a cost-benefit analysis, weighing the benefit of tapping one market at the risk of your main vein collapsing.
Gamers as a whole still seem to be not just male, but insecure. Individually, this may not be true, but the larger picture would point us that way. I'm pointing this out less because I think it's right, and more because a large portion of the base are already fine with money-grabbing tactics, even if they harm said base itself.
Makes it hard to argue.
I prefer character creation myself. Let me make my own lead.
We need to get rid of characters I think...more games need to go to an RPG-style character creation system. That way, you can play as yourself, as a steroid chewing monster man, a 36-10-36 woman, or whatever you like. It should be a balanced system too...don't give the female characters +1 agility and the male characters +1 strength unless you immediately give them extra points to distribute upon starting the game. There are certain things that a good RPG will change based on the gender, such as conversation options, but it is important to be balanced here as well. If you want to make a game where the female characters can cry their way out of speeding tickets, you have to give the male characters some equal bonus. Also, you have to give the female character some non-degrading option, like slipping the cop a bribe...or just shooting the cop in the head if it is that kind of game.
Because of this situation, I changed my GTA IV online character to a woman. Her tops options are fine (gotta love leather jackets), but her leggins and shoes options are only "whore with heels" or "fashionista with furry boots".
I went to a small convention recently and I actually heard the same thing from an employee of Icarus Studios (company that created Fallen Earth), that they don't mind the overly sexual approach so much as shallow characters.
IMO, most gamers are men so a male protagonist does actually have some legitimacy, but I also agree we shouldn't pander to a specific crowd and alienate other people because we're shallow.
How about "my character"? Does anyone ever say, let me get out my player character sheet? Or, let me see the new player character you just rolled up? Not to mention, that as far as me and most of the western world is concerned, a PC is the computer that sits on your desk that's not a laptop and not a mac.
Now, I may be a young white male (even if i'm not from america).
Seriously though, while i think it is important to keep focus on equality and gender diversity in entertainment, then i find it an odd thing to get truly up in arms about.
Look at Maddison from Heavy Rain, a kickarse journalist who will go to any lenght to get the story. To me that just screams out "positive female role model".
If we want true female characters in games, then we need to get better at accepting female sexuality in games too, since real life women are sexual beings as well (As are men, but that's more accepted).
The way it is now, then we allow videogame males to be sexualized, and we think that is just fine, but when a female character shows a bit of cleavage then we, as a community, get up in arms about it and call it exploitation of the character, and pretend that it detracts from the power of the female.
Remember guys, if you want true female characters, then it does include the whole package, we can't shy away from sexuality completely.
He did explain how it affects him. He doesn't like game devs making the assumption that male gamer fans think exclusively with their gonads and will buy a game based on how hot the chick on the box-art is. I tend to agree with him on that.
By extension, it also means outsiders look upon gamers as a whole as horny teenage males or immature man-children with no real taste or appreciation for things like story or meaningful gameplay, and a lot of us resent being lumped together that way.
Strong female leads appeal to the G.I.R.L. crowd as well. So there is a market.
This guy has the right idea.
I like the double-standard here with the diversity posts that are always brought up. If you were to, for example, say that women aren't in videogames because most women don't really do the whole combat thing, a likely response would be "Hey now, no sexism here. Women can do everything men can do. Viva la Equality!". And yet in games, even though they doth loudly proclaim the lack of meaningful difference between the genders, they fiercely demand to play as girls.
But the whole thing is silly. People don't need to photoshop themselves into paintings to enjoy the viewing; why do the characters need to be you for the game to be enjoyable? The wonder about fiction is that it lets you get out of yourself and see things from a different light, which actually broadens your sense of self and makes it that much richer. How can people claim to want diversity while still demanding "representation"?
To put in a cliche, I wish there would be less whining about difference without a difference. Someone earlier mentioned that they really wanted a game about some minority raised by two parents who are even smaller minorities, but somehow still finding the compatibility to raise a child. It borders on nonsense. I'll make my own useless plea to developers and pretend like how much I spend holds any sway: Don't just pick random ethnic, religious, sexual, or psychological character aspects and throw 'em all together; you won't get a rainbow. All you'll do is court the neophiles, and they will never be pleased because all they want is something new, something alien, regardless of its artistic merit.
