text:
Drilon stews over Games cauldron
posted November 19, 2019 at 01:05 am by Macon Ramos-Araneta
Senate Minority Leader Franklin Drilon on Monday questioned the P50-million estimated cost of the stadium cauldron that will be lit during the opening ceremonies for the Southeast Asian Games.
An artist's sketch of the SEA Games cauldron
Drilon said the money could have been used to build 50 classrooms.
"A P50-million kaldero [cauldron]. Do you realize that at P1 million per classroom this can build 50 classrooms?" Drilon asked during the deliberations for the proposed 2020 budget of the Bases Conversion and Development Authority.
"In other words, we did away with 50 classrooms in exchange for one kaldero. Is this a correct conclusion?
"Is that reasonable? Is that a correct prioritization? We will spend P50 million for the kaldero that will be used only once?"
Earlier, Drilon pressed the BCDA over the cost of the stadium cauldron that would be used during the 30th SEA Games, which will be hosted by the Philippines from Nov. 30 to Dec. 11.
Senator Sonny Angara, who was defending the BCDA's 2020 budget, said the design cost of the cauldron amounted to P4.4 million while its foundation cost P13.4 million.
He said the production of the cauldron was under the Philippine Sports Commission and was designed by the late Filipino architect Bobby Mañosa.
Drilon then asked if the total cost of building the cauldron was P32 million, and to which Angara said yes.
Drilon then computed a round figure of P50 million for the stadium cauldron, which included the cost of the design and the foundation.
"A classroom costs P1 million, so we could have built 56 classrooms if the money of the people was not abused," he said.
Angara defended the cost.
"I think what the government is really envisioning was to do a really impressive hosting of the games and showcase Philippine ingenuity by using Philippine creative designers and performers," Angara said.
"I think this is what other Southeast Asian countries have also done when it was their turn to host [the games]."
He said the facilities would be made available for rent after the games.
Meanwhile, Senator Panfilo Lacson sponsored the proposed PP553.661-million budget of the Dangerous Drugs Board, which is lower than the 2019 budget.
The lower budget was due to many factors, including the non-recurring funding for the nationwide survey on the extent of drug abuse in the Philippines.
Lacson also sponsored the PP2.480-billion budget of the Philippine Drug Enforcement Agency, which is higher than the current year's budget.
The Breakdown of the DDB and PDEA's 2020 Budgets:
The proposed appropriation for the DDB is P553.661 million. From P283.006 million in the NEP, it was increased under the GAB as transmitted by the House to P533.6 million.
The Senate added another P20 million to augment the fund for the program monitoring and evaluation of the Philippine Anti-Illegal Drug Strategy (PADS).
While the Senate Finance Subcommittee C proposed adding P200 million to support the institutionalization of PADS, the mother committee adopted only P20 million.
Meanwhile, the proposed appropriation of the PDEA is P2.480 billion from P2.380 billion in the NEP and GAB.
Lacson said the DDB continued to improve the system of its drug information portal, which disseminates knowledge of the anti-drug campaign.
When asked to assess the DDB's drug abuse and prevention program on a scale of 1 to 10, Lacson gave it an '8.'
Topics: Franklin Drilon , Southeast Asian Games , Bases Conversion and Development Authority
Drilon's scam exposed
Gina's 'sacred cow' bared
Don't mess with Dick


text:
Q: Multiple command alias's So, my current folder structure has a subfolder called commands and inside of it are a bunch of files named x.js for commands. One of these is a version.js and I want to be able to add an alias to this so people don't need to type out !version all the time. However the problem I have with this is that I need to update both files and I was wondering (haven't had much luck with searches) if there's a way to either have my bot read !vers as !version or just always fetch the same code from version every time !vers is ran.
Here's the code I use to go about loading the commands and detection which is selected.
const init = async() => {
  if (message.author.bot) return;
  // Here we load **commands** into memory, as a collection, so they're accessible here and everywhere else.
  const cmdFiles = await readdir("./commands/");
  client.logger.log("Loading a total of ${cmdFiles.length} commands.");
  cmdFiles.forEach(f => {
    if (!f.endsWith(".js")) return;
    const response = client.loadCommand(f);
    if (response) console.log(response);
  });
}

Any help or atleast points to the right direction would be appreicated :D

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaStackExchange


In the grounds of The Boathouse on Ormesby Broad in Norfolk sits the unique woodland lodges, all beautifully finished and making the most of their natural setting.
The lodges are made of a timber frame open paneled construction with the roofs hand cut to sit on large glulam purlins.
The timber frame is clad inside and out with a cedar boarding and outside a hardwood decked veranda overlooks The Broads.


text: Altered motor performance and muscle strength in p75NTR−/− mice. a–e Young (2–4 months old) WT (n = 8) and p75NTR−/− (n = 8) mice were challenged in different motor tests. In the footprint test, p75NTR−/− mice displayed increased distance between steps (a) and increased distance between the fore and hind limbs steps (b) compared to WT controls. In the accelerating rotarod test, the latency time in two consecutive days was significantly decreased in p75NTR−/− mice compared to WT controls (c). Similarly, in the triple horizontal bar test (d) and the static bar test (e) p75NTR−/− mice had reduced scores and latency, respectively, compared to WT mice. f Representative X-ray images of WT and p75NTR−/− mice. The kyphotic index (KI) was calculated as the ratio between distances D1 and D2. g KI quantification show no differences between WT (n = 4) and p75NTR−/− (n = 3) mice. h–i Young (2–4 months old) WT and p75NTR−/− mice were challenged in two muscle strength tests. h In the Kondziela's inverted screen test, no differences were detected between WT and p75NTR−/− mice. However, in the weights test (i), p75NTR−/− mice (n = 6) obtained a significantly impaired score compared to WT mice (n = 5). The results represent the mean ± SEM. n.s., non-significant, *p < 0.5; **p < 0.1; ***p < 0.01, unpaired t-test (a, b, g–i), or two-way ANOVA (c–e)

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaCommonCrawl


The Peak2Peak Gondola connects Whistler Mountain and Blackcomb Mountain at a dizzying height of 436 metres(1427 feet). It runs all winter and in the summer when the mountains are open for sightseeing and hiking. The Peak2Peak Gondola runs very fast as it carries up to 4100 people per hour at 7.5 metres per second or 16.8 miles per hour!
The overall length you travel one way is 4.4 kilometres or 2.7 miles and that distance is covered in just 11 minutes! The entire 11 minutes is pretty thrilling right from the start as you creep along in the loading bay then suddenly shoot out at full speed, gaining elevation rapidly. Owing to the great span of the supporting columns, over 3 kilometres, the journey across dips down into the valley before rising up the other side. Despite this considerable dip in the middle, you are still chillingly high. From over 400 metres or nearly 1500 feet above the ground Fitzsimmons Creek and the thousands of treetops looks wonderfully distant. One side of the cabin faces Whistler Valley descending to Whistler Village and several lakes. Alta Lake and Lost Lake are visible and the much larger Green Lake in the distance. Fitzsimmons Creek that flows below runs through Whistler Village and into Green Lake. Green Lake then empties into Green River, north to Lillooet Lake. Lillooet Lake flows to Harrison Lake via Lillooet River, which then flows into the Fraser River which reaches the Pacific Ocean in Vancouver. An interesting characteristic of Whistler's other big lake, Alta Lake is that it flows in two directions. One end flows to Green Lake via the River of Golden Dreams then the route just described. The other end flows to Nita Lake, then Alpha Lake, then Cheakamus River to the Squamish River, finally reaching Howe Sound where it then meets the Pacific Ocean at Vancouver. Fantastic.
The other side of the Peak2Peak Gondola gives you a marvellous view of the meeting point between the two local mountain ranges that you are crossing between. The Fitzsimmons Range on the Whistler Mountain side and the Spearhead Range on the Blackcomb Mountain side. The two mountain ranges meet at the Overlord Massif. A massif is a term used to denote a cluster of mountain peaks all attributed to the most prominent peak among them. Overlord Mountain is the dramatically beautiful mountain visible at the end of the valley with Overlord Glacier descending down the valley. To the right of Overlord Mountain is The Fissile. Another beautiful mountain with its dark red colour and angular, pyramid like shape. The Fissile is so stunning that it inspired the design of Whistler Village to have an unobstructed view of it from Village Gate Boulevard. Through much of Whistler Village and certainly at Village Gate Boulevard you will catch a dramatically beautiful view of this gorgeous mountain. Both end of the Peak2Peak Gondola are located next to restaurants, gift shops, washrooms and quite a lot else. The Rendezvous Lodge is at the Blackcomb Mountain end, and the Roundhouse Lodge is at the Whistler Mountain end.


text:
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text:
Der kleine Mann (English: "The Small Man") is a German television series that aired for 8 episodes in 2009. The show was created by Ralf Husmann and starred Bjarne Mädel as a store clerk who gains sudden fame when he appears in a television commercial.

