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Ask GR Anything is a weekly Q%26A column that answers questions submitted by readers (as well as questions we're particularly curious about ourselves). Got a burning question about games or the industry? Ask us in the comments below and you may just get it answered!
This week's question comes not from a specific person, but from deep within the recesses of our collective minds. If you have a soul, then you've probably wondered, at some point, whether or not NASA will ever make good on all that money we've been sending them and bring home a lightsaber from one of their little trips. Or at the very least, somebody could make a crappy one just to show off on YouTube. Is it even possible? Given that it's launch week for The Old Republic, we thought we'd try to find out.
The major force at work in a lightsaber is plasma, which is very real. To put it bluntly, plasma is the coolest thing on the planet. It's not very common, but when it's in the room, you're going to know about it. What's plasma? Plasma is lightning. Or to be more precise, it's a highly excited form of gas. But it's also not really gas. Confused? Good, that means you understand. Plasma is so weird that it's earned a status as a completely different type of matter apart from solids, liquids and gases.
But this is good for us, because plasma can be used to melt crazy amounts of anything. There are things called arc furnaces that are used to melt huge amounts of scrap metal. Plasmas can have energy levels that take them to ridiculous temperatures. This has a couple different implications for lightsabers.
On the one hand, when we see Jedi/Sith slicing dudes up, that's kinda realistic in a way. You don't mess with plasma. But on the other hand, plasma isn't something you can heat up in the handle of a flashlight (aka lightsaber).
"It still takes a lot of energy to melt things, so this energy must first be put into the plasma before the plasma can melt anything," said a representative of the Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory when we emailed asking lightsaber questions. So it's fairly unrealistic to think that a plasma sword that large could be sustainably powered for a stretch of time far from a power source. Ultra-nerds estimate the power usage at several mega-watt hours per use. But then again, it's Star Wars. They've got Wookiees; anything is possible.
We actually have handheld plasma devices that are hooked up to very large power supplies. They're called plasma torches, but don't get excited. Plasma torches require contact with the metal you're working with in order to form. But when they do light up…they burn at a mind-blowing 45,000 degrees. For those of you keeping score at home, that's about four times hotter than the surface of the sun. Like we said, don't mess with plasma.
The lightsaber problem was dissected some time ago by an engineer at General Electric, who broke down the machine and tried to figure out a way to make one work. He also took the time to rip apart George Lucas' insane vision for how a lightsaber might work. Lightsabers have a focusing crystal (one of the most important parts) which focuses the plasma into a stable beam. But as the GE engineer points out, that doesn't make sense on even the most basic level.
"There are […] no crystals that can 'direct' a plasma. In fact, a plasma 'being directed' by a crystal lens doesn't make any physical sense anyway. A plasma is really just an ionized gas." What he's saying is that you can't focus plasma through a crystal any more than you can focus the wind through your glasses. Gases don't pass through solids.
That said, this guy (whose name is Matt Gluesnkamp, if you care) also believes that a laser-based lightsaber could be possible. Although it'd be more akin to No More Heroes than Star Wars.
"An electrical arc can have wild shifts in direction, and it can hardly be controlled without being surrounded by magnets," Gluesnkamp said. "A laser will go in a straight line, but of course it doesn't stop. A laser-based lightsaber would require a block or a couple of mirrors floating in midair, moving in sync with the hilt – which is of course largely impossible."
So no, you can't have a lightsaber. But you can buy a plasma torch online for a little over a thousand dollars. They're not going to work like the industrial ones, but if you absolutely need to melt through some capital ship blast doors, then that's probably your best bet.
Submit your own questions in the comments (or Tweet them to @sciencegroen) and we may tackle them for a future Ask GR Anything.


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Elevated Carbon Dioxide Boosts Invasive NutsedgeBy Laura McGinnis
June 9, 2008
Elevated levels of carbon dioxide (CO2) could promote the growth of purple and yellow nutsedge—quick-growing invasive weeds that plague farmers and gardeners in many states.
That's the conclusion of plant physiologist Hugo Rogers and his colleagues at the Agricultural Research Service (ARS) National Soil Dynamics Laboratory (NSDL) in Auburn, Ala.
With ARS and Auburn University colleagues, Rogers grew purple nutsedge (Cyperus rotundus L.) and yellow nutsedge (C. esculentus L.) in chambers designed to mimic the atmospheric CO2 levels predicted to occur within the next century—about twice existing levels.
They found that both species benefited from elevated CO2, particularly purple nutsedge.
Although neither species is native to the United States, purple and yellow nutsedge can be found all over the country. Purple nutsedge can tolerate extremely high temperatures and is a major problem in the southern United States, whereas yellow nutsedge is better suited to more temperate climates.
Both species displace native plants and reduce yields in a variety of important agricultural crops, including corn, cotton and rice. Purple and yellow nutsedge spread via rhizomes and underground tubers, and are extremely difficult to control.
The Auburn scientists observed that both species grew larger in the elevated CO2 chambers than in control chambers. The plants had more tubers and greater water use efficiency, indicating that they could become increasingly competitive in an elevated-CO2 environment. This could result in reduced crop yields and displaced native flora.
This research, published recently in the Journal of Environmental Quality, is the first in a series of papers on the effects of CO2 on invasive weeds.
ARS is a scientific research agency of the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

subset: commoncrawl


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My, how the tables have turned. Long the laughing stock in the current generation video game war, Sony's PS3 is suddenly coming on strong:
With the PlayStation 3 edging out the Xbox 360 in sales for the second straight month, SCEA is feeling quite good about the state of PlayStation.
Sony [is] boasting about the PS3 outselling the Xbox 360 for the second consecutive month. The PlayStation brand in general also generated the most retail revenue in the U.S for the second consecutive month.
"Consumers are recognizing the tremendous value of PS3 and we believe that Blu-ray becoming the high-def format of choice was the tipping point for many consumers. With monster titles like Gran Turismo 5 Prologue and Grand Theft Auto IV launching in April and Metal Gear Solid 4 in June, we're demonstrating this is the year for PS3," said a very pleased Jack Tretton, president and CEO, Sony Computer Entertainment America.
PLAYSTATION 3 (PS3) outsold Xbox 360 for the second straight month with 280,841 hardware units sold in February, 10% higher than Microsoft (according to NPD February 2008 sales data). Year-over-year this represents 120% sales growth.


