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Two Followers of Cadmus devoured by a Dragon
Cornelis van Haarlem
Oil on canvas stuck on oak
148.5 x 195.5 cm
Inscription summary
Signed; Dated
Presented by the Duke of Northumberland, 1838
Hugh Percy, 3rd Duke of Northumberland
Cadmus, a prince of Tyre, travelled to the Delphic Oracle after his sister was stolen away by Zeus, chief of the Greek gods. There he was told that, instead of searching for his sister, he should 'follow the cow outside and wherever it rests, build a new city'.
When the cow stopped Cadmus's followers went in search of water. A dragon was guarding the spring they found; it slaughtered them all. Cadmus managed to kill it, and the goddess Athena told him to sow its teeth in the ground. Armed men sprang from them – and fought each other. Five survived to help Cadmus build the city of Thebes.
Here, the dragon sinks its teeth into a man's cheek. Its claws seem to tear his flesh, but a closer look reveals that the legs and torso belong to a second person flung across his hips. A glimmer of hope is offered by a distant view of Cadmus fighting the dragon.
Cadmus, a prince of Tyre, travelled to the Delphic Oracle after his sister was stolen away by Zeus. He asked where to find her but was told that, instead of searching for his sister, he should 'follow the cow outside and wherever it rests, build a new city'.
This Cadmus did. When the cow collapsed from fatigue, he sent his followers to search for water so he could sacrifice it to the goddess Athena. But the spring they found was guarded by a fierce dragon, the son of Ares, and it slaughtered them all. When his men failed to return, Cadmus set out after them and came face to face with the monster. After a fierce struggle he killed it, and was told by Athena to sow its teeth in the ground. Armed men sprang up from the earth as soon as the teeth touched it – and began to fight each other. Five were left alive. They swore allegiance to Cadmus and helped him build the city that later became known as Thebes.
Here, a man reaches up to wrestle the dragon away as it sinks its foul teeth – described by the Roman poet Ovid as shining like gold, though van Haarlem imagines them otherwise – into his cheek. The dragon's tail curls and clings down past the man's shoulder, the livid pink tip obscenely probing his curls. Its claws seem to tear his torso and legs, but a closer look reveals that they belong to another person, already dead and flung across his hips. A severed head is on the ground, the throat revealed behind the first man's muscular back and contorted arm. The bones of other victims are scattered about. The dragon's black wings are outlined against a thundery sky, but a glimmer of hope is offered by a distant view of Cadmus fighting it to its death. This collapsing of time – showing two scenes from a story in one painting – was a favourite device of artists like van Haarlem, working in the Manneriststyle.
The story of Cadmus is told in Ovid's Metamorphoses with as much gory detail as van Haarlem shows in his painting. Biblical and classical stories gave Mannerist painters scope for studies of the nude in contorted poses with exaggerated facial expressions. Karel van Mander, an artist and influential writer on art in Haarlem in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries, was van Haarlem's mentor. Together with the painter and printmaker Hendrick Goltzius, who made a print after van Haarlem's painting, they furthered the Mannerist style in the city, with Michelangelo and more muscular examples of classical sculpture as their ideal exemplars. Not for them the cosy Dutch interior or elegant flower arrangement. Their ambitions were far wider than the Haarlem market and they sought to align themselves with international developments in painting.
More paintings by Cornelis van Haarlem
The Preaching of Saint John the Baptist
The central character of this painting is hidden in the shadows: a man with long hair and a beard who seems to draw the attention of the people gathered before him. This is Saint John the Baptist, standing on what looks like an improvised pulpit. The large crowd is divided between conversation an...