See also
List of German television series

External links

2009 German television series debuts
2009 German television series endings
German-language television shows
ProSieben original programming

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaWikipedia


text:
metamedia
by newsmary
Metamedia: writing about journalism and the media generally
All sorts of games and play – live, board, RP, and video – and the theory behind them.
Writing about story, storytelling and narrative, in theory and practice.
People and the way they socialise and operate in groups, particularly on social media or in online communities.
Writing about politics and current affairs.
Wordweaving
Prose, creative writing, poetry and other bits and pieces.
Writing about personal matters.
My blogging principles
Physical game design quickstart toolkit - metamedia on #AIretreat: the rise of the machines is all about people
Mary Hamilton on Hello again.
Andrew Losowsky on Hello again.
Mary Hamilton on 13 things I learned from six years at the Guardian
katie on 13 things I learned from six years at the Guardian
editorial technology
emergent story
Grant Howitt
JCARN
live action role play
pocket lint
stuff I've made
where's my fucking jetpack
Zombie LARP
Libraries, games and books
There's no need for physical media any more, not really, not unless it is a beautiful and delightful object that requires physical existence in order to truly accomplish what it sets out to do.
I am thousands of miles away from my McSweeney's quarterlies, my copies of the Codex Seraphinianus and House of Leaves, but I kept them, when we moved; they live in boxes in my parents' spare wardrobe along with the textbooks and miscellany I couldn't bear to get rid of. Since we landed I've bought three books: The Norton Anthology of Poetry, a Bible-sized chunk of literature that I pick up maybe every week or so for a hit; a field guide to Australian birds, because it helped me feel less like an alien if I could identify the stuff in the sky here; and S., a gorgeous full-colour library book full of fake marginalia and individually-produced inserts. A formal experiment of the sort I can't devour enough of.
I can't remember the last time I bought a physical copy of a game for the PC. Digital downloads have supplanted physical games for the PC, and in doing so they've freed a vast multitude of new, small, interesting games from the strange tyranny of the physical product. (Except possibly in Australia, where you can actually buy things like The Basement Collection on disk, presumably because the internet here runs about the same speed as a smoke signal.)
Now Steam sales and Kickstarters have turned my PC gaming library into the same sort of collection as the bookshelves I tore up before we moved to Australia. It's loosely organised by genre and by 'feel', in a way that's intuitive to me but makes little to no sense otherwise. Its construction and contents reflect a lot about me; the things I've chosen to dedicate time to, the games I want close at hand for replaying.
It's also full of games I probably won't play to completion, in much the same way as the Shelf of Shame I used to keep my unread books on. For most of those games it doesn't matter – the concept of 'completion' is pretty fuzzy on games without linear narrative – but there are more that I haven't started than I feel entirely comfortable with.
That never stops me from buying more. It reminds me in some ways of the glory days of the PS2, when publishers produced the most astonishing array of strange and wonderful (and often utterly awful) games, and you could pick them up relatively cheaply knowing you would get a flawed but often interesting experience. (The collection of interesting PS2 games is also in London; the bad ones we traded in, so some other poor sucker has the joy of playing Air Rescue Rangers and America's Top Ten Most Wanted now.)
I'm also now part of the friends and family sharing system, which means I tend towards buying games that I might have been on the fence about, so I can share them with others who will probably get as much from them as I will. But it also means my Steam library has an extra 200 or so games in it that I didn't put there, that don't fit the system. Like merging books with housemates or lovers whose tastes overlap but don't entirely cohere. I had to make a new category for games I don't want to play – not the same as games I haven't played yet but will, one day. Games I just don't want.
But that sharing is a joy, and not just because we don't need to pay twice for two people who share the same computer to play the same game. It's joyous because I get to explore and discover games I'd never have thought to try, and because I also get to explore someone else's library, the way I used to wander through bookshelves when I visited friends. It's joyous because that library even in its barest form – as a list of names without categorisation – is a sort of access to someone's identity, a carefully chosen stack of media that says, at the very least: this is how I like to spend my time.
Media consumption, especially conspicuously, is a way of constructing identity; it follows then that Steam sales are cheap ways of being people.
Posted on January 2, 2014 July 20, 2018 Categories Games, PeopleTags books, collections, digital media, identity, PC games, physical media, Steam2 Comments on Libraries, games and books
The PAX diversity lounge vs the benefit of the doubt
According to an Indiestatik report on some leaked documents today, PAX is introducing a special "Roll for Diversity hub and lounge" at events – a place "to provide a resource hub for PAX attendees in relation to marginalized communities within the gaming audience". According to the post, "It will be a hub for communication, networking and, hopefully, an increased understanding of issues facing these communities every day and the promotion of a tolerant, safe space within PAX." Which is… interesting.
From the post:
Despite the proposal documents mentioning these spaces to be part of a continued effort "to provide a safe and welcoming environment," in labeling an entire, separate little village as the "diverse" space, I think you're running into a lot of potential problems, even if the experience is supposed to be focused on non-judgmental learning. For instance, why can't the entire PAX space be explicitly marked as a safe space? Why does it appear that this is going to be the only area where someone might not feel threatened because of their 'biological gender?'
There are the added concerns about the "diversity specialists" on hand to teach people about diversity in the gaming industry. Who are they, and who is vetting them? Why have these individuals been chosen to specifically represent queer gamers or woman gamers, or gamers of color? And why does the promotional registration policy for the diversity lounge seem so draconian?
(Quick disclaimer: I've not been able to verify this story myself, so I'm relying on Indiestatik's source & reporting for the facts here. I don't have any reason to doubt them. If that changes, I'll update this post.)
The diversity lounge isn't just one tone-deaf response to the need to build an inclusive space and a diverse community at PAX – although it is remarkably tone-deaf, given that presumably one of the things this space will be safe from is the remarks of one of the company's founders. The issue isn't just that hiving diversity and safety off into a small space is strange when you control the rest of the space and could, presumably, decide to make it all safe and all inclusive. It's not just one iffy approach that needs a bit of work. The problem is the context.
The context is that, since the start of the dickwolves stuff, there have been – what, five? six? – let's say, a lot of incidents where Penny Arcade or at least one of its founders have gone through this cycle. It goes like this: do something dodgy, get called out, apologise (sometimes with a greater degree of sincerity than others). There's an optional fourth step where they take back the apology or go on to do something else equally dodgy that demonstrates none of the criticism's been taken on board.
And those are just the things they've been called out on – at some point presumably someone with some diversity training will take them up on their persistent use of "crazy-person level of attention to detail" in their job posts, for instance, but while that level of casual cluelessness remains on show it's pretty much impossible to take their organisational approach to inclusivity very seriously.
This isn't just one thing. It's a pattern of behaviour – a hypocritical one that seeks the right to continue to do stupid, harmful stuff under a consumer-friendly cloak of vague respectability, as though the word "sorry" means more than not doing it again. Right now, none of PAX's critics are going to take a half-hearted, tone-deaf "diversity lounge" as anything other than a hilariously bad joke at best and a disaster waiting to happen at worst. Even if it's well intentioned. Because that's what so many of their other half-hearted, tone-deaf approaches to diversity have turned out to be.
For this to work the way it needs to work, for it to be a positive space that can provide practical benefits for people traditionally excluded by events like PAX, it needs a lot of goodwill from the same people who've been hurt by PAX in the past – the devs, the game designers, the public speakers, those with personal knowledge and professional expertise, the people who've been put off and dismissed in public by the event's founders. The people who say they won't be there at all, never mind corralled in a small safe space.
PAX needs to prove that it's broken the pattern. It needs the benefit of the doubt. The problem is that Penny Arcade has never once proved that it deserves it.
Posted on December 18, 2013 July 20, 2018 Categories Games, PoliticalTags diversity lounge, PAX, Penny Arcade2 Comments on The PAX diversity lounge vs the benefit of the doubt
Notes on Papers, Please
1. Papers, Please is a much easier game to slip into than Cart Life even though they're both tackling Big Non-fun Things. I found the feedback loop much more rewarding and engaging – I've not yet got much beyond day 3 in Cart Life despite repeated attempts, because I'm not finding the flow within it. Maybe that's the point, and Cart Life is supposed to be boring to play as well as simulating a boring experience. Maybe I just haven't hit the sweet spot with it yet. But Papers, Please is doing something much more engaging for me.
2. A chunk of that is the way the game's designed to tap skills I know I have. I am reasonably good at this game. I'm not sure you're meant to be good at this game. I'm not sure that's the point. I'm also not sure it's meant to be fun, but I've gone back to it several times, so there's definitely something satisfying going on here.
3. When I had a friend, the security guard outlined in green, I was terrified that a bomber or a gunman would kill him. It made me worse at the job. Whenever I had someone to help I was slower and more thorough because I was scared of letting them down, these meagre human connections. By contrast, when I was concentrating hardest on the tasks in hand, I stopped caring about any of the other characters.
4. Everyone has an agenda. Sometimes they're incredibly clear what that agenda is; sometimes it's obscured. Sometimes you get taken in. There is nothing in the game more bitter than going out of your way, risking financial or other punishments, for the sake of a little human kindness, and then having that thrown back in your face. Papers, Please is very good at making you quickly feel very bitter. I hated the inspector. I hated the people who abused me. I hated the journalists, in particular.
5. This is a game I would recommend for journalists to play. If you want good examples of how interactivity illuminates systems in a way that words, images, video and audio just can't, this is right up there with the best. It is a game I would suggest for journalism courses, not for its content so much as for its methods. It is extremely powerful in what it conveys, with a very clear internal rhetoric, and I can easily imagine reskins that would make it a vehicle for understanding, say, border control in North Korea.
6. That said, some of the power behind the game's EZIC storyline is that it is not realistic, at all; it reads better as the desperate power fantasy of a powerless official struggling to find meaning in what they're doing. It has the qualities of delusion: shadowy figures, cryptic messages, strange codes. An ending in which things are just magically better, somehow. I was almost expecting it to turn out to be a test, a front for the secret police. Its implausibility only serves to point up the grinding cruelty of the situation you find yourself in.
7. And it is grinding, too, it is awful. The game distracts you from the humanity of what you're doing by giving you puzzles to solve. Simple, absorbing tasks against the clock, requiring concentration and attention to detail. No time for empathy. No time to feel bad for the people you don't let through, only just time to kick yourself for letting through one or two who bring your totals down. Like the gorilla at the basketball game, no spare mental bandwidth to take into account the little human gestures people make as they come through the checkpoint. Just when you are getting the hang of it, being able to rely on your memory and instincts, the game complicates itself. Before long you are a monster.
8. The process of checking someone's documents manipulates the pacing in an enormously clever and carefully judged way. The frantic checking makes the imposed pauses problems to be overcome – you are impatient, annoyed at the time it takes for a fingerprint slip to print or a scan to be undergone. But you are also stopped in that moment, and it gives you seconds where you become suddenly, uncomfortably aware of the task you're engaged in. It breaks flow. The scans, in particular – suddenly the player's perspective shifts a little and you realise, as the scan prints, that this is a horribly degrading and largely meaningless thing. Then you flip the image, spot the package of drugs, and hit the detain or deny button, but you have had that moment of connection with your actions and it is deeply uncomfortable. Especially when you are checking gender.
9. I couldn't play it through without doing the EZIC tasks. There is an ending for just doing your job, and I couldn't get to it, knowing there was no hope.
Posted on December 17, 2013 July 20, 2018 Categories GamesTags notes, Papers, Please1 Comment on Notes on Papers, Please
In defence of 'gamer'
Simon Parkin in the New Statesman has an excellent take on the ways gamer culture strikes out at those outside it, and the way homogenous stereotypes reinforce that behaviour – it's a great piece, and you should definitely read it, but the headline is wrong. It says "If you love games, you should refuse to be called a gamer." But I love games. I'm a gamer. I'm a player too. And the good guys don't get to do boundary policing and gatekeeping any more than the bad guys do.
(To be clear I don't think Simon's advocating this position – his point is that this is not a homogenous community, that people who play games aren't just one thing, and I am 100% with him on that score.)
A friend of mine did some research looking at women who play games, their experiences of games and game culture, and found that a great deal of the people who responded to her survey would not define themselves as gamers, in part because of the stereotype and the hostility they felt from the community. I don't look like the stereotype, so I can't be one – a similar issue to the one facing feminism, where the strawfeminist is assumed to be the definition of feminism. Except that in gaming the stereotype is celebrated, rather than criticised on all sides.
Gamer as an identity isn't going to disappear. It's not limited to videogames (though lots of videogamers seem to think it is). It's not limited to those who play vs those who don't play. It's a useful label, something that people bond over and around – and that's not limited to dudebros playing CoD. It applies to me playing PC games, and tabletop RPGs, and board games, and live games, and finding commonality with all those gamer communities. It implies a shared vocabulary and a shared set of interests, but it's also big enough these days to accommodate a huge number of overlapping sub-communities. And one of those – in fact, several of those – are mine.
Gaming has a huge identity problem. Many gamers see gaming as an integral part of their identity, and one of the messier results of that is that many people still perceive criticism of the games they like as criticism of them as people. That leads to all sorts of awfulness – backlash against those who are discriminated against in games and who dare to speak out, critics being attacked for doing valuable work. Some groups of gamers behave more like fandom than most of fandom does – ingroup/outgroup policing, jostling for status, assuming an outsider position, banding together against perceived adversaries. None of that is healthy or particularly sensible given the spread of the hobby.
But that doesn't mean that's all the label is. That headline falls into the trap that the article laments: assuming gamers are homogenous, and that the identity itself holds no value. It holds value for me: it's been important in fostering a sense of togetherness, in creating shared spaces where I feel like I belong, diverse spaces that include other gamer women and other queer gamers. And many of us fought to be called gamers, used that label in public in spite of hostility, and we would not have done that or continue to do that if it wasn't a valuable and useful thing.
I can criticise the actions of others who identify as gamers while also calling myself a gamer. I can be proud to be part of a community that makes Journey and Gone Home and Dys4ia and all those other games. I can be proud of being part of a community that's – slowly but surely – getting broader, more accepting and more diverse, and I can fight against – not disown – the backlash against that process in my small corner of this culture.
Owning this identity helped me find friends on the other side of the world. It would be a shame to lose it.
Posted on December 10, 2013 July 20, 2018 Categories Games, PeopleTags game culture, gamer, identity, times when I was wrong7 Comments on In defence of 'gamer'
Flow, realism and violence
Challenge, skill and flow, via Wikimedia.
The fundamental problem with this New Yorker piece on the psychology of first person shooters is that the writer doesn't really understand game design. Now, I'm all in favour of mainstream journalists writing positive articles about video games, but despite its positivity this piece makes some fundamental misunderstandings about the psychology of gaming and the way game design works.
It's clear that the writer is searching for reasons for the incredible success of first-person shooters, but it ends up in some extremely strange places. For one thing, FPS games aren't the majority of the market; while the CoD and Halo franchises are very popular, so are World of Warcraft, GTA, Assassin's Creed, and so on. Even the Wikipedia list of bestselling games the article tries to link to lists Gran Turismo, God of War, Uncharted and Little Big Planet alongside FPS games in the Playstation 3 category. The premise that FPS games are somehow special, justified by the sales figures, just doesn't stand up.
But the biggest problem is a fundamental misunderstanding of "flow", and the mistaken belief that it's somehow intrinsically linked to genre, rather than anything else:
What is it that has made this type of game such a success? It's not simply the first-person perspective, the three-dimensionality, the violence, or the escape. These are features of many video games today. But the first-person shooter combines them in a distinct way: a virtual environment that maximizes a player's potential to attain a state that the psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi calls "flow"—a condition of absolute presence and happiness.
Flow is not an intrinsic element of first-person games, nor of shooters. It's not just presence and happiness: it's concentration and absorption in a task, to the exclusion of all else. It is often an intrinsic element of good games – perhaps that explains why Kane & Lynch didn't have the same effect as Half Life 2 – but it's also an intrinsic element of lots of other experiences.
I get it from working out knotty Javascript problems in Twine, sometimes, from reading fiction, and from doing my day job during massive breaking news stories. I work like crazy to make sure that every player in our live games gets it at least once during the experience, too, because that's often the clearest mark of a genuinely fantastic game. Whether it's digital or physical, FPS or MMO, whatever your genre or even form conventions are.