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Australian Veterinary Journal
The Australian Veterinary Journal is Australia's leading scientific publication in the field and provides an essential forum for the dissemination of leading edge veterinary research.
- ISI and MEDLINE listed
- Online submissions at Manuscript Central
- Publishing case reports, reviews, opinions, news, book reviews, letters to the Editor and more.
Web Site: http://www.blackwellpublishing.com
European Journal of Companion Animal Practice
The European Journal of Companion Animal Practice (EJCAP) is the official journal of FECAVA, the Federation of European Companion Animal Veterinary Associations. EJCAP is printed in English and contains reprints of the best material originally printed in national journals and translated into English, original work, commissioned papers, papers based on FECAVA state of the art lectures, papers given at FECAVA continuing education courses, book reviews, news and a calendar of continuing education possibilities. EJCAP is the only non-specialist large circulation veterinary publication in Europe. The Scientific standard is very high as each country submits its best articles which are further selected by the EJCAP Production Sub-Committee
EJCAP is published three times a year. Two issues are in hard copy. The third issue is an online issue only, devoted to one scientific topic each year. In 2007 the topic is ophthalmology, in 2008 it is zoonotic diseases.
The hard copy issues are published in April and October and the third issue is available here on www.fecava.org at the end of the year (please note that the 2007 issue is delayed).
Web Site: http://www.fecava.org
Veterinary Surgery
Veterinary Surgery is a source of up-to-date coverage of surgical and anesthetic management of animals, addressing significant problems in veterinary surgery with relevant case histories and observations. It contains original, peer-reviewed articles that cover developments in veterinary surgery, and presents the most current review of the field, with timely articles on surgical techniques, diagnostic aims, care of infections, and advances in knowledge of metabolism as it affects the surgical patient. The journal places new developments in perspective, encompassing new concepts and peer commentary to help better understand and evaluate the surgical patient.
Web Site: http://www.blackwellpublishing.com
VCOT - Veterinary and Comparative Orthopaedics and Traumatology
VCOT covers orthopaedics and traumatology in veterinary medicine as well as common approaches in human and veterinary medicine. By advancing traumatology through the documentation of practical experience, the journal aims at fulfilling scientists' need for new information in the field. International authors use VCOT as a platform for publishing the latest scientific research in the field. All articles conform to a high scientific standard and are written in English. Review articles, original papers and case reports strive to inform the reader about newer and gentler operating techniques, improved materials for implants and the latest in basic research. Congress reports and abstracts of the societies' annual meetings regularly help readers stay up-to-date and expand their knowledge. To top it off, VCOT also publishes book reviews and a preview of congresses.
Web Site: www.thieme.com/vcot
JAVMA - Journal of the American Veterinary Medical Association
The Journal of the American Veterinary Medical Association began publication in 1915 and is the most widely distributed veterinary medical journal. The mission of the JAVMA is to promote the science and art of veterinary medicine and to provide a forum for discussion and dissemination of ideas important to the profession.
Web Site: http://avmajournals.avma.org/loi/javma
JAAHA - Journal of the American Animal Hospital Association
Published as an official scientific and educational publication of the American Animal Hospital Association. The purpose of the Journal of the American Animal Hospital Association (JAAHA) is to publish accurate, timely scientific and technical information pertaining to the practice of small animal medicine and surgery.
Web Site: http://www.jaaha.org
JSAP - Journal of Small Animal Practice
The Journal of Small Animal Practice is a monthly, peer-reviewed veterinary journal which covers all aspects of medicine and surgery relating to dogs, cats and other small animals.
Web Site: www.wileyonlinelibrary.com/journal/JSAP
VECCS - Journal of the Veterinary Emergency and Critical Care Society
The Journal of Veterinary Emergency and Critical Care is a peer-reviewed publication that seeks basic, applied and clinical research articles that address the emergency treatment and critical management of veterinary patients. Prospective and retrospective clinical studies, case reports, brief clinical communications and letters to the Editor will also be accepted. Review articles (state of the art and clinical practice reviews) are accepted on a limited basis. All manuscripts and letters are subject to editing before publication.
Web Site: http://www.blackwellpublishing.com
Veterinary Anesthesia/Analgesia
Veterinary Anaesthesia and Analgesia is an international journal publishing original peer-reviewed articles covering all branches of anaesthesia and pain relief in animals. The Journal publishes review articles, special articles, case reports, historical notes and editorials concerned with the following subjects related to anaesthesia and analgesia.
Web Site: http://www.blackwellpublishing.com
Veterinary Clinics of North America
Veterinary Clinics of North America: Small Animal Practice offers you the most current information on the treatment of dogs and cats; updates you on the latest advances; and provides a sound basis for choosing treatment options. Each issue focuses on a single topic in small animal practice and is presented under the direction of an experienced guest editor.
Web Site: http://www.us.elsevierhealth.com
Canadian Veterinary Journal
The Canadian Veterinary Journal, published by the Canadian Veterinary Medical Association, is the 'voice of veterinary medicine in Canada'. This monthly, peer-reviewed, general scientific publication features a wide variety of articles and regular columns intended for the veterinary practitioner. The Journal includes news and features of interest to the members of the Association, notices of upcoming meetings, new product information, and book reviews.
Web Site: http://canadianveterinarians.net/publications-journal-issue.aspx
Compendium of Clinical Practice
Compendium Online is your interactive connection to the best CE journal for veterinarians. Here you can: read articles online, take CE tests and get real-time results in one of two ways: through our annual CE program subscription, by purchasing individual tests; search our entire back issue collection and find specific articles by author, keywords, or date of publication, view all abstracts, purchase copies of full-text articles not available online
Web Site: http://www.compendiumvet.com
Veterinary Radiology & Ultrasound
Veterinary Radiology & Ultrasound is a bimonthly, international journal that maintains the highest feasible standard for publication of matters pertaining to veterinary imaging and allied discplines, sustaining its recognition as an established refereed journal and to serve as a source of continuing education. Published papers include results of original investigation, clinical reports, case-history reports and review articles.
Web Site: http://www.blackwellpublishing.com
AJVR - American Journal of Veterinary Research
The mission of the American Journal of Veterinary Research is to publish, in a timely manner, peer-reviewed reports of the highest-quality research that has the clear potential to enhance the health, welfare, and performance of animals and humans. The journal will maintain the highest ethical standards of scientific journalism and promote such standards among its contributors. In addition, the journal will foster global interdisciplinary cooperation in veterinary medical research.
Web Site: http://avmajournals.avma.org/loi/ajvr


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In November 2011 we at Clearleft hired out a farmhouse in the countryside and left client work behind for a week and just hacked on something for fun. The result was Map Tales, which I'm very proud of.
We knew straight away that we'd want to repeat the experience in 2012. A few weeks ago we all disappeared into the countryside once again. This time the location was in Dorset and it was less of a farm and more of a manor house. We still decided to call the outing a Hack Farm …although Hack Manor has a nice ring to it.
Before we went away, we got together for a meta-discussion on how to approach the week. We didn't want to decide what we were going to build before we got there (that's part of the fun) but there was some talk about doing things slightly differently this time. For example, what if we weren't setting out to actually launch something? What if the final deliverables were less tangible and more conceptual than that?
My initial reaction was to bristle at the thought of not launching something at the end of the week. After all, I thought, that's the whole point of a hack day/farm/athon. But I came around to the idea. I think it's because we succeeded in building and launching Map Tales in one week last year that I was able to accept the idea of doing something a bit different this time 'round.
We brought some friends of Clearleft along: Mike, Brian, Emil, Andy, Kyle, and Jessica. It was a pleasure spending a week in the country with them.
In total there were eighteen of us there. That's quite a lot of cats to herd when you're trying to reach consensus on what to spend a week working on, but after some fun design games and exercises, we agreed on what we wanted to do. Surprisingly the area we all gravitated towards was in the not-so-sexy field of politics.
We designed a service called Politmus. The basic idea was to take the best of the "quantified self" movement and apply it to politics in the UK. The elevator pitch was:
The only personal political opinion tracker that gathers your stance on issues, for disenfranchised voters in the UK who want to feel more connected in a time when we have increased participation in everything but government.
Here's how we imagined it working. Let's say your MP is going to be voting on a question in parliament very soon. We'll ping you with that question and ask how you would vote. Then we can see how well your answer matches that of your MP. Over time, we can start comparing trends: you and your MP; you and your constituency; you and the rest of the country.
There was a lot of research to begin with (not helped by the crappy internet connection), looking at how the UK parliamentary system works. It's complicated. They Work For You was, unsurprisingly, a huge help in figuring this stuff out.
I got very interested in the potential input mechanisms for voting. A website with a form is the obvious choice, but what about some more old-fashioned media? A postcard? An email? A phone call? SMS?
I did some hacking on the Tropo API to come up with a telephone interface. You can try it on 020 3051 6587. I put together a little video sketch to demonstrate some of these interactions.
Meanwhile a whole lot of work was being done on the voting interface, displaying the patterns of voting over time, and all that good stuff.
One of the areas that yielded the most benefit (and was a real eye-opener for me) was designing an API for the service before any interface decisions had been made. This "API First" approach meant that lots of tricky problems were solved early on, without getting distracted by the implementation issues of which kind of screens (if any) would be displaying the data. It also meant that visual design and development could be done in parallel.
(By the way, the food at Hack Farm was superb. Jessica cooked amazing meals for eighteen people each night!)
By the end of the week, we had some pretty solid deliverables: design principles, some prototypes, an API, branding. But it's a shame we didn't actually get a working website. It would have been very hard work, but I like to think that we could have got a minimal viable product out the door.
But we do have something to show. We've put together a nice little website that documents the process:
You can skip straight ahead to the product or can follow along with the day-by-day account.
I hope that the site conveys something of the flavour of this year's Hack Farm. It was a lot of fun, mostly because of the excellent people gathered together in one place.


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Plot Summary: Mari Wakatake has been living with her Grandmother for the past 5 years after a tragedy caused the loss of her home, friends and family, as well as her memories. Fearing for her future, her Grandmother admits her into Kaihou Academy, for her to make friends, instead of home studying. Although reluctant to go, she does and meets Hagino Sekonji. At first appearance, this girl appears like a normal student but inside her lies a deep secret that relates to the tragedy of 5 years ago.Genres: Drama Science Fiction Yuri
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This article is more than 1 year old
Virgin Media blames Activision for Call of Duty lag problems
'Rubbish scores... dead before I get the game on screen!'
Virgin Media has blamed coders of the popular Xbox Live game Call of Duty: Black Ops for slow connection issues that are hampering its service.
"We're aware some of our customers are experiencing issues whilst playing Call of Duty: Black Ops on Xbox Live. Xbox Live traffic isn't managed by our systems so we've taken a close look at our service to see if there are any other problems, such as traffic routing, that could be contributing to these issues," a Virgin Media spokesman told The Register.
"Our investigation hasn't found any issues with our service so we have been attempting to contact the developers to try to understand further why customers are having problems."
But the telcos' customers don't altogether agree with that assessment, with some labelling Virgin Media as the UK's "worst gaming ISP".
Many have been complaining for months in VM forums about the lag issues, but the company's customers feel largely ignored.
"I've just had to quit multiplayer, lagging way too much and keep getting rubbish scores because I'm dead before I even see it on screen! SORT IT OUT!!!," reads a typical complaint from May this year.
Despite that, Virgin Media maintains that it has made repeated yet fruitless attempts to get in touch with Activision Blizzard Inc, which is the console game publisher behind titles that include Call of Duty: Black Ops.
"Unfortunately, despite numerous attempts at contact through a variety of channels, we are still waiting for feedback. As soon as we have any contact we will be working with them to resolve this issue as quickly as possible," the Virgin Media spokesman said.
To back up its protestations against Activision, Virgin Media pointed us to this video explaining the lag glitch.
However, Reg reader Paul claimed that he hadn't experienced the same problem with any other UK ISPs when playing the online game.
And it's not just Call of Duty that's hitting the buffers for VM customers.
"For the last two or three months now people have been unable to play any Xbox game without encountering issues. Basically because Virgin have a traffic management policy that borders on the absurd and all console gaming traffic is now P2P you can kiss goodbye playing on the Xbox no matter if you are on 30Mbit/s,50Mbit/s or 100Mbit/s connection," Paul told us.
"The general problem that occurs is that when you try and read/send a message it will take over 30 seconds to do so. When you try to start a private chat or Party chat the same will again happen and if you try to do too many of these at once you will be kicked off Xbox Live," he added.
Earlier this year a gamers' lobby group reported Activision to the UK's Office of Fair Trading.
Gamers' Voice, which was founded by Labour MP Tom Watson in 2009, claimed in January that the Call of Duty: Black Ops game failed to function as advertised. Gripes included sudden disconnections from multi-player sessions online.
The Reg asked Activision to comment on this story, but at time of writing it had not got back to us. ®