On the ninth day of Mahabharata war, Duryodhana approached Bhishma in his camp. He was suspicious of the grandsire's dedication to the fight. Duryodana felt that Bhishma was not doing his best , as he was carried away by his affection to the Pandavas. Duryodhana felt anxious of the result if Bhishma continued to fight half-heartedly. So Duryodhana wanted to rouse Bhishma to his full fury, even if it meant hurting the old man.
Approaching Bhishma, Duryodhana remarked that Bhishma was waging a half-hearted fight. Stung by these remarks, Bhishma gave word that he would rout the Pandava army and kill all the Pandavas.
When Draupadi heard this, she was afraid. She prayed to her Lord Krishna.
As soon as she thought of Krishna, he appeared before her. Krishna asked her to follow him. He took her through the battlefield. The battlefield was an awful sight with bodies scattered everywhere. They finally reached a tent.
Druapadi got up asking Bhishma to promise protection to her husbands.
Thus succeeding in their mission, Krishna and Draupadi took leave of Bhishma.
As soon as devotee think of Krishna he appear on lotus of his hearth. When invited by devotee Krishna is always ready to help although apparently we do not see his help. By pleasing great personalities we get blessings even without asking for them as Draupadi get blessings of Pitamaha Bhishma.
moral / instructive stories they hear so that everyone can be benefitted.


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Share this Story: Saskatchewan: Easy to draw, hard to spell, fun to colour
Saskatchewan: Easy to draw, hard to spell, fun to colour
Barb Pacholik • Regina Leader-Post
Regina comic book creator Jason Sylvestre displays his new book, Colour Saskatchewan, an adult colouring book in Regina. Photo by TROY FLEECE /Regina Leader-Post
With images of notable Saskatchewanians, historic scenes, an array of flora and fauna, and beautiful vistas, Regina illustrator Jason Sylvestre offers colouring enthusiasts a chance to fill in the blanks as they see fit in his latest book.
Catching the craze in adult colouring books, Sylvestre has created Colour Saskatchewan, featuring a half-coloured iconic Pool grain elevator and beautiful prairie sunset on the cover.
Saskatchewan: Easy to draw, hard to spell, fun to colour Back to video
Regina illustrator Jason Sylvestre displays his new book, Colour Saskatchewan, an adult colouring book. Photo by TROY FLEECE /Regina Leader-Post
Sylvestre admitted in a recent interview that he had no idea who or what the market might be. But since the book's release last week, he's had plenty of interest from people inside and outside the province's lines.
"I'm excited that they're excited," he said.
Sylvestre hopes the images will inspire creativity, and people will cut their coloured pages from the book to create framed artwork.
He started working on the images over the summer and drew about 100, some 70 of which made the cut by the book's publisher MacIntyre Purcell Publishing Inc.
Most of the pictures come from Sylvestre's own photos or from old, archival photos. Then using translucent vellum paper, he made the transition to line drawing, either by freehand or with the help of Photoshop software.
During summer trips with his wife and two children, Sylvestre loves pulling into a campground then exploring the small-town life around it. Some of the drawings got their beginnings around the campfire.
He hopes they might inspire others to discover the beauty of such places as the Jackfish Lake Lighthouse at Cochin, or Hunt Falls in the north, or Duck Mountain Provincial Park, one of his favourite places.
Part of the proceeds from the sale of the book, with a cover price of $16.95, will go to Creative Kids, a Saskatchewan organization funding disadvantaged children in arts and culture activities. Plans are underway for a fundraiser, having celebrities colour and autograph a picture in books that will be sold off.
"It's pretty weird seeing somebody else colour your picture," perhaps colouring outside those lines. "You can't attach any feelings to any of the images. You have to let them go," he said.
Creative Kids is a cause that's near to Sylvestre's heart, who grew up in a single-parent family where money was tight. But he persevered in his artistic dreams. He's an illustrator and comic creator and also takes on similar contract jobs in addition to working fulltime for Legal Aid. He and co-worker, lawyer Carson Demmans, have put out five graphic novels, with plans for more.
Sylvestre admits even he is a bit baffled by the adult colouring trend, but can appreciate the "zen" of focusing on a creative endeavour after the stress of a workday. "It's very cathartic," he said of drawing.
Colour Saskatchewan is available in bookstores around the province, online through Amazon, and Sylvestre will have copies at Regina's upcoming Fan Expo.
bpacholik@postmedia.com