And because of that, I've got to quibble with the assertion that "The more realistic the game becomes…the easier it is to lose your own identity in it." The best flow situations I've built myself have come when people forget they're playing, sure, but that isn't linked to realism or to shooting or even to a first-person perspective and a sense of control. You can get it from dancing stupidly to disco music, from fighting in slow motion, from matching 3 jewels of the same colours over and over again, from Solitaire.
Realism and violence are not necessary for good game design. And good game design is not an adequate explanation for their popularity.
Posted on December 4, 2013 July 20, 2018 Categories Games, MetamediaTags flow, game design, genre, New YorkerLeave a comment on Flow, realism and violence
Ludonarrative Discodance: how to be silly in public
Because if you want other people to look silly in public, you have to get them started somehow
Ludonarrative Discodance is a pun that got really, really out of hand. It's also, somehow, a game we actually ran this weekend in Melbourne as part of the Playroom at This Is A Door. I'm eternally indebted to Pop Up Playground for the opportunity and the time and the wine involved in making that happen.
Grant's already posted an excellent write-up that you should read if you want to fully understand (a) what on earth we did at the weekend and (b) why on earth he now has that moustache. (As of current writing, he still has the moustache. He has shaved the rest of his face, but not that bit. It's possible he thinks I haven't noticed.)
LD was a bit of a shot in the dark, a silly idea that got out of control, but it worked. The core of the game is performing a silly dance and, across a crowded room, seeing the person who's performing your dance too – then running up to them, confirming it, and smiling broadly before running off to collect another card. It's clubbing rendered down into shorthand: a breaking-down of boundaries, feeling more comfortable with our own bodies and the bodies of other people, a game of connections and performance and acceptance. People told me it recreated the poor impulse control of being drunk, too, which I like.
Despite the daftness of it, it is a game which lets you say – "Do you want to dance with me?" and for the answer to be yes more often than no. Which is pretty neat for a lot of people, including me, who are used to the opposite. And for it to be a safe question to ask, too.
The gist of the game is paired charades with dancing. Disco music plays and you dance, while also trying to find the other person doing the same dance as you. Round one is nice and easy: you have to act out disco moves – the hip thrust, the hand jive, the Uma-Thurman-in-pulp-fiction. Round two is harder – the lost keys, the high-noon shootout – while round three has you act out films like the Lion King while trying to find someone else crawling around, roaring, holding small lions up to the sunlight etc.
We didn't get chance to do a full playtest before we ran in Melbourne, which meant the first few plays needed some tweaking. More disco admin staff, different balances of cards – having both Dungeons and Dragons and Lord of the Rings didn't really work, for instance, but Star Wars and Pirates of the Caribbean worked perfectly as foils for each other to make the game a little harder. (Both involve a lot of waving swords around, which can also be mistaken for Harry Potter.) I'd like to run other versions, other editions, perhaps tailored to different crowds or different themes. But there's something about disco that really, really works.
The Matrix, obviously
Fundamentally, the game's about being silly in public, and being rewarded for it. The more exaggerated and daft you are, the better you'll be at the game – if you hold back, you won't score so many points. So it's in your best interests to throw yourself into things and shed a few inhibitions in the process. Something about disco music just works for that, somehow; lots of us have mental images of Saturday Night Fever (though not the rape and drowning bit, obviously) and memories of school discos to use as touchstones for that kind of dancing. If you don't, well, there are instructions on the cards.
It's equal opportunity silliness: everyone looks as daft as you, so you might as well have fun with it. And it's a good way to get people mixing and mingling, talking and laughing – you present your silliest, most overblown, daftest self and then someone else dances up to you and there's a moment of recognition where you both grin.Often people would add little flourishes, dancing together for a moment before coming to hand in the cards – synchronised disco pointing, putting on Cinderella's shoe, twirling towards the disco admin team in time to classical music no one else could hear.
My personal favourite card from this play was the dad-at-a-wedding. Everyone interpreted it differently, but it was surprising how recognisable it was. I got to see people's joy as they worked out what was going on and got into the groove; actively encouraging people to dance badly is, it turns out, a great way to get them moving and laughing.
We played perhaps a dozen other games – eight shows in three days, two hours each, with Ludonarrative Discodance just a small part of the proceedings. Rainbow Running has a similar physicality, but it's competitive in a broad way rather than collaborative, and it's definitely not silly. Impossible Book Club is all about discussing a book that doesn't exist, so it's performative and intellectual and silly in a slightly different way. But my personal favourite from the weekend was The Ride, a game about slow-motion fighting and Valkyries.
Victory. Also Valkyrie.
You start with a cardboard axe or sword. You challenge an opponent from the other army. Then you battle in slow motion, not landing a blow until the Valkyries decide who should die. There's smoke and dramatic music and shouting, and dramatic deaths on the floor. Then you do it again, but this time the dead fighters are spirits who can help out their living comrades, by helping them throw weapons or carrying them across the battlefield or repelling enemy attacks. Even if you lose, you get to lose in the most epic and glorious way possible, and then you get to help your fellow players to achieve even greater heights of epicness and glory.
It is a gorgeous game, absorbing, entertaining and delightful. It is beautifully, wonderfully silly, in a way everyone can get behind, because once again everyone is being silly, playful and physical, in public together at the same time. That's something we don't get to do as adults nearly often enough.
all photos courtesy of Pop Up Playground
Posted on December 3, 2013 July 20, 2018 Categories GamesTags being silly, game design, live games, Pop Up Players, stuff I've made1 Comment on Ludonarrative Discodance: how to be silly in public
Ludonarrative Disco Dance in Melbourne this weekend
Grant has acquired a tasteful and attractive costume for the game
Serious Business is premiering a new game this weekend at the all day playroom at This Is A Door, an excellent month-long festival of interesting games and play run by the Pop Up Players in Melbourne.
The game is called Ludonarrative Disco Dance. It's possible we started with the name and then worked backwards until we had a decent concept. If it all works as well as we hope it does, we'll be running the game in other places, cities and quite possibly continents in the next few months.
The playroom is happening at Theatre Works in St Kilda, and tickets are $20/25 from the Theatre Works website or on the door. If you're in the city, please come along, say hi, and let us know what you think.
Posted on November 28, 2013 July 20, 2018 Categories GamesTags live games, stuff I've madeLeave a comment on Ludonarrative Disco Dance in Melbourne this weekend
11 quick thoughts on the new Steam reviews
Steam reviews are a thing now, apparently.
Now it's easy to see what other Steam users think about a product before you buy. With Steam Reviews, you can browse for reviews that others have found helpful, or write your own reviews for titles you've played on Steam
A few quick thoughts in no particular order:
Valve is displaying the time you've spent on a particular game next to your review. That's interesting; that suggests they might also use it as a ranking factor for your review. It certainly means people will judge your review as less helpful if you've spent less time in the game than others. For positive reviews maybe that makes some sense; for negative reviews maybe it doesn't, so much, because I don't need to play 20 hours of Duke Nukem Forever to know it's awful, or more than 5 minutes of the PC port of Fez to know it's unplayably crashy on my setup, for example.
They're also flagging up the number of things you've bought on Steam, even ahead of your Steam level (which is to some extent a proxy for money spent). That's an even more interesting choice, because it is almost certainly going to affect how people see the review on a subconscious level.
You have to launch the game via Steam in order to review it. So I can't review some of the games I've played most, because I didn't buy them on Steam. Platform lock-in. But I also can't review games just for the sake of hating on them from a distance, which deals with some of the Metacritic & Amazon swarming problems.
But what I can do, if I want to game this system, is launch the game once, leave it on overnight to gather Steam cards & game cred, and then review it. Whether anyone will care enough to actually do that is an open question at this point.
The only ranking factor they specifically mention is time – ie more recent reviews will be visible on game pages – and that's framed as a good thing for the devs. But there will be others – game time and helpfulness are the obvious ones, but Valve would be daft not to include things like friendship data, similarity of game libraries etc in personalising reviews for individual readers.
They're defaulting to post-moderation, removing or hiding things when flagged, and not giving devs the ability to hide things directly without moderator input. That makes some sense (hide all negative reviews won't be a valid strategy) but is also potentially concerning (we don't yet know how much moderator support they have, or the moderation guidelines by which they're operating, or the speed with which they'll respond, or… etc).
This could be a serious Metacritic competitor, because of Steam's metadata about who's played what games for how long, which could tie into an authority system using upvotes and activity more generally…
…but (at the moment) they're not including a scoring system, just recommend vs not recommend. Thankfully. Any numerical system would be exactly as open to abuse as the current Metacritic system is, with all the existing issues about people only looking at the score when purchasing or devs' pay/bonuses being dependent on numerical scores that are, let's be honest here, based on spit and whimsy and nothing more.
The language stuff – allowing users to review games in their own languages and search for reviews in particular languages – is great for users especially in areas underserved by games press. And potentially a nightmare for devs, if they can't translate.
Helpful vs non-helpful is a nice way to harness the middle bit of the 1:9:90 rule.
Mutualisation is interesting. I wonder how many devs and users were clamouring for this feature.
Posted on November 26, 2013 July 20, 2018 Categories Games, PeopleTags community, mutualisation, reviews, Steam1 Comment on 11 quick thoughts on the new Steam reviews
ibis, fly!
I made a story game called ibis, fly! It's about being an ibis, and not really fitting in, and simple pleasures. It has four possible endings and a (sort of) win condition, if you're into that sort of thing.
Structurally it's far simpler than Detritus, and it should only take you five minutes or so to play it through from beginning to end. If you have bug reports or feedback please let me know.
Play ibis, fly!
Posted on November 25, 2013 July 20, 2018 Categories Games, WordweavingTags stuff I've made, Twine games4 Comments on ibis, fly!
Morrowind and Miasmata: walking tours of fictional islands
Miasmata's map and compass
Played Miasmata today for the first time, and had some loose thoughts about islands and slowness and learning terrain in fictional landscapes. Morrowind is still one of my favourite games and the one that I know best, and every time I move house significantly I tend to fire it up out of some deep need for a familiar space. I didn't notice I did this till the Sydney move, when I didn't feel properly grounded till I'd managed to get the PC set up and then walk at starting-character speed from Seyda Neen to Balmora, for the thirtieth time or so.
Morrowind doesn't have fast travel, or regenerating health or mana. Depending on your character choices at startup, you'll start at a level where you have difficulty defeating even the weakest of enemies, and going up against bandits or other human attackers would be impossible. There are travel networks – boats, silt striders, the Mages Guild teleportation system – and some spells that will teleport you to the nearest shrine or temple. And one that lets you set a waypoint then port back to it.
That's enough to let you navigate and move quickly between major cities, but most of the time the things you head out to do are in the wilderness, in the areas that those systems don't reach.
That creates a world that demands time, exploration and slow discovery. If you want to experience all the different parts of the game you will have to walk the same paths many times, growing accustomed to the geography, finding shortcuts as you go. With no way to port back to town to pick up supplies then pop back to where you were, you have to plan your trips based on how remote your destination is, what supplies you might require, where you pass through on the way, which tasks you can do together to save travel time.
Your quests are not marked on any maps, so you find yourself leafing through journal pages to find the descriptions that will take you where you need to go. North-east of Vivec into the Daedric shrine Ald Sotha to find the flower Roland's Tear growing on the east side. South past the Dwemer ruins and take the second road heading west to Malacath's shrine.
Later Elder Scrolls games let you fast travel between landmarks, which promotes a completely different engagement with the landscape. Instead of carefully plotting your caving trip to make sure you can survive it, weighing up the wisdom of leaving your course for an unexpected dungeon, you can wander off-track however you like and take on new challenges knowing you can simply teleport back when you're done. You find new locations not through landmarks and directions but through a marker on a minimap and then charging directly towards it, detouring to unlock new locations so you can teleport back next time and have a shorter distance to walk. You rarely walk the same path twice.
Let's be clear: this is, for most people, a vastly less frustrating system; Morrowind now feels antiquated without fast travel, and Miasmata a little old-fashioned. But it has its drawbacks too. For one thing – despite its limitations, alchemy in Morrowind is a more satisfying skill than in later games. The gathering of ingredients is a natural part of travel: I am walking south of Balmora towards Hla Oad for a quest, so on the way there will be cornberries to make Restore Magicka potions and corkbulb root for Restore Health.With fast travel, gathering relies on serendipity and snapping up what's there, and much of that synergy is lost.
I'm not too far along in Miasmata yet, but it shares a lot of design similarities with Morrowind in the way it slowly opens up deep knowledge of its landscapes to the player. Like Morrowind, it is an island, though a much smaller one. Islands are different metaphors to walled cities or vast plains: they're exciting and exotic, sometimes dangerous and sometimes unexplored but always distinctly separate, finite and bounded spaces that seem knowable, understandable, if you put in enough time. Proteus takes advantage of this, as do GTA3 and Assassin's Creed 4. On one hand it's a simple way to gate locations and avoid invisible walls; on the other it's a canny way of making self-contained worlds. Morrowind's and Proteus's are about uncovering, exploring and making known; Miasmata's is also about those things, but it adds in being cut off, having no escape, being trapped.
Miasmata's map is manual, and if you don't know where you are – if you are in the woods with no landmarks visible – then you are lost. You can find maps that fill in blank spaces for you, but if you don't have a map then you must start to triangulate your location using the landmarks you do know about to help you. Location in Miasmata (as in Morrowind, as in survival Minecraft, as in Dark Souls) is a resource, something that can be lost, something that requires significant player effort to maintain.
The game forces you to husband resources before you make foraging trips, plan your proposed routes carefully, make sure you can carry back everything you might find, think about timing to avoid being stuck in the woods at night with no light. So it's sensible to keep to the paths, so you know where you are and where you are going. But your objectives, the flowers and plants that hold the cure for your mysterious plague, are generally off the beaten track. Leaving the path is a gamble you must make.
I learn cities by walking them. Two months after we moved to London I decided to walk all the Tube lines in segments as long as I could; tendonitis meant I only got about a third of the way through, but by that time I already felt much more like I owned the city. You can walk it, so it's yours. You see the details, the shortcuts, the things you miss on subways (which are basically fast travel with really long loading times). You know the bones.
There's a quest in Morrowind, a pilgrimage, in which you visit a priest in Vivec, the largest city in the far south of the map. You take a vow of silence, which prevents you from using any of the transport systems because you can't speak to pay your fare, and you must travel to the Sanctus Shrine, at the absolute north edge of the map. There are some things you can do to make the journey shorter, using teleportation spells or spending significant time first to restore a semi-secret transportation network that doesn't rely on speech. Given the choice, though, I would always rather walk.
Posted on November 23, 2013 November 24, 2013 Categories GamesTags fast travel, fictional landscape, Miasmata, Morrowind, walking3 Comments on Morrowind and Miasmata: walking tours of fictional islands
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Sichuan, called Bashu in ancient China, is located in the southwestern hinterland of China stretching across the eastern edge of Qinghai-Tibet plateau and Sichuan Basin. With a large number of hills, crisscrossed rivers, high peaks and deep gorges, Sichuan boasts abundant products and a great number of outstanding people; hence Sichuan has been known as the "Land of Abundance" since ancient times.
Sichuan has magnificent, queer, perilous and elehant natural scenis spots. Since ancient times, Sichuan has enjoyed the reputation of "embracing the most fascinating landscapes on earth", such as Mount Emei, known as the most elegant mountain; Qingcheng Mountain, the most secluded mountain; Jianmen Pass, the most magnificent pass; and Jiuzhaigou Valley, the most appealing scenic marvel. From a vast expanse of bamboo sea in South Sichuan to the masterious and quiet Jiuzhaigou Vally in North Sichuan, and from the Nuoshui River in East Sichuan to Paoma Mountain in West Sichuan, natural scenic spots can be found everywhere in the province; hence Sichuan is acclaimed as "Scenic Province". In addition, over 85 percent of wild giant pandas in the world in habit in the high mountains in Northwest Sichuan become the "homeland of giant pandas".
Sichuan features varied and colorful ethnic minority customs and lifestyles. As one of the provinces in China with the most ethnic minority groups, Sichuan has been known as the "Ethnic Corridor". According to the historical records, several dozne ethnic groups have labored, lived, multiplied and blended with each other on this land since ancient times. Sichuan is the second largest region in China where the Tibetan people live in a compact community; the largest place inhabited by the Yi people; and the only province lived by the Qiang peolpe. The mysterious, ancient, unadorned and colorful customs and lifestyle of various ethnic minority groups, and the picturesque natural alndscapes make Sichuan become the "Land of Abundance" with unique glamour.