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Principal Financial Group Completes Cuprum Acquisition, the Premier Chilean AFP Pension Company
Principal Financial Group Completes Cuprum Acquisition, the Premier Chilean AFP Pension Company
DES MOINES, Iowa--(BUSINESS WIRE)-- Principal Financial Group, Inc. (NYS: PFG) , a global investment management leader, today announced that the AFP Cuprum S.A. (Cuprum) acquisition is complete. On Oct. 8, 2012, The Principal® announced a definitive agreement to acquire Cuprum, which required Empresas Penta S.A. and Inversiones Banpenta Limitada to sell their 63 percent ownership in Cuprum pursuant to a public tender offer that also included the remaining 37 percent of publicly traded shares, which has been completed giving The Principal a 90.4 percent ownership stake in Cuprum. The Principal intends to acquire the remaining shares after completion for a total purchase price of USD$1.5 billion less assumed debt.
The transaction was immediately accretive and is expected by the company to benefit 2013 EPS by approximately 12 cents and 23 cents in full year 2014. The transaction is estimated to improve total company ROE by 45 bps in 2013 and 75 bps in 2014.
Cuprum, a leading pension manager in Chile and among the fastest growing, has approximately USD$32.7 billion of assets under management1. Cuprum products include mandatory employee-funded pension plans, voluntary pension products (APV), and other long-term savings products. The Chilean pension market has consistently grown at double-digit rates driven by a large and expanding middle and affluent market, stable economic growth and robust growth in voluntary pension products.
"The combination of Cuprum and The Principal provides customers in Chile with an unparalleled array of retirement savings, asset management and retirement income solutions," said Luis Valdes, president and CEO of Principal International. "Cuprum already has a leading pension brand in Chile, and now adds the backing of a global retirement and investment management leader in The Principal."
According to Larry Zimpleman, chairman, president and CEO at The Principal, "the Cuprum acquisition further strengthens our competitive position in one of the most attractive emerging retirement and long-term savings markets. Cuprum represents the sixth such transaction for The Principal in the past two years and adds meaningfully to our fee-based earnings, giving us continued financial flexibility."
The Principal Financial Group's strategy of Investment Management Plus helps customers around the world ensure their financial future by building retirement and long-term savings, investing to grow their assets, and insuring their income.
Forward looking and cautionary statements
This press release contains forward-looking statements, including, without limitation, statements as to operating earnings, net income available to common stockholders, net cash flows, realized and unrealized gains and losses, capital and liquidity positions, sales and earnings trends, and management's beliefs, expectations, goals and opinions. The company does not undertake to update these statements, which are based on a number of assumptions concerning future conditions that may ultimately prove to be inaccurate. Future events and their effects on the company may not be those anticipated, and actual results may differ materially from the results anticipated in these forward-looking statements. The risks, uncertainties and factors that could cause or contribute to such material differences are discussed in the company's annual report on Form 10-K for the year ended Dec. 31, 2011, and in the company's quarterly report on Form 10-Q for the quarter ended Sept.30, 2012, filed by the company with the Securities and Exchange Commission, as updated or supplemented from time to time in subsequent filings. These risks and uncertainties include, without limitation: adverse capital and credit market conditions may significantly affect the company's ability to meet liquidity needs, access to capital and cost of capital; continued difficult conditions in the global capital markets and the economy generally; continued volatility or further declines in the equity markets; changes in interest rates or credit spreads; the company's investment portfolio is subject to several risks that may diminish the value of its invested assets and the investment returns credited to customers; the company's valuation of securities may include methodologies, estimations and assumptions that are subject to differing interpretations; the determination of the amount of allowances and impairments taken on the company's investments requires estimations and assumptions that are subject to differing interpretations; gross unrealized losses may be realized or result in future impairments; competition from companies that may have greater financial resources, broader arrays of products, higher ratings and stronger financial performance; a downgrade in the company's financial strength or credit ratings; inability to attract and retain sales representatives and develop new distribution sources; international business risks; the company's actual experience could differ significantly from its pricing and reserving assumptions; the company's ability to pay stockholder dividends and meet its obligations may be constrained by the limitations on dividends or distributions Iowa insurance laws impose on Principal Life; the pattern of amortizing the company's DPAC and other actuarial balances on its universal life-type insurance contracts, participating life insurance policies and certain investment contracts may change; the company may need to fund deficiencies in its "Closed Block" assets that support participating ordinary life insurance policies that had a dividend scale in force at the time of Principal Life's 1998 conversion into a stock life insurance company; the company's reinsurers could default on their obligations or increase their rates; risks arising from acquisitions of businesses; changes in laws, regulations or accounting standards; a computer system failure or security breach could disrupt the company's business, and damage its reputation; results of litigation and regulatory investigations; from time to time the company may become subject to tax audits, tax litigation or similar proceedings, and as a result it may owe additional taxes, interest and penalties in amounts that may be material; fluctuations in foreign currency exchange rates; and applicable laws and the company's certificate of incorporation and by-laws may discourage takeovers and business combinations that some stockholders might consider in their best interests.
About the Principal Financial Group
The Principal Financial Group® (The Principal ®)2 is a global investment management leader offering retirement services, insurance solutions and asset management. The Principal offers businesses, individuals and institutional clients a wide range of financial products and services, including retirement, asset management and insurance through its diverse family of financial services companies. Founded in 1879 and a member of the FORTUNE 500®, the Principal Financial Group has $403.0 billion in assets under management3 and serves some 18.3 million customers worldwide from offices in Asia, Australia, Europe, Latin America and the United States. Principal Financial Group, Inc. is traded on the New York Stock Exchange under the ticker symbol PFG. For more information, visit www.principal.com.
About AFP Cuprum
AFP Cuprum is a publicly traded, leading Chilean pension company with US$32.7 billion in assets under management. Their products include mandatory defined contribution pensions (AFP), voluntary pensions, non-tax preferenced voluntary savings (CAV) and account drawdown at retirement (RP). Based in Santiago, Chile, the company has more than 1,100 employees and distributes products from 32 branches in Chile, with 3 branches located in Santiago.
1 As of Nov. 30, 2012
2 "The Principal Financial Group" and "The Principal" are registered service marks of Principal Financial Services, Inc., a member of the Principal Financial Group.
3 As of Dec.31, 2012
Principal Financial Group, Inc.
Susan Houser, 515-248-2268
John Egan, 515-235-9500
KEYWORDS: United States North America South America Chile Iowa
The article Principal Financial Group Completes Cuprum Acquisition, the Premier Chilean AFP Pension Company originally appeared on Fool.com.
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Nicki Minaj's Name Misspelled on Display at Grammy Nominations Concert
We've heard of Nicki Minaj but Niki Minaj? Yeah, we don't know her. Her alter ego is Roman, not Niki! Turns out, the producers at the Grammy nominations live concert know this Niki Minaj.
Minaj, who was on site to announce the nominees in the Record of the Year category, was awarded a nomination herself in the Best New Artist category. But when her name and picture were displayed on the giant screens, her name was misspelled as "Niki." No one thought to hire a copy editor? There are only two words to describe this snafu: EPIC FAIL!
We understand that in the fast-paced, hustle and bustle of the instant age of information that sometimes these errors occur, but at a major, live and televised event such as this?
The Twitterverse blew up with fans tweeting about this Niki Minaj person and the fact that an error like this got past so many noses.
One tweeter wrote: "Wait, so it's not official. Nicki Minaj wasn't nominated, Niki Minaj was. I hope Niki steps up and claims her nomination." Another Minaj fan posted: "Who is Niki Minaj?? Goshh is it that hard to spell?? N-I-C-K-I M-I-N-A-J."
You can have a hearty laugh and keep up with the comments here.
Minaj herself had yet to tweet about the egregious error. We love you Niki! We meant Nicki.