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaCommonCrawl


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How I'll remember Shirley Williams
[Getty Images]
Shortly after the news of Prince Philip's death was announced by Buckingham Palace, a woman called Karen Geier tweeted the following: 'Deeply saddened to hear it was peaceful. He deserved so much more (pain).' Ms Geier is a writer who has been published by, among others, the Guardianand the Huffington Post. That's the kinder, gentler left for you. Meanwhile, the BBC received 100,000 complaints (a record) for its relentless coverage, the entire schedule having been ripped up on 9 April so that a succession of people could explain to us how nice the Prince was. I suspect it wasn't only carping lefties phoning in to moan — I grew a little tired of it all by lunchtime.
It is hard — in this instance — not to feel sorry for the BBC: damned if they do, damned if they don't. The poor buggers will have been through countless rehearsals on how to cover the Duke's death, the same ones I endured when I worked for the BBC back in the last century (except then it was largely for the Queen Mum, who in our reconstructions always expired with a whole trout sticking out of her mouth). There is a strict protocol which has to be followed and years' worth of pre-recorded material to shove on air. It is a kind of anti-journalism, in that it never tells you anything you didn't know already and the story itself, while undoubtedly sad, is journalistically unremarkable: 'Very old man with heart condition dies.'
It is always the same. I recall being bored to death when Nelson Mandela corked it. 'Famous nice black man dies,' I wrote at the time, causing the left to erupt in fury and call me a racist, as per usual. They failed to spot that I had made very similar comments when Margaret Thatcher died and we were treated to reruns of the miners' strike, the Falklands War etc. With the passing of old Nelson, I was mildly interested to hear some of the eulogies from world leaders, the reaction in his home country and maybe an expert to predict how quickly South Africa would descend into the tyrannical, violent and corrupt pit of hell inhabited by almost every other country on the continent (about two years, as it turned out). I didn't want 24 hours of hagiography and nor did I when Prince Philip bought the farm. A BBC exec once asked me what plans I had in place for the expected death of Pope John Paul II. He wanted details. Very old Polish manifestation of God on Earth dies, etc. I was editor of Today at the time. I told the boss that we would be doing the programme exactly the same as usual, but that we'd get the Revd Ian Paisley to do Thought for the Day.
Three days after Prince Philip, Shirley Williams popped her clogs and the encomiums were by and large measured and proportionate. The most oft-repeated phrase was that she was expected to become Britain's first female prime minister but apparently that honour went to somebody else. Nobody I heard made the reasonable observation that she destroyed the country for three generations, invented woke and helped to liquidate a perfectly decent political party, the Social Democratic party, of which she was the first president. Perhaps people thought it was too soon to make those sorts of comments.
What we heard, instead, was that Shirley Williams was incredibly nice — which she was. I met her on several occasions and she was always utterly charming. But then I'm told that Pol Pot could be incredibly winning, once you got to know him. OK, Shirley Williams should probably not be compared with old Pol — but niceness is perhaps an overrated virtue: one must always look at outcomes. Richard Beeching, for example, was also regarded as a friendly sort of guy — but it didn't stop him crucifying our rail network.
Anyway, held in a certain suspicion by Harold Wilson, before he went doolally, Shirley found herself with the education portfolio as soon as Jim Callaghan became prime minister in 1976. With great fervour she immediately began to dismantle the country's grammar schools which, during the 1960s, had elevated many children rather less high-born than the daughter of Vera Brittain into top universities. However, personally aghast at her own proposals, she moved house to ensure that her daughter, Rebecca, was able to attend a grant-aided school, Godolphin and Latymer, which she knew had absolutely no intention of becoming a comprehensive and instead went private. Thus Shirl laid down a winning template for future leftie hypocrites such as Diane Abbott, Emily Thornberry and the ghastly Shami Chakrabarti: volubly opposed to private or selective schools but absolutely determined to send their own kids to one or the other. Williams was also an early advocate of the core curriculum, which has led to education becoming a conduit for tendentious liberal propaganda — even if, late in the day, she worried that central control over the curriculum had possibly gone too far. She epitomised white, late 20th century,bien pensant upper middle-class liberalism: no creed has more damaged this nation.