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Sukkah City in Union Square Park
A dozen sukkahs were on display on September 19 and 20 in Union Square Park. 600 designers entered the Sukkah City international design competition. 12 finalists were selected.
We went to the Sukkah City village on the first day. One of the sukkahs, Shim Sukkah by Tinder, Tinker of Sagle, Idaho was still being constructed; it is our favorite. The designers used unassuming wooden shims to create an intricate and beautiful structure.
A sukkah, quoting the Sukkah City poster, is
Biblical in origin...an ephemeral, elemental shelter, erected for one week each fall, in which it is customary to share meals, entertain, sleep, and rejoice....the sukkah's religious function is to commemorate the temporary structures that the Israelites dwelled in during their exodus form Egypt....The Sukkah is a means of ceremonially practicing homelessness....
Ronald Rael and Virginia San Fratello's Sukkah of the Signs is a literal interpretation of "practicing homelessness." Sukkah of the Signs is "clad with cardboard signs purchased from destitute individuals across the U.S." (Proceeds from the Sukkah City auction will benefit Housing Works.) Most viewers of this sukkah spent several minutes reading the signs on the sukkah's exterior.
There are specific rules for constructing a sukkah. Again, quoting the exhibit's poster:
The structure must be temporary, have at least two and a half walls, be big enough to contain a table, and have a roof made of shade-providing organic materials through which one can see the stars.
The guidelines do not provide a maximum area, but the New York Department of Buildings does not consider a structure larger than 19 feet x 8 feet to be temporary. More construction details can be found here.
Children at the exhibit enjoyed sukkahs that provided climbing and lounging features such as Star Cocoon by Volkna Alkanoglu of Los Angeles and In Tension by SO-IL of Brooklyn. The interior space of the latter was quite limited but the space was large enough to hold a short-log table and chairs.
Two sukkahs incorporated herbaceous flowers. Flowers hung from the ceiling of In Tension and Single Thread by Matter Practice of Brooklyn.
Based on viewers's reactions, the most impressive sukkah was Log by Kyle May and Scott Abrahams of Manhattan. Unlike the other 11 sukkahs, access to this sukkah was limited to the designers and to a rabbi. We overheard one woman say to another:
Nothing hits the ground. Everything is suspended from the log. It's incredible!
However, our second favorite, Fractured Bubble by Henry Grossman and Babak Bryan of Long Island City, won New York magazine's People's Choice contest and will be displayed in Union Square until October 2. We like Fractured Bubble for its creative use of a declared invasive plant. The roof of this sukkah is composed of the perennial grass, Phragmites australis or common reed, which the designers harvested from Corona Park in Queens. New York City Department of Parks & Recreation lists phragmites as "one of the 20 most invasive plants" in the state! Read more about the grass here.
You can see selected sukkahs at the Center for Architecture on La Guardia Place from September 22 to October 30.
Les September 25, 2010
What fun! I first heard of this tradition from an orthodox co-worker and was fascinated. My wife's family was totally secular and barely celebrated Passover, let alone anything that involved spending time outside. If I was to convert, it would be to build a sukkah.
Georgia September 27, 2010
Les, you can nominate Norfolk as a 2011 Sukkah City by emailing sukkahcity (at) gmail (dot) com.
Wonderful, wonderful designs! Thank you for sharing this post. I'm not even remotely Jewish, but was lucky enough to learn about sukkahs during my studies at Brandeis University. I'm glad to have a limited idea of more typical modern sukkahs, to better appreciate how incredible these are. The photos are wonderful.
Georgia April 09, 2011
Crystaltrulove, thank you for your kind comments here and on the FOTT 58 post.
The Garden City of Santa Clara, Sevilla