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African Studies
Interdisciplinary Minor
"The College's African Studies Program has given me the opportunity to continue exploring my love of African geography, culture and sociopolitical history, both here and in Africa. After completing my second trip to that amazing continent, I look forward to many more enlightening experiences."
– Haley Thomas '13
When you envision Africa, what comes to mind? Exotic wildlife? Diverse cultures? Lush resources? What about Egyptian politics, Moroccan architecture, Nigerian literature or the South African economy?
With 54 separate nations, the African continent is one of the most diverse regions of the world. It's amazingly complex and regularly misperceived. Rich in culture, history and language, as well as geographic diversity, Africa offers an enormously broad spectrum of opportunities for study.
At the College of Charleston, Africa is firmly on our radar, which is why our approach to understanding this remarkable continent is decidedly interdisciplinary. The courses in our African studies minor stem not only from the departments of history and anthropology but also from political science, English and French. Students in this program take classes that survey the diverse cultures and politics of this continent, as well as its geography, literature and economics. They develop in-depth knowledge of various African countries, both historically and within the modern age. Some deepen their understanding through hands-on research or service, such as Project Harambee in which students from the College are building a school for a rural village in Kenya.
Of course, every student in the program is strongly encouraged to travel and study in Africa. This experience can lead to an expanded understanding of and appreciation for Africa and its place in the world. The rewards for our students are tremendous. Our graduates have gone on to careers in government and the public sector. They've also taken on a variety of roles in:
- higher education
- environmentalism
- the foreign service
- health sciences
- human rights
So what comes to mind when you envision Africa? How about your future? African studies at the College of Charleston – check it out.
Contact Information
Simon Lewis
program director


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Saturday, April 28, 2012
REVIEW: The Girl Who Played with Fire (Millennium Trilogy, Book 2) by Stieg Larsson
In this second book of the Millennium series, after The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, Millennium magazine is getting ready to publish a very revealing exposé on the sex trade and trafficking in Sweden. But just as the article and book are preparing to come to press, Dag Svensson, author of the book and article and friend to Mikael Blomkvist, is murdered in his home along with his wife Mia. Mikael is fairly certain that the murders have something to do with the material in Dag's book, but due to an unusual set of circumstances, Lisbeth Salander is being sought in connection with the crime instead. But now Lisbeth has gone into hiding, and while Mikael desperately searches for pieces of a really bizarre puzzle in an to attempt to prove her innocence, some of what's uncovered reaches deep into the highest levels of international security. It seems someone will do whatever it takes to keep a secret!
When I finished this book my first thought was, "Whoa, what a ride!" I'm not sure why several people told me they couldn't get past the first few chapters. I agree that like the first book in the trilogy, things may have started off a little slow, but before I was even halfway through, I was having a hard time putting this one down. Though this book could actually stand alone, it certainly adds a lot to have read The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo first. For that reason, some initial character development and past story line summaries were scattered throughout the beginning of the book. Perhaps that turned some people off, I don't know.
One thing I have to mention again though, and I believe I said this in my review for The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo too, I don't particularly care for the convention of calling characters by their last name. Especially with these non-American names which (to me) so many of them look or sound alike. What's nice about reading on the Kindle though is it makes it super easy to just highlight and search on the name to get a refresher, otherwise I'd probably find this a lot more burdensome than just a minor distraction. Overall, a great read and two thumbs up! I've already started on the final book in the trilogy, The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest.
3 comments Posted by Cherie at 7:22 PM
Tags: mystery/thriller
Monday, April 16, 2012
REVIEW: Cirque du Freak #11: Lord of the Shadows by Darren Shan
Eighteen years after he was pronounced dead and buried, Darren Shan is heading home. The Cirque du Freak is performing in Darren's home town, and though there's the chance he might run into people he used to know and have to explain why he hasn't aged, the greater threat is that this is where destiny has led him, and the fate of both the Vampire and Vampaneze races will be determined by a single battle that is to take place here with the Vampaneze Lord.
This is the 11th book and second to last in the Cirque du Freak series. As usual, it was a super quick read and I thoroughly enjoyed it. I really like the author's way with words as he describes everything so vividly. And also, he throws in reminders of past characters and events as needed in the story line so even if you've gone awhile in between books, you can easily pick up and recall relevant events from previous books.
I noticed at one point they tried to make a movie out of these books, but it didn't do well at all. I don't recall the details but I remember that it didn't follow the book at all, way too many differences, and the screenplay didn't appear to be written very well at all. It's too bad really because if done right, this 12 book series could easily fit into a couple of 2 hour movies. And they'd be great!
BookCrossing journal page for this book
0 comments Posted by Cherie at 4:22 AM
Tags: horror, paranormal/occult, young adult
Friday, April 13, 2012
REVIEW: The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo by Stieg Larsson
Mikael Blomkvist is a 42-year old financial journalist recently accused of libel and facing three months in prison and some pretty hefty fines. After his trial, Mikael is approached by retired industrialist Henrik Vanger with an offer to write the Vanger family history and do a little extra research into the 1966 disappearance of his great niece Harriet. Henrik has been obsessed with Harriet's disappearance for the last 36 years and is convinced that someone in the family is behind her murder, despite the fact that the previous investigation has turned up no evidence to support that supposition. In exchange, Henrik offers to hand over some dirt on Hans-Erik Wennerström, the financier which Mikael is attempting to expose.
With help from some unlikely sources, including 24-year-old Lisbeth Salander, a genius hacker with Asperger's and a large assortment of tattoos and body piercings, they uncover some seriously sick shit that someone will go out of their way to keep hidden. And which puts Mikael right in the line of fire.
Though it starts off a bit slow, this book picked up speed about halfway through and got so that I couldn't put it down. I have to say this was definitely a multi-layered story with a lot going on and some serious undertones. For example, Lisbeth Salander looks and acts like some kind of anti-social street punk but she's actually extremely intelligent, has a near photographic memory, and is simply a product of all the shit she's been through. She's pretty much had to raise herself and up until recently, nobody has really taken the time or interest to help her acclimate. There's also the whole issue about violence against women which comes up several times in the course of the story, and again, the way Lisbeth deals with it, I'd say she's anything but a victim.
Because this was translated from the original Swedish text, there were a couple things here and there that bugged me a little. The author's habit of referring to characters by their last name instead of their first was one. Perhaps it's a European thing but I just couldn't wrap my head around a woman called Berger, or a young girl called Salander. (Which I kept wanting to read as Salamander. LOL) Also, some of the descriptions, especially pertaining to computer stuff, could be a bit tedious:
"He used the NotePad programme (www.ibrium.se), one of those full-value products that two men at the Royal Technical College had created and distributed as shareware for a pittance on the Internet."Or,
"The rucksack contained her white Apple iBook 600 with 25-gig hard drive and 420 megs of RAM, manufactured in January 2002 and equipped with a 14-inch screen."The above are just a couple of examples where the added details had absolutely no bearing on the rest of the story and seemed a bit out of place. I assume this was the way it came through in the translation, but I'm surprised all that superfluous detail wasn't edited out.
Those minor points aside, I really enjoyed this book and am looking forward to reading the next book in the Millennium trilogy, The Girl Who Played With Fire, very soon.
0 comments Posted by Cherie at 4:53 AM
Tags: mystery/thriller
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New Balance Jr PH237ED shoes
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WASHINGTON — President Joe Biden is set to meet Pope Francis when he visits the Vatican later this month as part of a five-day swing through Italy and the U.K. for global economic and climate change meetings.
Biden plans to discuss the coronavirus pandemic, the climate crisis and poverty during his meeting with the pope, according to the White House. The meeting will take place on Oct. 29, and Biden will then attend a two-day summit of G-20 leaders in Rome, before heading to Glasgow, Scotland for the U.N. climate conference known as COP26.
Biden, who is Roman Catholic, often speaks of his faith in public and attends Mass every weekend. But his political views, including his support for gay marriage and abortion rights, have at times put him at odds with Catholic doctrine and brought controversy and criticism from some leaders of the Catholic church.
Earlier this year, a number of Catholic bishops proposed drafting a document that would rebuke Biden and other Catholic politicians for receiving Communion despite their support for abortion rights. The issue of Communion is expected to be discussed at the bishops' national meeting in mid-November, but any document that emerges is not expected to mention Biden or other politicians by name.
Biden has met with Pope Francis three times before — first, when Francis was inaugurated as pope, in 2013, later during the pope's 2015 visit to the U.S., and again in 2016, when Biden visited the Vatican for a conference on regenerative medicine, where he spoke on cancer prevention. He keeps a photo of one of his meetings with the pope behind his desk in the Oval Office.
First lady Jill Biden will join her husband for his meeting with the pope.