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Dual-Degree Tuition, Expenses, & Financial Aid
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Second-year dual-degree students are BE candidates and are eligible for financial aid from Thayer School.


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CCNP 300-115: Implementing Cisco IP Switched Networks (SWITCH v2.0)
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The Charles Manson follower who stabbed Sharon Tate to death 40 years ago is terminally ill and up for parole.
Susan Atkins, 61, has terminal brain cancer and is paralyzed over 85% of her body, according to a Web site maintained by her husband and attorney, James Whitehouse. But even though another Manson follower, Lynette "Squeaky" Fromme was recently paroled despite an assassination attempt on President Ford, Whitehouse doubts his wife will be sprung.
"There is still a very real chance the Parole Board will nonetheless insist her release would be a danger to society," he said.
Atkins' 13th parole hearing will be held at the Central California Women's Facility at Chowchilla, California, said Terry Thornton, spokeswoman for the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation. Atkins was moved to the Chowchilla facility from the California Institution for Women at Frontera last year because of her illness.
Atkins -- California's longest-serving female inmate -- was 21 when she and other followers of Manson went on the Helter Skelter rampage that left seven people dead in Los Angeles in August 1969. She and the others -- Manson, Leslie Van Houten, Patricia Krenwinkel and Charles "Tex" Watson -- were initially sentenced to death in the slayings of five people, including Tate, and two additional deaths the following night.
By her own admission, Atkins held Tate down as she pleaded for mercy, and stabbed the actress, who was eight months pregnant, 16 times. In a 1993 parole board hearing, Atkins said Tate "asked me to let her baby live. ... I told her I didn't have any mercy on her."
Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger has previously opposed Atkins' request for compassionate release.
Get more: CNN


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John Keats
John Keats (31 October 1795 – 23 February 1821 / London, England)
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To George Felton Mathew
Sweet are the pleasures that to verse belong,
And doubly sweet a brotherhood in song;
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A fate more pleasing, a delight more true
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Magicalandia - A Microscale Medieval Town
Originally built in May, I've been saving this MOC for almost 6 months just so I could post it now. Many of you might remember Microscale Blacksmith House and my Microscale Medieval Street, well now the threequel has finally arrived! For those of you who are wondering what "Magicalandia" is, it's the random name of my siblings' and I's medieval town (minifig scale). So I thought it might work for this too.
Without further ado, check out the rest of the MOC here:
MOCpages (Highly recommeded)
(Brickshelf coming eventually)
(I also have one picture on Flickr, but it's just the main pic)
Constructive criticism is always welcome!
~Casey a.k.a. "FB"~


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Chicoma Mountain Climber's Log
Natejitsu - Jul 15, 2018 11:46 am Date Climbed: Jul 14, 2018Ascent from FR 144
Hiked up the route that starts from FR 144 right before it turns north. Pretty straightforward walk-up for the most part. Route is easy to find up to a point where downed trees become a big pain. As long as you are walking uphill you should be fine, but coming down might be tricky to find the route, so bring a GPS if you have one. Was up and back in just over an hour. Didn't spend long on the summit because of ominous clouds.
Brian Kalet - Jan 15, 2018 6:54 pm Date Climbed: Oct 22, 20164 Peaks
With Cerro Pedernal, Mesa Gurule & Mesa Escoba.
seano - Nov 27, 2014 9:45 am Date Climbed: Oct 20, 2014North slope
Biked the road, then hiked through the trees to the summit, which has a couple of cairn/shrine things on it. Like others said, bring a GPS: we headed slightly off-course in the forest, which often has no views, and finally came out on the road about a mile east of where we left it.
pattond - Jul 28, 2012 9:27 pm Date Climbed: Jul 28, 2012Summer Ascent
Hiked with my wife Lauren and my Mother-in-law Susan. We didn't have any trouble finding our way. I can see how it can be difficult, but if you get to the ridge or saddle that runs North/ South between Chicoma and Polvadera, just head ESE and keep going up. As long as you CAN keep climbing, keep climbing. We were on cow and deer trails off and on and some Forrest roads, but it's easier to just go off trail and take a direct route. It's good route finding practice and nice to get off the beaten path too! Great view from the top with a lot of Native history. Beautiful spruce trees (picea englemannii, picea pungens) at the higher levels with Fir and Pine varieties on the way up.