are glacier buttercup, Draba lactea and Salix herbacea. Starting with Setesdalsheiene north of the southern Skagerrak coast, the mountains go north, comprising large parts of the country, and intersected by the many fjords of Vestlandet. Variasjoner i vekst og fyringsforhold i Nordisk Arktis. Outside Norway (and adjacent areas in Sweden the only other areas in the world with the tree line mostly made up by a small-leaved deciduous tree like birch - in contrast to conifers - are Iceland and the Kamtschatka peninsula. In the eastern valleys it reaches several hundred kilometers into Gudbrandsdal and sterdal, and up to Lom and Skjk in Ottadalen. This is a slow process, and for thousands of years following the end of the ice age, the sea covered substantial areas of what is today dry land. Figure.7.12 Daylight autonomy (DA) simulation in a classroom before (left) and after (right) renovation, including.5m perimeter from the walls around the work plane. Scandinavian Mountains biogeographical region as defined by the European Agency of Environment and corrected by the Norwegian directorate for Nature Management. Also called, spring Forward, Summer Time, and, daylight Savings Time. However, the Fosen peninsula, and the most northern coast ( Leka ) is more dominated by mountains and more narrow valleys.
The North Atlantic Current splits in two in the northern part of the Norwegian Sea; one branch goes east into the Barents Sea, while the other goes north along the west coast of Spitsbergen ; this modifies the Arctic polar climate somewhat and results. More info: Juncker: EU Will Scrap Clock Changes Advertising Daylight Saving Time in Other Years DST changes do not necessarily occur on the same date every year. 25 Some plants are classified as western due to their need for high humidity and/or low tolerance of winter frost; these will stay close to the southwestern coast, with the northern limit near lesund; some examples are holly and bell heather. For Bergen the corresponding temperatures are.6 and.5 C t skjorter med trykk trondheim (36.7 and.9 F for Vrnes/Trondheim.0 and.1 C (30.2 and.2 F and for Langnes/Troms.5 and.1 C (27.5 and.8 F). The interior is dominated by the large Finnmarksvidda plateau. Figure.7.11 Cumulative curves of available external diffuse horizontal illuminance for Oslo (Norway Paris (France) and Rome (Italy). Physical geography Svalbard tundra Rafsundet in September, Northern Norway Beerenberg (2277 m) is the world's most northerly active volcano Light, timezone and tide edit Areas in Norway located north of the Arctic Circle will have midnight sun and corresponding winter darkness, the length of both. It happened again the same place in 1936, this time with 73 victims. The SB is the only boreal zone with a few scattered - but well-developed - warmth-demanding broadleaf deciduous trees, such as European ash and oak. This region seems to include both mountain areas with alpine tundra and lowland forests, essentially all areas outside the natural range of Norway spruce forests. Unlike the mainland, these glaciers calves directly in the open ocean.


We stayed in a jungle house close to the town Balgüe. The house had the most amazing view over the volcano Concepción. The remote location came with a surprise though, the largest spiders I have ever seen, in the house! Anyway it was not poisonous and it was easily removed by our nice host (but we did make complete fools of ourselves jumping up on the bed and screaming in front of them, ahahaa).
We were definitely too ambitious planing to go by bike to Mérida (9 km from our house) for kayak, then bike to Ojo de Agua (another 10 km), then to a beach and back home for the sunset at our jungle house sunset. The heat (34 degrees Celsius)and rocky roads and hills made it impossible. We managed to Mérida for a kayak tour to check out the dried up river Istiam, then to the beach and back home 5 minutes too late for the sunset. Anyway we were exhausted and proud of ourselves to have managed 20 km on bike and 4 hours of kayaking!
A two-volcano island in Lago Nicaragua.


Trial Run is an original oil by Americo Makk measures 24″ x 36″. Also available as a limited edition giclee.
An era gone by, but we are reminded by the Hokulea that it is still possible to travel the seas by celestial navigation. Here we see a boat on the ocean with Diamond Head in the background.


text:
Q: Angular bootstrap calendar month view open popup issue I am following an example here.
I want to achieve same functionality, like in month view when I click on event it is opening a popup with details.But somehow I am not able to achieve it. Following is the code I am experimenting with,
     app.module('mwl.calendar.docs')
        .controller('AppointmentsController',
                function ($rootScope, $scope, CalenderService, $location, ProjREST_URL, $state,
                        moment,alert, calendarConfig, $timeout, propSettingService, DetailService) {

    -----------------
    -----------------
 });
    angular
      .module('mwl.calendar.docs')
      .factory('alert', function($uibModal) {

        function show(action, event) {
          return $uibModal.open({
            templateUrl: 'modalContent.html',
            controller: function() {
              var vm = this;
              vm.action = action;
              vm.event = event;
            },
            controllerAs: 'vm'
          });
        }

        return {
          show: show
        };

      });

Both controller and factory is in same js
But i am getting an error,
Uncaught TypeError: app.module is not a function

I am new to angular, so what i am doing something silly here :)
Any help is really appreciated. Thanks

Updated code looks like, still the error remains same
angular.module('mwl.calendar.docs', ['mwl.calendar', 'ngAnimate', 'ui.bootstrap', 'colorpicker.module']);

app
.module('mwl.calendar.docs')
.controller('AppointmentsController',

A: You need to declare your module before registering a controller:
angular.module('mwl.calendar.docs', ['mwl.calendar', 'ngAnimate', 'ui.bootstrap', 'colorpicker.module']);


The only true copy of the navigator's log from the Enola Gay's atomic bombing of Hiroshima is heading to auction at Bonhams on March 9.
Theodore Van Kirk was the navigator on the mission. He made this copy shortly after landing back in Guam from the log he made on the plane (which sold for $372,500 at Sotheby's in 2016). It includes information relating to the devastating moment that heralded the dawn of the atomic age.
Wind speed, altitude and mission orders ("Drop first atomic bomb") all are featured in detail.
There are a number of differences between the two sheets. Van Kirk fails to include a couple of key observations (including the fact that the mushroom cloud disappeared at 10:52). The letter "o" also looks very different in each.That's because B-52 bombers were notoriously prone to vibration, making writing difficult.
The piece was kept as a memento by Captain Robert Lewis, co-pilot on the mission, who has added his own corrections. After being filled out, the file was tossed onto a pile on the floor. Lewis sensed it would be of historical interest in the future and asked if he could make a copy and keep this version.
There was no love lost between Lewis and the rest of the crew. He had originally been slated to pilot the mission, along with a hand-picked crew who had been training for months. However on the eve of the bombing he was demoted to co-pilot and most of his crew switched out for one headed by Colonel Paul Tibbetts. Lewis was particularly irked that Tibbetts named the plane for his mother, Enola Gay Tibbetts.