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just installed and sounds great!- EQ settings -6db all 5 bands for natural sound. which preamp would be adequate for PA compatibility?
No announcement yet.
lyric and loud old D28
new posts
lyric and loud old D28Tags: None
Hey James,
I'm glad to hear that you are liking the Lyric in your D-28. I'm happy to help you pick out a preamp that will help you interface with a PA.
I would recommend the Para DI or the Venue DI for a good external preamp/DI. I've used the Para DI for about 10 years, and the Venue for almost 5, now- and both have excellent features that compliment the Lyric. I would probably recommend the Venue over the Para DI, mostly because of the Venue's extra Mid-EQ band and more precise Notch Filter. The Para DI will definitely work well with the Lyric, but the added features of the Venue DI definitely give an extra amount of control that can be helpful in more "uncontrolled" environments.
Since the Lyric is a microphone, it will react to different rooms and amps/PA systems in a variety of ways. Being able to control that response is a big benefit. The isolated DI on the Venue makes for a very clean output into any PA system.
If you have any more questions about the Para DI or the Venue, just let me know.
aren't these preamps designed for pickups?
The Para DI and the Venue DI were both designed to work as multi-instrument preamps. They are not specifically designed for pickups either. I've used my Para DI with a Mandolin, Violin, Electric Bass/Guitar, Keyboard, as well as a bunch of other things in the studio. I've used the Venue for a lot of that stuff too, I just haven't had it as long Actually, I've even used a SM58 dynamic microphone with a 1/4" adapter, into the Para DI. I needed some extra EQ for the mic, and it worked really well.
So there are no incompatibilities there, as far as pickups vs. mics. The Lyric cannot be solely powered by the Venue or the Para DI, but it interfaces with both preamps very well as a second gain stage. All of our Lyric demos on our website were recorded through Venue DI's.


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How to treat a sunburn
How to treat a sunburn
We all know that preventing sunburn is the best. But what do you do if you get sunburn? I'm Dr. Alan Greene. Let's talk about that together. When you have a burn from the sun, a radiation burn from the sun, there are a couple of things going on. One is that there's a heat injury. The skin gets hot. You can feel it when you touch it. You can feel it in the burn itself. And another is the outer protective layer is damaged, so the skin can dry out too easily. So the keys to treating a sunburn are to keep the skin cool and moist. So, one great way to do that is with what we call a cool compress. Just take a washcloth. Put some cool water in there and press gently onto the skin. Or you might do a shower - frequent, cool, and lukewarm showers. Either way right afterwards you want to slather on a good moisturizer to try to seal some of that water in, moisture in, preferably a moisturizer that doesn't contain alcohol or any other drying agent.
Another time-honored remedy is the Aloe vera plant. And there's some recent studies questioning how effective it really is, but many people swear by it. You cut a little tip off the end of the plant and that gel you rub just directly onto the sunburn itself. And it certainly feels soothing and may help beyond that.
Another piece of treating sunburn is to deal with the pain and the inflammation. And for that you might try acetaminophen for the pain or ibuprofen for the pain and inflammation both. Hopefully that will at least take the edge off. But also hopefully that discomfort will help remind you next time to take extra steps to prevent sunburn.


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I was wondering whether this lighthearted (ok – silly) cartoon technique would be an effective way of presenting a debate. What do you think of of this redux of the discussion Cirilia and I had about hat knitting awhile back? (I know folks are passionate about their preference on the debated subject).
What might we debate next?
– Norah


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• A CBS poll shows that Sarah Palin is pretty unpopular. Unsurprisingly, only 7% of Democrats have a positive view of the former governor of Alaska, and 43% of Republicans can say the same.
Also interesting: Palin ranked really low among college grads, the majority of which disapprove of Sarah. • In other Palin news, she announced at a Michele Bachmann rally yesterday that, "Someone better tell Washington that that pink elephant is on the move, and 2010 is shaping up to be the year that conservative women get together and help take back this country." • And one such "pink elephant," Bachmann supporter Betty Soban, says she's for "freedom of ownership. Freedom of our guns. Freedom of having babies." Interesting definition of "freedom." • "A group of cheerleaders from Texas were suspended or otherwise punished after they spiked a girl's drink with urine. They reportedly mixed some pee into a soda, brought it to a restaurant, and tricked their friend into drinking the gross cocktail. • Glee star Lea Michele isn't the "clean" girl you'd expect her to be. Why? Because she has tattoos! Nine of them, in fact. The Sun has the (incredibly boring) inside scoop. • According to a new study, men and women are equally guilty of using their looks to manipulate members of the opposite sex. However, women generally have more success with the tactic. • Female scientists may be being held back by an unexpected weight. The burden of housework has helped to drain America's finest minds by keeping many women overly busy with things like vacuuming and dusting. A recent study found that, among tenure-track faculty, female scientists in long-term relationships reported doing 54% of the housework, while male scientists only did 28%. • A new study found that talking can have beneficial results for pregnant women. Something as simple as a conversation can help drastically cut neonatal mortality rates in rural communities, which is why a new program in India focuses on educating moms through "self-help groups." So far, results have been positive. • Brought to you from Yemen, the most depressing news you will read today: A 13-year-old child bride died five days ago after suffering internal hemorrhaging in her sex organs. She was married to the older groom just last week, in a traditional "swap" marriage. • An attorney for one of the five suspects charged with the rape of a seven-year-old girl at a party in New Jersey is arguing that the girl was not actually raped, and was pressured to give a false account. Police say the child was sold to several men by her older step-sister, who also engaged in sexual acts with several men. • Researchers have found a link between men's perceived happiness in marriage and their likelihood of dying from a stroke. However, they are not willing to say yet whether "happiness is a magic bullet" that keeps men alive. • A Wisconsin prosecutor is trying to stop teachers from demonstrating proper condom use to high school students in sex ed. He argues that, if the teachers know a student is sexually active, showing them how to use protection could amount to contributing to the delinquency of a minor. He also says that the instruction encourages sexual behavior among children. • Hattie Hasan was sick of being treated like a novelty item simply because she had chosen a "masculine" profession, so she started a company of female plumbers, wittily named Stopcocks. "The Stopcocks Business Scheme gives women plumbers a way to be part of a national brand, build up their customer base and increase their skills and speed without worrying about the business side of things so they can concentrate on the thing that earns the money... the plumbing," she explains. • A spokeswoman from the UK Health Protection Agency warns that gonorrhea may become a "superbug." Some strains of the STD are already resistant to certain medications, and doctors fear that someday it could become untreatable. • Lawmakers in Pakistan are considering a bill that would make domestic violence illegal. Currently, 80% of Pakistani women living in rural areas say they fear physical violence from their husbands, and 50% of urban women say their husbands beat them. Detractors argue that it could undermine families and tear apart the social fabric. • Camilla, the Duchess of Cornwall, broke her leg yesterday while "hill-walking" at the Prince of Wales' private home. Prince Charles was not with her at the time of the fall. • Gregory Giusti, the man accused of threatening Nancy Pelosi, cried in court today when a judge sent him back to jail instead of to a halfway house. • A fart-fetishist says he was sexually assaulted by a man he met online. He says he went to the man's house expecting that they could "fart and be friends" but was forced to engage in a variety of sexual acts. •


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Hard Rock & Metal virtuoso/"Guitar World" columnist/"Dangerous Guitar" video instructor Dave Reffett will perform a "Guitar Clinic Masterclass" on January 17th, 2014 at the "Rock Art Metal School" in Mexico City. Reffett will share with Mexican guitar enthusiasts his tips, techniques and approach to his unique style of playing. Reffett has played with the best of the best in music, players such as: Guthrie Govan, Jeff Loomis (Nevermore), Michael Romeo (Symphony X), Mike Mangini (Dream Theater), Michael Angelo Batio, Rusty Cooley, Craig Goldy (Ronnie James Dio) and George Lynch (Dokken) just to name a few.
Original "Anthrax" vocalist Neil Turbin (who sang on the groups 1st album "Fistful Of Metal") will be doing a "Vocal / Singing clinic masterclass" at the "Rock Art Metal School" on January 18th, 2014. Then Reffett & Turbin will be performing a concert that night on January 18th, 2014 at the "Comandancia Metal Club" in Mexico City.
Opening the concert will be Mexican metal masters Calvaria, Lead Soldier, Metallium Band Master's, and The Sexorcist.