Nice Axe! - Apr 22, 2009 4:53 pm Date Climbed: Apr 21, 2009Nice spring corn
Accompanied Scott on this one yesterday. Extremely pleasant ascent and descent. Sweet summit and perfect spring corn ski descent. Great view of Cerro Pedernal.
scotthsu - Apr 22, 2009 3:06 pm Date Climbed: Apr 21, 2009SE face ski descent
Enjoyed a fantastic ski descent of the SE face on a gorgeous spring day. FS144 was mostly snow-covered above ~10000', making for an "interesting" drive out.
MoapaPk - May 13, 2008 1:36 pm Date Climbed: Aug 20, 1983Chased by cows
Date a guess. We got to the trailhead about 1 PM, and meandered through flowery fields. This peak used to have an Amerind monument on top. On the way back, cows kept running up behind us. We were "confused" for a few moments at sunset, but found the correct cowpath back to the car.
We ate dinner at McDonald's in Espanola after the trip. At 9PM, the place cleared out incredibly quickly -- as everyone responded to the curfew. The streets were deserted afterward.
My wife took many pictures of beautiful flowers, using our SLR. Afterward we discovered that there was no film in the camera!
surgent - Aug 31, 2007 1:10 pm Date Climbed: Aug 11, 2007How to stretch a one-hour hike into an all-nighter...
Took an unplanned detour on the way down... Yes, I would agree that getting lost is easy to do up here. Like others have said, bring a GPS. I had everything. I might add: bring them, and use them! You can read about my hike here: Chicoma Mountain, 8/11/07
Garon Coriz - Jul 14, 2007 5:24 pm Date Climbed: Jul 14, 2007Waited Until Daylight
Left Albuquerque at 2 am and got to the northern slope around 4:30 but had a hard time trying to find the right place to park in the dark because the GPS didn't save the coordinates I had input when at home. I had to wait until 9 am to have my dad look them up again in Albuquerque and tell me them over the phone. Fun trip, though.
reverendslappy - Aug 10, 2005 5:25 pmRoute Climbed: Northern Slopes Date Climbed: 08/08/2005
What a view. On a clear day you can see the Blanca Massif in Southern Colorado as well as the southern parts of the San Juan's.
However, I have a word of caution for those who might have an interest in bagging this peak: If you have a difficult time being able to keep track of where you are at or are unfamiliar with this area take a GPS device at a minimum.
I took my aunt with me on the ascent and about two miles from the top she decided not to go any further. While she waited and after I had summited the mountain and was decending I lost my markers. Fortunately I used Povadera peak as a northern reference point and found my way to the road with relatively little trouble. Unfortunately, my aunt did not have the same luck as me. She spent a cold, wet and hungry night on the mountain.
Thanks to the quick and professional effort of Espanola, Taos and Los Alamos Search and Rescue volunteers she was found in very short order. God bless each and everyone of them for their efforts.
I found no real established trails to the summit. In fact during my aunt's rescue, the team I was on used a map, GPS and compass to follow the (supposed) trail to FR 144. I kind of like that because of the solitude of hiking there unlike the Sangre's on the other side of the valley in which literally 1,000 people will be out there clogging the trails.
sbkelley - Jan 30, 2005 5:10 pmRoute Climbed: North Slopes Date Climbed: November 2001, June 2003
I lived in Los Alamos during my high school years, so this was one of the local peaks - views off this peak are really incredible. When I went in 2003, I also did Polvadera Peak...good way to work on route-finding.