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The Athens Effect
Science, research, and technology in Athens, and the effect it has on the world!
Science Recaps
Southeast Ohio Stories
Athens City commits to fighting climate change
by Emily Crebs
Athens County Municipal Court. Photo by Emily Crebs
Athens City Council has announced, not only its belief in climate change but a promise to make the climate a priority in its agenda.
Athens City Council passed a Climate Emergency Resolution on Feb. 3, which is worded as a call to action for the city to mobilize and take steps to locally reduce its impact on the environment.
Chris Fahl, an Athens City council member who put together the resolution, indicated that it is stronger than typical resolutions.
"Resolutions do not have any implied law with [them]. However, for the city, it's like a marching order," Fahl said. "This has more direction than other resolutions."
The resolution calls Athens to focus the All City Boards and Commissions meeting, "on the formation of citywide climate protection strategies and priorities."
Athens will engage and mobilize the citizenry against climate change, as well as send a copy of the resolution to state government offices, such as the governor's.
Fahl described resolutions like the Climate Emergency as Athens speaking to the state legislature about what the city and its people believe. The resolution also serves to expand the work Athens has already been doing to combat climate change, according to Fahl.
"Athens has been doing a lot for a number of years when it comes to climate. It's out there, but we don't celebrate it very well, and we don't use it good enough," Fahl said.
The Climate Emergency says that Athens commits to ending "citywide greenhouse gas emissions as quickly as possible and no later than 2030."
The council members described programs already put in place in Athens that reduce carbon and greenhouse emissions, including electrical aggregation and solar energy.
Electricity in Athens comes from AEP Ohio. Citizens who have AEP electricity are involved in an electrical aggregation, which means that all electrical bills involved in the aggregation are considered together while negotiating with an electrical company for better rates. Most of the negotiation is done by the Southeast Ohio Public Energy Council.
Fahl said that one of the largest users of electricity is the Athens water and sewage treatment plant. Recently, the city has unveiled a plan in which solar panels will generate enough energy to run the plant, the city pool and the city's laboratory, according to a report by The Athens NEWS.
Beth Clodfelter, a City councilmember and environmental advocate, said one of the initiatives she is passionate about is reducing the "red tape" around solar panels for citizens and businesses.
"I just don't think we should stand in the way, slow down and annoy anybody who wants to go solar and help the environment," Clodfelter said.
The city's agenda already has plans to celebrate and combat climate change with the 50th anniversary of Earth Day in April.
Clodfelter said the celebration will be a month long and various groups will be planting trees around the city.
The tree density in Athens has significantly decreased in the last four decades. Since the loss has been gradual, many citizens are not aware of it, according to Clodfelter.
Trees have many benefits to the environment and people. They sequester carbon from the air, shade homes to reduce the need for air conditioning, provide homes for animals and cool the air around them, Clodfelter explained
Curbside composting is an initiative that Clodflelter hopes will expand in the future. Currently, it's in a pilot phase, and citizens must pay about $21 a month to participate in the composting. Clodfelter said composting reduces the amount of methane emissions that are released by food waste in landfills, and instead, the food scraps create rich soil.
Throughout her life, Fahl has been an advocate for the environment. She grew up in Northern California and fought against nuclear energy in the presidency of Reagan. Fahl was angered by the government cutting down old-growth in states like Oregon, Washington and California.
Fahl channeled her passion for the environment into running an environmental education program that focused on environmental activism. She is passionate about the environment "because it's what sustains life."
Clodfelter also fell in love with nature at an early age. She described the beauty of her family-owned property in Indiana where her family meets annually for a reunion. Clodfelter's grandfather introduced her to the majesty of trees.
"I don't know how old I was. I remember really distinctly walking on this path in the woods, with him. He was holding my hand, that was over my head, I was little," Clodfelter said with a smile. "He was teaching me the different kinds of trees. It was important for him for me to know that."
She reflected that her passion for trees specifically could have stemmed from those memories with her grandfather.
"Maybe having him point out to me that a tree is not just a tree, that it's a special kind of tree," Clodfelter said. "And you need to honor it by learning it and paying attention to it."
Clodfelter said in elementary school, she converted her family to recycling. As a high schooler, she gave presentations to elementary schools about the benefits and need to recycle. After college, she worked for an environmental nonprofit in Central America.
Clodfelter was elected to her first term on City Council last November, and her main goal in the position is to improve Athens's sustainability. She gave examples of how this could be done by planting more trees and creating pollinator gardens.
The resolution said, through economic and sociological changes, "Athens can act as a global leader."
Fahl explained why, despite Athens's size, global impact is possible: "The power of persuasion."
Fahl has attended city conferences in which representatives from different cities meet and discuss city programs. She said that many Athens initiatives, such as Athens's electrical aggregation, can be shared and implemented in other communities.
Clodfelter emphasized the impact that a local community can have on a global issue.
"While we can't change the whole planet, I really am a believer that think globally act locally slogan, that what we can control is right here," Clodfelter said. "We the people of Athens can make a difference right here in this town."
Emily Crebs February 24, 2020 February 24, 2020 Athens Effect, climate change, environment, featured
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text:
Q: Postgresql bottleneck neither CPU, network nor I/O We are testing our application for performance, which is using Postgresql 13 as a database. It is very insert and update heavy and we cannot get more than 65k TPS on the database. But none of the most common bottlenecks do apply (CPU/network/disk IO).
We have also run multiple combinations with pgbench but also those cannot go past 65k.
E.g.
pgbench -i -s 50 -U postgres -h <DB_HOST> -d <DB_NAME>
pgbench -c 64 -j 32 -t 100000 -h <DB_HOST> -U postgres <DB_NAME>

starting vacuum...end.
transaction type: <builtin: TPC-B (sort of)>
scaling factor: 50
query mode: simple
number of clients: 64
number of threads: 32
number of transactions per client: 100000
number of transactions actually processed: 6400000/6400000
latency average = 0.976 ms
tps = 65584.664360 (including connections establishing)
tps = 65594.330678 (excluding connections establishing)

(Using more clients resulted in fewer TPS)
The database server has the following specs:

*

*64 Cores (Intel Xeon Gold 6130 (Skylake, 2.10GHz, 2 CPUs/node, 16 cores/CPU))

*192 GiB RAM (12 * 16GiB DIMM DDR4 Synchronous Registered (Buffered) 2666 MHz (0.4 ns))

*2 * SSD SATA Samsung MZ7KM240HMHQ0D3 (one is used for the WAL and the other for the data)

*10 Gbps network link

*OS: Debian 11

And we are using the following configuration:
shared_buffers=65551953kB
effective_cache_size=147491895kB
huge_pages=on
min_wal_size=4GB
max_wal_size=16GB
wal_buffers=1GB
work_mem=2GB
maintenance_work_mem=4GB

checkpoint_completion_target=0.9
checkpoint_timeout = 15min
random_page_cost=1.1
bgwriter_flush_after = 2MB
effective_io_concurrency = 200

# Disabled just for performance experiments
fsync = off
synchronous_commit = off
full_page_writes = on

max_worker_processes=64
max_parallel_workers=64
max_parallel_workers_per_gather=10
max_parallel_maintenance_workers=12

When we reach the 65k TPS we have the following resource usage on the server:
Our application:

*

*CPU: 25%

*I/O Utilization: 30% resp. 60% (WAL)

*Network: in 200Mbps out 125Mbps

pgbench:

*

*CPU: 75%

*I/O Utilization: 2% resp. 5% (WAL)