She was a founding member of the party of which I am a proud member, the SDP. But the problem here was that, like Roy Jenkins, she was not really a Social Democrat at all: she was, from the beginning to the end, a liberal, lower case, and of course later upper case. Patriotism and a love of the nation state, together with a scepticism towards the ambitious EEC and a belief in communitarianism, held no allure for her, as it did for David Owen. Like Jenkins and the Liberals, she appealed to the affluent, the well-heeled and the well-mannered. The disastrous merger with David Steel's Liberals — opposed of course by Owen — meant almost the end of a party which had genuine appeal among the working class. (Almost: we're still going, and growing now.) But Shirley had no problem with that merger. She had come home at last.
TaggedPrince philip, Shirley Williams, Social Democratic party
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QPR: Assessment of Transfer Dealings and Squad
By Grant James on September 10, 2012 in Analysis
It's been an incredibly busy summer for QPR. 10 major signings have come in, whilst 6 regulars from last season have left the club. Going back further, since Neil Warnock was sacked and Mark Hughes came in, a mammoth 15 major players have been added to the squad, and to the wage bill. Just how strong is the current squad, and where is the club likely to finish?
Goalkeepers:
This was a weak area for the side last season. Paddy Kenny is a solid Championship goalkeeper, but an improvement in this area was needed. Robert Green came in after his contract with West Ham expired, but he promptly let in a soft goal on his debut. You have to ask yourself why no Premier League team was willing to sign Green after West Ham's relegation. When the chance arose to sign Júlio César, it's not one an ambitious side could turn down, just because they had already signed Green. Júlio César won the Champions League with Inter Milan in 2010, and working under José Mourinho's famed goalkeeping coach, Silvino Louro, he was generally regarded as one of the world's very best goalkeepers. Only 2 years later, Inter were happy to let him go after a couple of disappointing (and injury prone) seasons since Mourinho (and Louro) departed the club. He has 64 caps for Brazil, and was a no brainer signing, even on his wages.
At 32, he has several years left in him, and has already said that he is targeting Champions League football and a league title with QPR. Robert Green is now the number 2, and it remains to be seen if he will be satisfied with appearances in the domestic cup competitions when it appeared he was signed to be first choice. Hughes said that "the opportunity to sign him (Júlio César) only arose in the last couple of days [of the window] and when you get a chance to sign a player of that quality, you have to pursue it to its conclusion. I will sit down with Rob and talk him through it. What we're trying to do here is improve the quality of the group and pose challenges to everyone."
Defence:
This is a massive worry for Mark Hughes, that much is obvious. He tried, and failed, to sign Christopher Samba and Alex last January, despite agreeing a fee for the latter. This summer, he failed in attempts to sign Michael Dawson and, if reports are true, to loan Ricardo Carvalho from Real Madrid. If you look back at Hughes' defensive targets when he was Manchester City manager, his number one choice was John Terry. It's clear that Hughes always wants a big character in central defence – an organiser, a leader and someone to dominate aerially.
Hughes said, "That was the plan at the start of the window and [central defence] is the one area that we haven't been able to address." He got Ryan Nelsen and Stephanie M'Bia instead. Nelsen was captain at Blackburn Rovers under Hughes, but he is now 34 and hasn't played regularly for 18 months. You get the distinct impression that Nelsen's off-field personality and experience were more of an attraction that his actual defensive capabilities. M'Bia captained Marseille at times, and is an athletic, physical defensive midfielder, who can cover in central defence. He has made it clear in the past that he sees himself as a box-to-box midfielder, but it may be that Hughes uses M'Bia at centre back.
Link: Stephane M'Bia adds power and ambition to the QPR squad.
Beyond that, you are left with Clint Hill and Anton Ferdinand, neither of whom are top half players (and arguably not even Premier League standard players), and Nedum Onuoha. Onuoha is very quick, very athletic, and could have excelled alongside an organiser. Positionally, he is still learning and has spent most of his career thus far (with City and Sunderland) playing at right back. His one run of games in central defence came with Hughes as his manager at City.