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China Miéville, author of Perdido Street Station and The City & The City, joins us to discuss Dungeons & Dragons, international relations, and his recent science fiction novel Embassytown.
Art by Vincent Chong.
Geek's Guide to the Galaxy is hosted by John Joseph Adams and David Barr Kirtley.
You can download the MP3 for this episode here, subscribe to The Geek's Guide to the Galaxy podcast feed here, and browse other episodes here.
This episode includes:
Part 1: Interview with China Miéville (1:49)
Topics covered: Embassytown, science fiction and scientific rigor, influences on Embassytown, Dungeons & Dragons, looking back on Bas-Lag, the current state of steampunk, China's new tattoo, political uprisings, Marxism, book covers, Could They Beat Up China Miéville?, "Covehithe"
Part 2: Dave and John Discuss China Miéville and the New Weird (35:02)
Topics covered: Encountering China Miéville, Perdido Street Station, obscure words, The Scar, beyond Bas-Lag, refrigerator men, Cthulhu, the New Weird, The New Weird anthology edited by Ann and Jeff Vandermeer, the Cthulhu of literary genres, Steph Swainston quitting writing, the influence of the New Weird, The Scar in virtual reality, copyright issues, Miéville film adaptations
Thanks for listening!
John Joseph Adams is an anthologist, a writer, and a geek. He is the bestselling editor of the anthologies Brave New Worlds, Wastelands, The Living Dead, The Living Dead 2, By Blood We Live, Federations, The Way of the Wizard, and The Improbable Adventures of Sherlock Holmes. Forthcoming anthologies include Under the Moons of Mars: New Adventures on Barsoom (Simon & Schuster, 2012), Armored (Baen, 2012), and The Mad Scientist's Guide to World Domination (Tor, 2012). He is a 2011 Hugo Award-nominee for Best Editor (Short Form), his books have been nominated for the World Fantasy Award, and he has been called "the reigning king of the anthology world" by Barnes & Noble.com. He is also the editor of Lightspeed Magazine and Fantasy Magazine. Find him on Twitter @johnjosephadams.
David Barr Kirtley has published fiction in magazines such as Realms of Fantasy, Weird Tales, Lightspeed,Intergalactic Medicine Show, On Spec, and Cicada, and in anthologies such as New Voices in Science Fiction,Fantasy: The Best of the Year, and The Dragon Done It. Recently he's contributed stories to several of John's anthologies, including The Living Dead, The Living Dead 2, and The Way of the Wizard. He's attended numerous writing workshops, including Clarion, Odyssey, Viable Paradise, James Gunn's Center for the Study of Science Fiction, and Orson Scott Card's Writers Bootcamp, and he holds an MFA in screenwriting and fiction from the University of Southern California. He also teaches regularly at Alpha, a Pittsburgh-area science fiction workshop for young writers. He lives in New York.
Friend us on Facebook and follow us on Twitter. If you enjoy the show, please consider making a donation via PayPal and/or signing up for a free trial with our sponsor, Audible.com.


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Harold Ross had a theory about magazines. He believed that the humor in journals like Life was stale because by having a readership spread out over the nation, editors and writers could not get the material out fast enough to their readers. He wanted to create a weekly magazine that would not have a lengthy delay between deadline and delivery, and could stay in tip-top form, always on its toes with current events and wit. He was intrigued by local flavor and wanted to churn out a metropolitan magazine of wit as quickly as a weekly newspaper was produced. European humor magazines proliferated at the time, like Germany's Simplicissimus and London's Punch, and Ross thought it was time the Americans caught up.
The original conception of The New Yorker was to create a weekly humor magazine which was intended for an elite local audience. Ross was convinced that the residents of New York were unique and therefore were deserving of their own magazine, similar in concept to the city-based magazines that were springing up around the country in the 1930s. The readership and popularity of the publication grew until it enveloped a mass market of educated and sophisticated consumers, not all perhaps New Yorkers themselves, but "persons with a metropolitan interest."
But Ross was not only selling a magazine--he was selling a way of life, a slice of the city. Readers might live in Dubuque and not in New York, but they could get an insider's glimpse into the fast-paced cultural capital of the world through its pages. While the reader certainly wasn't going to get asked out to lunch with the Algonquin Round Tablers, reading The New Yorker could be a way to eavesdrop into the conversation of the witty exhanges and cultural topics that bubbled up to the surface in the text of the magazine. This idea of being able to purchase a sophisticated lifestyle, or at least an intimate glimpse of it, proved very attractive to many readers. Readers might not fool themselves into believing they belonged in that world, but they could imagine themselves there and could vicariously bask in the glow of high culture and literary circles.
| Contextualizing
the Covers
| Covering
the War
House Style
|The New
Yorker Staff
& Audience


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Van Halen Reportedly NOT Appearing at Grammy Nominations Show After All
Silly us, assuming that a post on the official twitter account for the Grammys — "Who do you predict the reuniting band will be @ GRAMMYnoms? Does this hint make you wanna 'Jump' & 'Dance The Night Away?'" — suggested that Van Halen would appear onstage Nov. 30 at the Grammy nominations show to announce their reunion plans. A source tells Rolling Stone magazine that a VH Grammy show appearance is not in the cards, although a spokesperson for the Grammys did not immediately respond to a comment request.
That said, Rolling Stone does confirm reports that Van Halen have signed with Santa Monica, Calif.-based Interscope Records, which means the band's next album will be the band's first ever not to be released by their longtime label, Warner Brothers. The as-yet-untitled disc, which will also be the first full-length platter with original lead singer David Lee Roth since 1984′s aptly-title '1984,' has a rumored February release date.
Van Halen were expected to sign with Columbia Records, but reportedly were pursued heavily by Interscope chairman Jimmy Iovine, who according to the The Hollywood Insider, "heard the band was available and wanted to work with them. It was decided at the 11th hour." VH were presented with a 360 deal that included marketing, merchandising, touring and recording revenues.
A source told The Hollywood Insider that the Columbia deal was doomed simply because singer David Lee Roth wanted to sign with a West Coast-based label. "He was never on board [with Columbia]," the source revealed. "It was as complicated as anyone would imagine, when one side says black, the other says white. The label was pretty skeptical that things would work out."
We know about DLR's thing for 'California Girls,' but West Coast labels? We can't even think of something witty to say about that one.