*Network: in/out ~500Mbps

We have also temporarily placed the WAL and data into RAM to verify that the disks are not the issue, but this had no impact either.
Does anyone have a guess where our bottleneck might be?
(We have thought about sharding already but would like to use the single server as much as possible)
Edit:
vmstat 1 -S M while running pgbench:
procs -----------memory---------- ---swap-- -----io---- -system-- ------cpu-----
 r  b   swpd   free   buff  cache   si   so    bi    bo   in   cs us sy id wa st
 1  0      0  92009     25  18316    0    0     3   318  405   22 26 11 63  0  0
 0  0      0  92009     25  18316    0    0     0     0  261  320  0  0 100  0  0
 0  0      0  92009     25  18316    0    0     0 46616  216  257  0  0 100  0  0
45  0      0  92260     25  17996    0    0     0     0 509124 781029 35 13 52  0  0
44  1      0  92252     25  17998    0    0     0 82192 743920 1140285 51 20 30  0  0
50  0      0  92247     25  18003    0    0     0 65564 740366 1152212 52 18 30  0  0
41  0      0  92243     25  18005    0    0     0     0 736052 1138409 50 20 30  0  0
35  0      0  92240     25  18009    0    0     0     0 734265 1138483 50 20 30  0  0
36  0      0  92238     25  18012    0    0     0   264 741315 1152409 52 19 29  0  0
43  0      0  92236     25  18016    0    0     0    36 740374 1147759 51 20 29  0  0
46  0      0  92231     25  18020    0    0     0 163856 737491 1166498 53 19 28  0  0
47  0      0  92228     25  18023    0    0     0     0 741582 1171814 52 19 28  0  0
43  0      0  92223     25  18027    0    0     0 61584 741537 1168119 53 19 28  0  0
46  0      0  92220     25  18030    0    0     0    36 739695 1167456 53 19 28  0  0
43  0      0  92216     25  18034    0    0     0   228 741992 1150333 52 20 29  0  0
38  0      0  92214     25  18036    0    0     0 147464 740589 1166289 52 19 28  0  0
41  0      0  92209     25  18042    0    0     0     0 737148 1162946 52 19 28  0  0
44  0      0  92207     25  18044    0    0     0  2480 741757 1173128 53 19 28  0  0
39  0      0  92205     25  18049    0    0     0    48 740404 1170644 53 19 28  0  0
52  0      0  92201     25  18051    0    0     0   292 739032 1159037 52 19 28  0  0
42  1      0  92198     25  18054    0    0     0 20072 740101 1165594 52 20 28  0  0
51  0      0  92194     25  18059    0    0     0 45464 738055 1165382 53 19 28  0  0
41  0      0  92190     25  18062    0    0     0     0 742838 1172377 53 19 28  0  0
45  0      0  92185     25  18067    0    0     0    36 740704 1174534 53 19 28  0  0
50  0      0  92182     25  18069    0    0     0    92 741691 1150716 52 19 28  0  0
42  0      0  92177     25  18073    0    0     0    28 740220 1168488 53 18 28  0  0
44  0      0  92174     25  18077    0    0     0     0 738818 1164769 53 19 28  0  0
46  0      0  92172     25  18080    0    0     0     0 740720 1169902 53 19 28  0  0
46  0      0  92166     25  18083    0    0     0 90404 592524 945810 42 15 43  0  0
45  0      0  92161     25  18087    0    0     0  3884 746310 1159898 52 19 28  0  0
49  0      0  92157     25  18090    0    0     0    20 747242 1177750 53 19 28  0  0
36  0      0  92152     25  18094    0    0     0     0 744477 1173832 53 19 28  0  0
46  0      0  92149     25  18098    0    0     0     0 746194 1172700 53 19 28  0  0
39  0      0  92147     26  18101    0    0     0 49768 745651 1177462 54 18 28  0  0
43  0      0  92143     26  18105    0    0     0   212 744968 1161110 53 19 28  0  0
43  0      0  92138     26  18109    0    0     0     0 743223 1176960 54 19 28  0  0
43  0      0  92135     26  18112    0    0     0 81920 745168 1173574 53 19 28  0  0
48  0      0  92132     26  18116    0    0     0     0 743174 1169255 53 19 28  0  0
48  0      0  92129     26  18120    0    0     0    68 592295 933445 42 15 43  0  0
41  0      0  92124     26  18123    0    0     0    76 740354 1162221 52 19 28  0  0
49  0      0  92120     26  18125    0    0     0     0 738456 1158291 53 19 28  0  0
39  0      0  92117     26  18129    0    0     0 147536 740735 1162479 52 20 28  0  0
49  0      0  92113     26  18133    0    0     0     0 737209 1165532 53 20 28  0  0
49  0      0  92111     26  18137    0    0     0    40 741185 1168133 54 19 28  0  0
45  0      0  92110     26  18140    0    0     0  4000 740693 1141945 52 20 28  0  0
42  0      0  92105     26  18144    0    0     0     0 741857 1168830 53 19 28  0  0
43  0      0  92102     26  18147    0    0     0     8 742546 1168867 54 18 28  0  0
43  0      0  92101     26  18150    0    0     0 147456 741941 1166646 53 19 28  0  0
41  1      0  92097     26  18154    0    0     0 64192 740052 1169040 53 19 28  0  0
48  0      0  92094     26  18158    0    0     0 27484 737224 1139511 52 20 28  0  0
47  0      0  92087     26  18162    0    0     0     0 740821 1165037 53 19 28  0  0
54  0      0  92059     26  18164    0    0     0     4 737109 1155098 53 19 27  0  0
38  0      0  92051     26  18170    0    0     0 147456 701847 1075069 55 20 25  0  0
35  0      0  92064     26  18174    0    0     0    44 723153 1125736 54 19 27  0  0
48  0      0  92056     26  18179    0    0     0 53008 734590 1134838 52 19 29  0  0
46  0      0  92053     26  18183    0    0     0     0 741595 1166891 53 19 28  0  0
46  0      0  92049     26  18186    0    0     0     0 740196 1170838 54 19 27  0  0
31  1      0  92045     26  18191    0    0     0 98304 741800 1170076 54 18 28  0  0
44  0      0  92043     26  18194    0    0     0 49188 733352 1173652 53 20 27  0  0
43  0      0  92028     26  18198    0    0     0   116 733522 1151497 53 20 27  0  0
44  0      0  92037     26  18201    0    0     0     0 730364 1137665 53 19 27  0  0
37  0      0  92035     26  18204    0    0     0     0 742348 1164945 53 19 28  0  0
44  0      0  92031     26  18208    0    0     0     0 739273 1165044 53 19 28  0  0
52  0      0  92028     26  18211    0    0     0 147888 739274 1164496 53 19 28  0  0
50  0      0  92024     26  18215    0    0     0   144 739684 1145210 53 19 28  0  0
50  0      0  92020     26  18219    0    0     0     0 742847 1167779 54 18 28  0  0
38  0      0  92016     26  18223    0    0     0     0 738079 1166580 53 19 28  0  0
36  0      0  92013     26  18226    0    0     0     0 742687 1171101 54 18 27  0  0
48  0      0  92009     26  18229    0    0     0 147500 741536 1166846 53 19 28  0  0
40  0      0  92006     26  18233    0    0     0 94600 740746 1147102 52 20 28  0  0
45  0      0  92001     26  18238    0    0     0     0 741119 1163851 53 19 28  0  0
48  0      0  91999     26  18241    0    0     0     0 740995 1167197 53 19 28  0  0
35  0      0  91996     26  18244    0    0     0     0 742235 1165666 53 19 28  0  0
44  1      0  91993     26  18248    0    0     0 49192 741392 1164506 53 19 28  0  0
43  1      0  91990     26  18251    0    0     0 124876 743695 1144639 52 19 29  0  0
48  0      0  91987     26  18255    0    0     0 24864 737759 1159383 52 20 28  0  0
44  0      0  91983     26  18258    0    0     0     0 740224 1164983 53 19 28  0  0
43  0      0  91980     26  18262    0    0     0     0 741742 1168140 54 19 27  0  0
18  0      0  91976     26  18267    0    0     0    36 737449 1162293 53 19 28  0  0
49  0      0  91973     26  18269    0    0     0 147576 741462 1148048 52 20 28  0  0
43  0      0  91969     26  18274    0    0     0     0 742408 1168332 54 19 27  0  0
43  0      0  91966     26  18277    0    0     0     0 738803 1164992 53 19 28  0  0
39  0      0  91963     26  18280    0    0     0     4 737891 1159372 52 19 28  0  0
43  0      0  91962     26  18283    0    0     0    40 741888 1166835 53 19 28  0  0
48  0      0  91958     26  18287    0    0     0 164144 738677 1145900 52 20 28  0  0
46  0      0  91955     26  18291    0    0     0     0 740956 1165789 53 19 28  0  0
44  0      0  91952     26  18295    0    0     0     0 741055 1166460 53 19 28  0  0
44  0      0  91948     26  18299    0    0     0     8 739414 1165698 53 19 28  0  0
46  0      0  91945     26  18301    0    0     0    48 743218 1165277 53 19 28  0  0
36  0      0  91941     26  18305    0    0     0   208 736320 1134425 51 20 29  0  0
47  0      0  91936     26  18309    0    0     0 239096 739799 1159730 52 19 28  0  0
45  0      0  91932     26  18312    0    0     0     0 742477 1167618 53 20 28  0  0
45  0      0  91928     26  18316    0    0     0     0 736442 1159690 52 20 28  0  0
47  0      0  91926     26  18319    0    0     0    76 737145 1157620 52 20 28  0  0
48  0      0  91921     26  18323    0    0     0    64 739999 1146323 52 19 29  0  0
50  0      0  91918     26  18326    0    0     0 197176 739590 1159797 52 19 28  0  0
50  0      0  91915     26  18330    0    0     0     0 740533 1166111 53 19 28  0  0
52  0      0  91911     26  18334    0    0     0     0 739776 1161328 52 20 28  0  0
42  0      0  91907     26  18338    0    0     0    60 590783 929545 41 16 43  0  0
39  0      0  91904     26  18341    0    0     0  4248 744434 1161062 52 19 29  0  0
41  1      0  91900     26  18345    0    0     0 114688 741817 1163511 53 19 28  0  0
14  0      0  91928     26  18349    0    0     0 32768 598242 996868 43 15 42  0  0
 0  0      0  91951     26  18349    0    0     0     0 41914 84357  3  1 96  0  0
 0  0      0  91952     26  18349    0    0     0    36  174  204  0  0 100  0  0
 0  0      0  91954     26  18349    0    0     0   276 7897 13403  0  0 99  0  0
 0  0      0  91954     26  18349    0    0     0     0 1911 3678  0  0 100  0  0
 0  0      0  91954     26  18349    0    0     0 147456  330  351  0  0 100  0  0

Edit:
The same pgbench benchmark as above gave about 68k when it was run on the same system as the database and select only 540k (507k from a remote system).

A: Is CPU:75% user or user + system?
Anyway, 75% of OS CPU with hyper-threading means all cores 100% busy.
You use simple protocol tpc-b which is stressing network and context switches.
See https://franckpachot.medium.com/do-you-know-what-you-are-measuring-with-pgbench-d8692a33e3d6


The reconstruction of St Maarten's iconic Princess Juliana International Airport is making progress, officials said this week.
While the airport has been serving passengers since Oct. 10, 2017, operations will be transfefred back to the terminal building for the first time in time for the high tourist season, on a temporary basis.
The migration project for the arrival and departure operations should begin next week, with a major part of the terminal building's ground floor beginning to take shape.