Fullback is another potentially dodgy area. Jose Bosingwa and Fabio have come in, and both are excellent going forward, and quick, determined fullbacks, but neither is great at covering their central defenders, and can be targeted in the air with diagonal balls. Luke Young is a steady performer, but he has not made QPR's 25 man Premier League squad, and is expected to be loaned out to a Championship side. There's also Armand Traoré, who came on in the Capital One Cup win over Walsall, and will challenge Fabio for the left back spot, and could possibly do a job on the left hand side of midfield.
Midfield:
This is undoubtedly the strongest area of QPR's squad. In wide positions, Park Ji-Sung and Junior Hoilett both joined this summer. Park brings his experience, defensive nous and versatility to the squad, whilst also being the current captain of the side. At one stage, he was one of the best big-game players in European football, and although he is older now, and less capable of marathon shifts, he gives QPR a sense of calm which was lacking under previous captain, Joey Barton. Hoilett arrived after his Blackburn contract expired (though a tribunal will set compensation payable to Blackburn) and he brings a great directness, skill in 1v1 situations, and a real threat from long range.
Samba Diakité has agreed a four-year deal with the Loftus Road club having initially joined on loan last season. The fee is reported to be in the region of £3.5m. He had some very good games for the club last season, especially when scoring the winning goal in an all-action display against Arsenal. However, he was sent off on his debut, and it will be very important for him to tackle intelligently.
Samba Diakité joined QPR on loan from Nancy last season before making the move permanent. Photograph: Ian Walton/Getty Images
Mark Hughes told the club's website: "Samba was a real find for us in January, so we're delighted he's joined us permanently. He's a very accomplished footballer and he's made to measure for the Premier League. He's got good pace, strength and ability on the ball and he's going to be a great asset for us going forward. There's still so much more to come from him. He's only been exposed to the Premier League for a handful of games, so I'm sure he's raring to go and get back into the action again."
However, the major midfield signing of the summer was Esteban Granero, a very surprising addition from Real Madrid. And it's not as if he never played for them. He played in roughly half of last season's La Liga games, as well as against both Barcelona and Bayern Munich. His excellent ball retention in deep positions will be of huge benefit to a QPR side who were desperately lacking in that area after Alejandro Faurlín's knee injury last January. With the Argentine back to full fitness, QPR's central midfield options look very strong. It's quite possible that Faurlín and Granero could be used together in a 2 man central midfield too. Faurlín had some of the best tackling stats in the division last season and also brings a competitive edge to the side. This is something that might take Granero a little time to develop. Last season's regulars Adel Taarabt and Jamie Mackie will also be keen to keep their places in the starting midfield. Mackie was one of the best performers last season, and Taarabt has been given the iconic number 10 jersey as a show of faith after he signed a new 3 year contract. It remains to be seen if he will feature wide this season, or will play predominantly off a single striker.
You can find analysis of Granero here:
Strikers:
QPR have 3 senior strikers on the books in Bobby Zamora, Djibril Cissé and Andy Johnson. If you consider that a single striker formation will be used regularly, and the ability of Mackie, Taarabt or Hoilett to play off that lone striker, this appears to be a sufficiently stocked position. Andy Johnson will bring a workrate that the other two don't offer, and his diligent channel running makes him an attractive option in away games, as well as making him a handful on the tight Loftus Road pitch. Cissé gives pure pace, and some selfish striking instinct. He scored 6 league goals in 8 appearances after his move last season, and if he can cut out the red cards, he may end up as top goalscorer. Zamora is an excellent "hold-up" target man, and is a perfect foil to a 5 man midfield, especially one featuring runners like Park and Hoilett. The issue in this area is that none of these front men provide particularly reliable goal returns.
Finances and wages:
You can find a very in-depth article on QPR's financial situation here, by the outstanding Swiss Ramble. This is a worrying area for the club as big wages have been offered to a number of older players, and the commercial income is not at all strong, whilst Loftus Road holds only 18360 and is not always sold out.
This must still be a worry. New signing Park Ji-Sung is currently captain, and that is a risky route to follow. Barton was appointed captain shortly after signing last season, as was Roger Johnson at Wolves. Neither club had good seasons and both appeared lacking in on (and off) field guidance, and both sacked managers during the course of last season.
Where will QPR finish?