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Poor Luigi, always in Mario's shadow. Even when Luigi set off on his own ghost-wrangling adventure in Luigi's Mansion over a decade ago, it was still as though he was defined by Mario's absence. The game dedicated a whole button to calling out Mario's name!
In the new 3DS sequel Luigi's Mansion: Dark Moon, the green-clad Mario brother is pulled back into the ghostbusting business. The ghosts are going haywire, you see. It's up to you round them up. You do this by unloading a charge of your flashlight on ghosts, and then using your trusty Poltergust 5000, a ghostbusting device that straps onto your back, to suck the ghosts up. That's not all you can do with it, though. The Poltergust 5000 has two functions: vacuuming and blowing. Like in the first game, you use these abilities to poke and prod your way through rooms. Who knew so many of the world's problems could be solved with an overpowered vacuum?
You'll capture ghosts, solve puzzles, and generally cause havoc. You aren't the only one causing mischief, either. The cackling, conniving ghosts cause trouble, but they're clearly having a lot of fun while they're at it. It reminds me a little of superstitious belief in some religious communities that says that when we lose things, it's really ghosts and angels having a ball with our possessions; nothing malicious per se.
Dark Moon feels supersized in comparison to the original game. There are six mansions (!), each with a bevy of themed rooms and multiple floors. The number of things you can do is huge, too—you can go from riding balloons, to watering plants, to setting things on fire and just about everything in between; this game features far more puzzles and objects to interact with than the first game did.
It's an adventure so grand and extensive that you won't wonder where Mario is. This is Luigi's adventure, and that's great, because honestly? Luigi is the more interesting character-even if he is a total scaredy-cat. It's funny to see the green-hatted brother cower and chatter his teeth at anything that moves, and it feels like he has more texture than Mario does.
The flip side of having such an extensive adventure is that, at times, the game feels like it drags on. If the first game could be criticized for being too short (or, in my books, just long enough), the new Luigi's Mansion could be criticized for being too long. You can tell Nintendo took the criticisms to heart and did their best to try to provide "value," but they resort to padding the game a bit too often.
WHY: Exploring abandoned mansions and bustin' ghosts: what's not to like?
Luigi's Mansion: Dark Moon
Developer: Next Level Games
Platforms: Nintendo 3DS
Release Date: March 24th
Type of game: Adventure game with supernatural fishing—an odd combination, but trust me, it works.
What I played: Got to the final boss battle after about 21 hours of playtime. Messed around with the multiplayer for a few rounds, no more than a couple of hours.
My Two Favorite Things
- The jingle that plays every time Professor E. Gadd calls Luigi.
- Actually, Professor E. Gadd, period. I love it when that crazed man talks.
My Two Least-Favorite Things
- Backtracking. Too much backtracking.
- The game could definitely be shorter. (This time I have to go through and clean the mansion?))
Made-to-Order Back-of-Box Quotes
- "F*ck Mario. Luigi's where it's at." —Patricia Hernandez, Kotaku.com
- "These stupid ghosts better not steal my house keys." —Patricia Hernandez, Kotaku.com
- "Luigi, when someone asks you if you're a god, you say YES."—Patricia Hernandez, Kotaku.com
You go into all the mansions with the purpose of collecting the dark moon piece hidden inside, but each mansion is broken down into smaller levels. Even if you enter knowing exactly where the piece is, something always happens to get in the way: you might, for instance, have to recover an item deep inside the mansion, only to have it stolen by ghosts, but then you recover it, but then it gets stolen by a ghost-dog, then you recover it, and then…
The fragmented setup can lead to a lot of backtracking as you search for what might be different in a familiar location across multiple levels, which contributes to the padded feeling. But the level structure makes me think the game is best played in short bursts—no more than 30, maybe 40 minutes for later levels. That way, you don't end up backtracking too much in one go. When most of the levels are about 20 minute affairs, and because Dark Moon makes you hungry for exploration, keeping to short play sessions might be difficult.
I often wanted to keep going, even when the game absolutely stumped me—which happened more times than I expected. The folks at Next Level Games are clever indeed. Dark Moon is a game for the observant; you can think of it a little like a point-and-click adventure game. The objects you need to interact with may not always be immediately obvious—heck, they might not be visible at all.
That's where your new dark light comes into play, which you can use to make hidden objects appear. You use the same intuition you might in a Mario game when you think "this is where an invisible block would be," only in this case, it would be some sort of everyday household item, like a vase or a dresser. Actually realizing that an item is missing someplace can take a while.
Solving puzzles and going deeper into the mansions also means encountering ghosts. Like before, you can think of ghost hunting as supernatural fishing, with the player having to 'reel in' the ghosts. The ghosts will struggle and try to run away. You have to tilt the circle pad in the opposite direction. At the start of the game, catching ghosts is rather easy, but as you go along, not only does their HP increase, but stunning them with your flashlight becomes more difficult. Maybe they're wearing sunglasses. Maybe they're in a full suit of armor. You need to figure out how to deal with different types of situations, which can keep things fresh.
The ghosts, in a way, are what disappointed me most about this game. In the first Luigi's Mansion, the major ghosts were all characters—people who used to inhabit the spaces you explore. Ghosts so attached to the material plane, they continued living out their daily existence in the afterlife. It also made it feel as if Luigi was intruding, as if it wasn't really Luigi's mansion. (These newer mansions don't belong to Luigi either though! Why are the games called "Luigi's Mansion"?)
You only get repeating cannon-fodder ghosts, which made it difficult for me to get invested in that side of the game. It felt like the ghost-hunting was something I did in between puzzles rather than something fun to do for its own sake. It wasn't until the later portion of the game, where it gave me intense ghost battles, that I felt thrilled by these otherworldly encounters. Really, the latter half of the game is where Dark Moon shines—the game takes its gloves off and gives you environments without maps, multi-room spanning puzzles, and mansions that are exotic enough that they can't be compared to the mansion in the first game.
That last bit is crucial, since at the start, Dark Moon might feel like a rehash of the first game, only not as good thanks to the ghosts' relative lack of character and ample backtracking. Newer players won't have a point of reference and might not care, though. My colleague Kirk Hamilton hasn't played the first game, and tells me he finds the new one to be quite charming.
The boss battles, meanwhile, tended to infuriate me. Without giving anything away, some battles felt too obtuse, while others require you to go through too much tedium. I suspect that half of my game time was me either being stuck in puzzles, or stuck on boss battles. I wanted to quit the game multiple times, and probably would have were I not reviewing it—but, I'm glad I stuck through it, since the game truly does have outstanding moments.
Finally there's multiplayer. You gotta give props to something called "Scarescrapper." There are four modes in Scarescrapper: Hunter, Rush, Polterpup and Surprise. I didn't dabble with multiplayer too much; I've only played a few matches with fellow Kotaku editors. Hunter reminds me a bit of a roguelike: the point is to climb through floors, capturing all the ghosts on the floor. You don't know what items do at first until you get them, and the rooms are randomly generated.
I also played Polterpup, which involves chasing down ghost puppies throughout levels. Both require coordination and communication with your teammates, as you'll need help with tough rooms, or to undo curses, traps and the like. Surprisingly, ghosthunting lends itself pretty well to multiplayer. I won't say it's on Mario Kart's level, but definitely something to mess around with if you're curious. It's too bad that you can't use the 3DS to talk to your friends while playing, and that you can't join mid-game (which makes falling out of a game a major bummer, as you'll have to restart). Though this does seem like a game that would be really fun to play locally, with three other players in the same room. Not everyone has to own the game to play, though the local download-play options are more limited than if everyone has the full game.
Nintendo has deemed 2013 the "Year of Luigi." And while Luigi's Mansion may not have felt like a game that needed a sequel, Dark Moon exists, and it has something to prove: Luigi can carry a game all by himself. I'm not convinced the series needed to go for more, more, more, (bigger! better! faster!) but I'm sold on Luigi himself. In fact, I want to see more of Luigi than I do his famous brother. Even if Luigi is kind of a goof.