text:
Home SharperIron Forums Principles & Consequences Fundamentalism & Evangelicalism [Moore] was telling us that Martin Luther King spoke with true biblical authority
[Moore] was telling us that Martin Luther King spoke with true biblical authority
Douglas Wilson's response to Russell Moore
Russell Moore: What Martin Luther King Jr. Can Still Teach the Church
Dr. Martin Luther King and #MeToo
Dave White - Mon, 05/27/2019 - 7:42pm
https://twitter.com/roddreher/status/1132855674780700673
https://www.theamericanconservative.com/dreher/me-too-martin-luther-king/
David Garrow, who won a Pulitzer Prize in 1987 for his biography of King, has unearthed previously classified FBI documents showing that King was genuinely sexually depraved.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-7071713/FBI-tapes-Martin-Luther...
Secret FBI tapes that accuse Martin Luther King Jr of having extramarital affairs with '40 to 45 women' and even claim he 'looked on and laughed' as a pastor friend raped a parishioner exist, an author has claimed.
The civil rights hero was also heard allegedly joking he was the founder of the 'International Association for the Advancement of P***y-Eaters' on an agency recording that was obtained by bugging his room, according to the sensational claims made by biographer David Garrow - a Pulitzer prize-winning author and biographer of MLK.
Perhaps it is easy for those
Jay - Tue, 05/28/2019 - 6:22am
Perhaps it is easy for those who have never felt the stinging darts of segregation to say, "Wait." But when you have seen vicious mobs lynch your mothers and fathers at will and drown your sisters and brothers at whim; when you have seen hate filled policemen curse, kick and even kill your black brothers and sisters; when you see the vast majority of your twenty million Negro brothers smothering in an airtight cage of poverty in the midst of an affluent society; when you suddenly find your tongue twisted and your speech stammering as you seek to explain to your six year old daughter why she can't go to the public amusement park that has just been advertised on television, and see tears welling up in her eyes when she is told that Funtown is closed to colored children, and see ominous clouds of inferiority beginning to form in her little mental sky, and see her beginning to distort her personality by developing an unconscious bitterness toward white people; when you have to concoct an answer for a five year old son who is asking: "Daddy, why do white people treat colored people so mean?"; when you take a cross county drive and find it necessary to sleep night after night in the uncomfortable corners of your automobile because no motel will accept you; when you are humiliated day in and day out by nagging signs reading "white" and "colored"; when your first name becomes "nigger," your middle name becomes "boy" (however old you are) and your last name becomes "John," and your wife and mother are never given the respected title "Mrs."; when you are harried by day and haunted by night by the fact that you are a Negro, living constantly at tiptoe stance, never quite knowing what to expect next, and are plagued with inner fears and outer resentments; when you are forever fighting a degenerating sense of "nobodiness"--then you will understand why we find it difficult to wait. There comes a time when the cup of endurance runs over, and men are no longer willing to be plunged into the abyss of despair. I hope, sirs, you can understand our legitimate and unavoidable impatience. You express a great deal of anxiety over our willingness to break laws. This is certainly a legitimate concern. Since we so diligently urge people to obey the Supreme Court's decision of 1954 outlawing segregation in the public schools, at first glance it may seem rather paradoxical for us consciously to break laws. One may well ask: "How can you advocate breaking some laws and obeying others?" The answer lies in the fact that there are two types of laws: just and unjust. I would be the first to advocate obeying just laws. One has not only a legal but a moral responsibility to obey just laws. Conversely, one has a moral responsibility to disobey unjust laws. I would agree with St. Augustine that "an unjust law is no law at all...
...But despite these notable exceptions, I must honestly reiterate that I have been disappointed with the church. I do not say this as one of those negative critics who can always find something wrong with the church...When I was suddenly catapulted into the leadership of the bus protest in Montgomery, Alabama, a few years ago, I felt we would be supported by the white church. I felt that the white ministers, priests and rabbis of the South would be among our strongest allies. Instead, some have been outright opponents, refusing to understand the freedom movement and misrepresenting its leaders; all too many others have been more cautious than courageous and have remained silent behind the anesthetizing security of stained glass windows...
I have heard numerous southern religious leaders admonish their worshipers to comply with a desegregation decision because it is the law, but I have longed to hear white ministers declare: "Follow this decree because integration is morally right and because the Negro is your brother." In the midst of blatant injustices inflicted upon the Negro, I have watched white churchmen stand on the sideline and mouth pious irrelevancies and sanctimonious trivialities. In the midst of a mighty struggle to rid our nation of racial and economic injustice, I have heard many ministers say: "Those are social issues, with which the gospel has no real concern." And I have watched many churches commit themselves to a completely other worldly religion which makes a strange, un-Biblical distinction between body and soul, between the sacred and the secular.
I have traveled the length and breadth of Alabama, Mississippi and all the other southern states. On sweltering summer days and crisp autumn mornings I have looked at the South's beautiful churches with their lofty spires pointing heavenward. I have beheld the impressive outlines of her massive religious education buildings. Over and over I have found myself asking: "What kind of people worship here? Who is their God? Where were their voices when the lips of Governor Barnett dripped with words of interposition and nullification? Where were they when Governor Wallace gave a clarion call for defiance and hatred? Where were their voices of support when bruised and weary Negro men and women decided to rise from the dark dungeons of complacency to the bright hills of creative protest?"
There was a time when the church was very powerful--in the time when the early Christians rejoiced at being deemed worthy to suffer for what they believed. In those days the church was not merely a thermometer that recorded the ideas and principles of popular opinion; it was a thermostat that transformed the mores of society. Whenever the early Christians entered a town, the people in power became disturbed and immediately sought to convict the Christians for being "disturbers of the peace" and "outside agitators."' But the Christians pressed on, in the conviction that they were "a colony of heaven," called to obey God rather than man. Small in number, they were big in commitment. They were too God-intoxicated to be "astronomically .
But the judgment of God is upon the church as never before. If today's church does not recapture the sacrificial spirit of the early church, it will lose its authenticity, forfeit the loyalty of millions, and be dismissed as an irrelevant social club with no meaning for the twentieth century. Every day I meet young people whose disappointment with the church has turned into outright disgust.
Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr.,
"Letter From A Birmingham Jail"
"Our task today is to tell people — who no longer know what sin is...no longer see themselves as sinners, and no longer have room for these categories — that Christ died for sins of which they do not think they're guilty." - David Wells
As for Douglas Wilson
I am not sure why I need to understand "Southern Slavery As It Really Was" by a Paleo-Confederate who is not only a serial plagiarist but who also deliberately married off a young woman to a convicted pedophile and then washes his whole hands of the matter and declares his innocence, or who attacked a family in his church for having the gall to report one of his seminary students to the police when he was found sexually assaulting their own daughter.
But I am certain that Wilson writes well and tells people soothing words, so it must just be me.
I can be thankful that MLK Jr. was used to confront hatred and bigotry in America without having to point out his many and serious flaws in the same breath.
dcbii - Tue, 05/28/2019 - 11:48am
Similar sentiment to what I can say about Trump, Reagan, JFK, or even Samson. I can be thankful for the good many have accomplished, without having to talk about their serious flaws at the same time, even if I do have to recognize that they were flawed, and keep everything in context.
Dave Barnhart
But I am certain that Wilson
Larry - Wed, 05/29/2019 - 8:34am
No, it's not just you. A lot of people are troubled by Wilson. Do you think Wilson ever makes good points? What are some examples of things you think he is right about, or things he makes a good contribution about?
IMO, it is not just that he writes well. It is that he makes points that people often haven't considered and often refuse to interact with, perhaps because they take the accepted line. They write it off as "That's just Wilson being Wilson." I think that is to the detriment of conversation. Wilson, unlike many, is not afraid of being politically incorrect if he thinks he has a point to make.
The point is whether or not that is okay. Historically, that has been widely accepted. But now, a large segment of society believes that almost anything done in the past disqualifies one from any sort of honor (statues, street names, school names, etc.) The question is whether they will be consistent when it comes to one of their heroes.
But I have to chuckle that immediately preceding this paragraph was a statement about Wilson's past which leads to me wonder why you had to point out "his many and serious flaws in the same breath." Is it possible to say anything good about Wilson without reminding people of these flaws that you see?
Jay - Wed, 05/29/2019 - 1:21pm
IMO, it is not just that he writes well. It is that he makes points that people often haven't considered and often refuse to interact with, perhaps because they take the accepted line. They write it off as "That's just Wilson being Wilson." I think that is to the detriment of conversation.
These are all good points. I guess my objection is that Wilson has an entire freight train's worth of baggage attached to him, and some of it is disqualifying to elders (1 Timothy 3:2). Some of it can be charitably written down as an accident (plagiarism), and some of it can't. So I don't understand why people use him as a reputable source on just about anything or look for his guidance/commentary. I used to read Wilson and linked to his blog, but now I regret that I did.
Wilson, unlike many, is not afraid of being politically incorrect if he thinks he has a point to make.
And I understand (and can appreciate that to a certain extent), but he's also demonstrated a willingness to fight and quarrel over many other things, including insignificant matters. Calling Nadia Bolz-Weber a "cunt" on his blog a few weeks ago, for example, or endlessly using the term "nubile" to describe young women when he knew it was offensive to at least some of his audience. That's before we get into the fiascos with Sitler and Wight. I mean, he styles himself as a "one of those grenade launching Protestants". That speaks to me as someone who has crossed over from "speaker of hard truths" to "pugnacious and quarrelsome", and, as such, is someone to be marked and avoided (2 Timothy 2:24; Romans 16:17), not celebrated and passed around because he "speaks truth" or whatever.
If I could, I'd pull his blog off the internet entirely, and I fear that people like Wilson because he fights, not because he makes good points - again, which he has done on occasion in the past. That's why it makes me nuts when sites like SharperIron link to him.
Larry - Sun, 06/02/2019 - 3:06pm
The reason why he is cited is because of what he says. And it is interesting how little people want to interact with his arguments. Consider your example of Nadia Bolz-Weber. You obviously read him more than I do because I never saw him say that. It is interesting that he predicted your response. It is not a word I would use, but it reminds of something that Tony Evans (I believe, or perhaps someone else) said when using a particular word generally considered to be profanity to describe a situation and commenting that "Some of you are more upset that I used that word than you are about" whatever problem he was mentioning. His point with the particular word used seems to be to highlight exactly what she claimed, using a word that would be more striking to highlight the issue. Again, it's not a word I would use, but it's a common rhetorical tactic that has merit. In general, I am in favor of being nicer rather than uglier. But perhaps we have become too nice and unwilling to point out the obvious about foolishness.
It seems to me that you are willing to grant King more leeway on far more serious issues than you are Wilson and others.
Jay - Sun, 06/02/2019 - 4:51pm
I will grant that I haven't read Wilson's article and don't have the entire context of what was said.
I will not, however, agree with you or Wilson that this is acceptable speech for any Christian, much less a pastor. It continues to concern me that Wilson can deliberately provoke people by sinning and then handwaves us into believing that it is either necessary or acceptable, because reasons. Most surprisingly, we are dumb enough to buy it!
If I used that word to describe any woman at work, in an environment that is not populated by Christians and has minimal exposure to Christ, I would be reprimanded and possibly even fired. Why is my workplace harder on this sin than a bunch of people who should be familiar with what the Scriptures teach us about how to interact with unbelievers? Does Ephesians 5 or James 3 suddenly go out of the Bible because Nadia Bolz disagrees with Biblical doctrine? Or because Douglas Wilson, in all his wisdom, decided that he needed to use the word in order to make a point?
It is not a word I would use,
Joel Shaffer - Sun, 06/02/2019 - 8:19pm
It is not a word I would use, but it reminds of something that Tony Evans (I believe, or perhaps someone else)
It was from Tony Campolo.
"I have three things I'd like to say today. First, while you were sleeping last night, 30,000 kids died of starvation or diseases related to malnutrition. Second, most of you don't give a ****. What's worse is that you're more upset with the fact that I said **** than the fact that 30,000 kids died last night."