QPR chief executive Philip Beard revealed the club are not prepared to accept another relegation scrap following their summer transfer spree. My personal prediction is a finish around 12'th, which would represent a solid season and something to build on.
WHERE DO YOU SEE QPR FINISHING THIS SEASON?
LET US KNOW IN THE COMMENTS SECTION BELOW.
About Grant James
Grant James is a professional football analyst and coach who holds a UEFA B Licence, FA Youth Module 2, CAF B License, the Prozone Level 3 in Performance Analysis and has a one-year diploma in Sports Coaching Science from ETA. All views are his own.
View all posts by Grant James →
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5 Responses to QPR: Assessment of Transfer Dealings and Squad
Sheldon September 10, 2012 at 7:10 PM #
probably a mistake making Park captain. I do not doubt he will give his all for the side, but can he even speak? his face doesnt look designed for conversation.
frank September 11, 2012 at 10:55 AM #
Its not sustainable for long term success to bring in only 3 out of 12 players under 25 on these kinds of wages. Its the kind of transfer policy that got Newcastle relegated effectively. When the going gets tough will the players really be motivated to put the effort in when they know no matter the result they'll have a fat wad of cash in the bank at the end of the week?
Swansea have a more united side (much more balanced), Villa have a better manager, Fulham with that home record.
Grant James September 11, 2012 at 11:26 AM #
Yes, it's a risky ploy. The average age of the 25 man squad is 28.2. This would be higher if you included Luke Young, who's also a recent signing.
Premier League Review Week 4 - September 18, 2012
[…] away game Chelsea had less possession than the opposition, with QPR enjoying 52.9% of the ball. The squad is looking very deep too, with M'Bia, Diakité and Hoilett all yet to really […]
QPR: Mark Hughes' Side Lack Leadership - Football Analysis - December 4, 2012
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The prevalence of armed conflict in areas of high biodiversity is alarming, though not entirely surprising. According to "Warfare in Biodiversity Hotspots" (abstract online), which was published earlier this year in Conservation Biology, 80 percent of the major armed conflicts between 1950 and 2000 took place in biodiversity hotspots. While natural resources are rarely the principal causes of conflict, their allocation and ownership are frequently among its drivers.
Thor Hanson et al. highlight what the conservation and development communities already know about rights to land and natural resources: They pose some of the most difficult and essential challenges to peacebuilding in nearly every conflict situation around the world.
Land-use and resource rights are often connected with essential services that need to be restored after conflict, such as rule of law and livelihoods. Resolving these politically contentious issues is typically beyond the purview of post-conflict development programs. Yet development programs can support the host government's efforts by providing land-dispute resolution mechanisms and working to ensure access to justice. The international community and development actors must make more of an effort to address these issues within the existing frameworks of post-conflict stabilization, reconstruction, and recovery programs.
In addition, post-conflict peacebuilders must be aware of any existing tensions over natural resource exploitation, taking care to ensure that future revenues from natural resources directly benefit the local economy and community. To complement this, the business activities of private entities should be required to meet safety and quality standards. While this may be extremely difficult to achieve in practice, some certification programs, such as the Kimberley Process, are being promoted as ways to meet this goal.
Most biodiversity hotspots are in tropical regions, which are some of the poorest areas on the planet and often inherited highly unequal land-tenure systems from colonial land arrangements. Conservation organizations have the opportunity to influence and advance their agenda in many of these hotspots by involving themselves constructively in the post-conflict recovery process, by seeking partnerships with development organizations, and by identifying specific recommendations for post-conflict recovery and development planning–some of which is being done by UNEP's Post-Conflict and Disaster Management Branch.
These communities have much to learn from each other, and their collaboration is essential to ensuring that post-conflict development planning sustains both the environment and peace in the world's remaining biodiversity hotspots.
Adrienne Stork holds an M.A. in international environmental policy from the Monterey Institute of International Studies, and is currently interning for the UN Development Program in the Disarmament, Demobilization and Reintegration team of the Bureau for Crisis Prevention and Recovery.
Photo: Water sampling exercise at a UNEP capacity building course in Cote d'Ivoire, October 2008, courtesy UNEP.