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If You Thought Police Brutality Was Bad … Wait Until You See What Congress Wants to Do Next Week
The police brutality against peaceful protesters in Berkeley, Davis, Oakland and elsewhere is bad enough.
But next week, Congress will vote on explicitly creating a police state.
The ACLU's Washington legislative office explains:
The Senate is gearing up for a vote on Monday or Tuesday that goes to the very heart of who we are as Americans. The Senate will be voting on a bill that will direct American military resources not at an enemy shooting at our military in a war zone, but at American citizens and other civilians far from any battlefield — even people in the United States itself.
The Senate is going to vote on whether Congress will give this president—and every future president — the power to order the military to pick up and imprison without charge or trial civilians anywhere in the world.
The power is so broad that even U.S. citizens could be swept up by the military and the military could be used far from any battlefield, even within the United States itself. The worldwide indefinite detention without charge or trial provision is in S. 1867, the National Defense Authorization Act bill, which will be on the Senate floor on Monday.
I know it sounds incredible. New powers to use the military worldwide, even within the United States? Hasn't anyone told the Senate that Osama bin Laden is dead, that the president is pulling all of the combat troops out of Iraq and trying to figure out how to get combat troops out of Afghanistan too? And American citizens and people picked up on American or Canadian or British streets being sent to military prisons indefinitely without even being charged with a crime. Really? Does anyone think this is a good idea? And why now?
In support of this harmful bill, Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) explained that the bill will "basically say in law for the first time that the homeland is part of the battlefield" and people can be imprisoned without charge or trial "American citizen or not." Another supporter, Sen. Kelly Ayotte (R-N.H.) also declared that the bill is needed because "America is part of the battlefield."
The senators pushing the indefinite detention proposal have made their goals very clear that they want an okay for a worldwide military battlefield, that even extends to your hometown.
Part of an Ongoing Trend
While this is shocking, it is not occurring in a vacuum. Indeed, it is part of a 30 year-long process of militarization inside our borders and a destruction of the American concepts of limited government and separation of powers.
As I pointed out in May:
The ACLU noted yesterday [that] Congress is proposing handing permanent, world-wide war-making powers to the president – including the ability to make war within the United States:
As I noted in 2008:
An article in the Army Times reveals that the 3rd Infantry Division's 1st Brigade Combat Team will be redeployed from Iraq to domestic operations within the United States.
The unit will soon be under the day-to-day control of US Army North, the Army service component of Northern Command. The Army Times reports this new mission marks the first time an active unit has been given a dedicated assignment to Northern Command. The paper says the Army unit may be called upon to help with "civil unrest" and "crowd control".
The soldiers are learning to use so-called "nonlethal weapons" designed to subdue unruly or dangerous individuals and crowds.
This violates posse comitatus and the Constitution. But, hey, we're in a "national emergency", so who cares, right?
(We're still in a declared state of national emergency).
I noted a couple of months later:
Everyone knows that deploying 20,000 troops on U.S. soil violates Posse Comitatus and the Constitution.
And everyone understands that staging troops within the U.S. to "help out with civil unrest and crowd control" increases the danger of overt martial law.
But no one is asking an obvious question: Does the government's own excuse for deploying the troops make any sense?
Other Encroachments On Civil Rights Under Obama
As bad as Bush was, the truth is that, in many ways, freedom and constitutional rights are under attack even more than during the Bush years.
Obama has presided over the most draconian crackdown on leaks in our history — even more so than Nixon.
As Marjorie Cohen – professor at Thomas Jefferson School of Law and past president of the National Lawyers Guild – writes at the American Constitution Society for Law and Policy:
Army Pfc. Bradley Manning, who is facing court-martial for leaking military reports and diplomatic cables to WikiLeaks, is being held in solitary confinement in Quantico brig in Virginia. Each night, he is forced to strip naked and sleep in a gown made of coarse material. He has been made to stand naked in the morning as other inmates walked by and looked. As journalist Lance Tapley documents in his chapter on torture in the supermax prisons in The United States and Torture, solitary confinement can lead to hallucinations and suicide; it is considered to be torture. Manning's forced nudity amounts to humiliating and degrading treatment, in violation of U.S. and international law.
Nevertheless, President Barack Obama defended Manning's treatment, saying, "I've actually asked the Pentagon whether or not the procedures . . . are appropriate. They assured me they are." Obama's deference is reminiscent of President George W. Bush, who asked "the most senior legal officers in the U.S. government" to review the interrogation techniques. "They assured me they did not constitute torture," Bush said.
After State Department spokesman P.J. Crowley criticized Manning's conditions of confinement, the White House forced him to resign. Crowley had said the restrictions were "ridiculous, counterproductive and stupid." It appears that Washington is more intent on sending a message to would-be whistleblowers than on upholding the laws that prohibit torture and abuse.
Torture is commonplace in countries strongly allied with the United States. Vice President Omar Suleiman, Egypt's intelligence chief, was the lynchpin for Egyptian torture when the CIA sent prisoners to Egypt in its extraordinary rendition program. A former CIA agent observed, "If you want a serious interrogation, you send a prisoner to Jordan. If you want them to be tortured, you send them to Syria. If you want someone to disappear – never to see them again – you send them to Egypt." In her chapter in The United States and Torture, New Yorker journalist Jane Mayer cites Egypt as the most common destination for suspects rendered by the United States.
As I pointed out in March:
Former constitutional law teacher Glenn Greenwald says that – in his defense of state secrecy, illegal spying, preventative detention, harassment of whistleblowers and other issues of civil liberties – Obama is even worse than Bush.
Indeed, Obama has authorized "targeted assassinations" against U.S. citizens. Even Bush didn't openly do something so abhorrent to the rule of law.
Obama is trying to expand spying well beyond the Bush administration's programs. Indeed, the Obama administration is arguing that citizens should never be able to sue the government for illegal spying.
Obama's indefinite detention policy is an Orwellian nightmare, which will create more terrorists.
Furthermore – as hard as it is for Democrats to believe – the disinformation and propaganda campaigns launched by Bush have only increased under Obama. See this and this.
And as I pointed out last year:
According to Department of Defense training manuals, protest is considered "low-level terrorism". And see this, this and this.
An FBI memo also labels peace protesters as "terrorists".
A 2003 FBI memo describes protesters' use of videotaping as an "intimidation" technique, even though – as the ACLU points out – "Most mainstream demonstrators often use videotape during protests to document law enforcement activity and, more importantly, deter police from acting outside the law." The FBI appears to be objecting to the use of cameras to document unlawful behavior by law enforcement itself.
The Internet has been labeled as a breeding ground for terrorists, with anyone who questions the government's versions of history being especially equated with terrorists.
Government agencies such as FEMA are allegedly teaching that the Founding Fathers should be considered terrorists.
The government is also using anti-terrorism laws to keep people from learning what pollutants are in their own community. See this, this, this and this.
Claims of "national security" are also used to keep basic financial information – such as who got bailout money – secret. That might not bode for particularly warm and friendly treatment for someone persistently demanding the release of such information.
The state of Missouri tried to label as terrorists current Congressman Ron Paul and his supporters, former Congressman Bob Barr, libertarians in general, anyone who holds gold, and a host of other people.
And according to a law school professor and former president of the National Lawyers Guild, pursuant to the Military Commissions Act:
Anyone who … speaks out against the government's policies could be declared an "unlawful enemy combatant" and imprisoned indefinitely. That includes American citizens.
Obama has refused to reverse these practices.
There Is Still a Chance to Stop It
The ACLU notes that there is some hope:
But there is a way to stop this dangerous legislation. Sen. Mark Udall (D-Colo.) is offering the Udall Amendment that will delete the harmful provisions and replace them with a requirement for an orderly Congressional review of detention power. The Udall Amendment will make sure that the bill matches up with American values.
The solution is the Udall Amendment; a way for the Senate to say no to indefinite detention without charge or trial anywhere in the world where any president decides to use the military. Instead of simply going along with a bill that was drafted in secret and is being jammed through the Senate, the Udall Amendment deletes the provisions and sets up an orderly review of detention power. It tries to take the politics out and put American values back in.
Now is the time to stop this bad idea. Please urge your senators to vote YES on the Udall Amendment to the National Defense Authorization Act.


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The ten commandments of video game menusBy Kirk Hamilton 18 comments
A good video game menu is like a good roadie: It stays out of the way. But still, far too many menus waste far too much of our time. People want to play games, not mess around in menus!
We've gone up to the top of Video Game Mountain in search of answers, and have come down with ten rules all video game menus should obey. Ten "commandments," if you will.
10. Thou shalt allow players to skip the splash screens
For while players are no doubt excited about the Unreal Engine, Dolby Digital and Speedtree, they shall doubtless be less psyched about them after the hundredth time they watch the opening splash screens.
9. Thou shalt make "Continue" the first option in the main menu
For lo, many players art excited to continue their saved game, and so they press the A button repeatedly to skip through the splash screens (provided thou art obeying commandment #10), and therefore shall likely press 'A' straight through the main menu. This pressing of A shall take them into their most recent saved game. It shall not tell them that starting a new game will overwrite all auto-save information. Please mindeth the flow.
8. Thou shalt not place a montage video before the main menu
Looketh. We art all excited to play the game in question, but we already bought it, and there is no reason to play a hypey montage video before the menu even loads. We are about to see the game itself! We do not need to see any more trailers. If the game doesn't convince us it's awesome, no trailer before the game is going to. This is not Battlestar Galactica, and you know, come to think of it, we never understood why they played pre-episode clip-montages either.
Which brings us to this Sub-Commandment: Thou Shalt Not Cut Away From The Main Menu To Show An Attract-Mode Sizzle Reel Of The Game, For This Is Not A 1990s Arcade Cabinet.
7. Thou shalt automatically save settings once they are changed
For it is known that players like to tweak settings in the options menu, and shall become irate if they have to enter every menu twice to make sure that whatever settings they just implemented actually stuck. Again, this is known.
6. Thou shalt quit reminding us that the game auto-saves
While it is known that this is a requirement put in place by hardware manufacturers and publishers, it is also known that every single person who has ever played a video game is now aware that video games quick-save, and furthermore, if one were to turneth off the console in the middle of saving, it would somehow be detrimental to the system. However, if this were to actually happen, it would likely be because the power went out, not because the player decided this would be a good time to turn off the system.
5. We all shall agree where everything goes
For there are but a few basic types of menus, and we shall agree on what goes where. Subtitle toggling shall forever go under
audio, not video video, not audio. (Okay, we art convinced.) Y-axis inversion shall forever go under controls, not gameplay. Difficulty and violence filters shall be placed under gameplay, however. PC games shall condense the "video" and "graphics" menus into one menu called "video," because we think we can all agreeth that we do not need two menus for video options and that "graphics" is a silly term.
4. Thou shalt giveth the option to invert the Y axis before the game begins
In a perfect world, one without sin, all games would be like Xbox 360 games and would remember your preference. But until we arrive at that perfect world, all games shall give some sort of access to the options menu before the game begins, so that the very first thing a player does in the actual game isn't pause to invert the Y-axis. Or worse, try to pause only to accidentally skip the very first cutscene.
3. Thou shalt agree to use 'A' to advance and 'B' to go back
Whatever the menu or the function, the 'A' button shall move players one step forward, while the 'B' button shall move players one step back, eventually landing them in the main menu. (Or, "X" and "O" for PlayStation.) The 'B' button shall not be required to get players into the game (we are looking at you, Mass Effect), nor shall it be used to quit the actual game (ahem, PC versions of Crysis 2 and Arkham City).
2. Thou shalt not bury the map behind more than one (1) level of menus. In fact, just anchor the map to the select button because come on already
Lo, it is understandable that there are a great many functions to assign to the various buttons on the controller, but the map is always one of the most important aspects of a game, and shall be easily accessible. Putting it behind even one extra layer of menus is annoying at first and maddening over time. Players shall not need to memorize a button combination just to quickly access the map.
1. Thou shalt always allow the player to quit to desktop
In every menu, there shall be one option called "Quit." Upon selecting that option, the player shalt be given one (1) pop-up menu that lets them either quit to the desktop (or dashboard) or to the main menu. Thou shalt not, under any circumstances, force players to first quit to the main menu, then quit again to the desktop. Thou shalt not get cute with the language in the qutting pop-up, and if thou placeth a loading screen between quitting and actually being out of the game, thou shalt rot in a special circle of Hell, where inconveniencers and meddlers go.
By obeying these commandments, game developers shall make video games a more user-friendly and enjoyable experience for all man and womankind.
So it has been written, so it shall be. One day. Hopefully.