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Q: s3slider jquery sorry guys but why would s3slider plugin for jquery throw this error when I followed everything to the letter. here is the error
$("#s3slider").s3slider is not a function

here is the code for which the s3slider works on:

                        <img src="<?="$base$images";?>/gallery/cleaningup.jpg" alt="" />

Cleaning UpAnd it's not just her Act

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Getting Water to DrinkShould it be this hard?

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  Waiting in LineAnd Patiently too.

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Grabbing LunchGuess what is for Lunch?

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  An IronClad Future?Doing his bit to make that happen.

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KidsDoing their Bit of Household chores.

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At the Market PlaceBusiness of Buying and Selling.

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Providing a Necessary ServiceAdding Value the Best he can

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On The JobVital Refreshment on the Job.

A: What does your script block look like?
If it literally says this:
$("#s3slider").s3slider
try changing it to:
$("#s3slider").s3slider();

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaStackExchange


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Q: How to split an input of numbers (student ID) from user to implement into formula I'm having trouble with this beginner java program that was assigned to me, I'm completely new to java and I'm having a lot of trouble with this particular program. These are the instructions:

Your program should prompt users to enter an n-digit number as a student ID, and then display the
  validity of the entered ID. You can assume n will be in the range of 6 and 10 inclusive. The checksum
  digit is part of student ID. Your algorithm is to match the rightmost digit in the entered ID with the
  computed checksum digit. If there is no match, then your program shall report the entered ID being
  invalid.
  For example, the entered ID 1234567 is invalid because the computed 7th digit is 1 (= (1 * (digit1)  + 2 *
  (digit 2) + 3 * (digit 3) + 4 * (digit 4) + 5 * (digit 5) + 6 * (digit 6)) % 10) and is different from the actual 7th digit which is
  7. However, if the entered ID is 1234561 your program shall display a message of acceptance.

The first step I'm trying to do is to read each number from the user's input that doesn't have spaces, as if it were to have spaces. Then I'm trying to get each of those numbers assigned to the variable that is digit 1, digit 2, ... etc. to compute.
import java.util.Scanner;
public class H4_Ruby{
public static void main(String[] args){
// this code scans the the user input
  Scanner scan = new Scanner(System.in);
  System.out.println("Please enter a student ID between 6-10 digits");
  String nums = scan.nextLine();
  String[] studentIdArray = nums.split(" ");
  int[] studentID = new int [studentIdArray.length];

  for (int i = 0; i < studentIdArray.length; i++)
  {
     studentID[i]= Integer.parseInt(studentIdArray[i]);
     System.out.print(studentID[i] + ",");
  }
}

That is my code so far...

A: You can't split by nums.split(" ") to get a String array. You already got a String Id from user without spaces.
So iterate through the String and keep calculating the sum of products with multiplier like below. I've added comments in the code itself.
public static void main(String[] args) {
    // this code scans the the user input
    Scanner scan = new Scanner(System.in);
    System.out.println("Please enter a student ID between 6-10 digits");
    String nums = scan.nextLine();

    int multiplier = 1, totalProductSum = 0;
    for (int i = 0; i < nums.length() - 1; i++) {

        // if the character is not digit, its not a valid id
        if (!Character.isDigit(nums.charAt(i))) {
            System.out.println("Invaild Id");
            return;
        }

        // maintain the sum of products and increment the multiplier everytime
        totalProductSum += (multiplier * (nums.charAt(i) - '0'));
        multiplier++;
    }

    // the condition for validity i.e totalProduct sum mod 10 and last digit in input Id
    if ((totalProductSum % 10) == (nums.charAt(nums.length() - 1) - '0'))
        System.out.println("Valid Id");
    else
        System.out.println("Invaild Id");
}

A: Here, you can use this one also:
final class H4_Ruby {
  public static void main(final String... args) {
    System.out.printf("%s student ID%n", (H4_Ruby.isValid(H4_Ruby.read())) ? "Valid" : "Invalid");
  }

  private static String read() {
    final Scanner scan = new Scanner(System.in);
    // [start] do-while here for input validation: length and all characters must be digits
    System.out.print("Please, enter a student ID between 6-10 digits: ");
    final String input = scan.nextLine();
    // [end] do-while here for input validation: length and all characters must be digits
    return input;
  }

  private static boolean isValid(final CharSequence studentId) {
    int partial = 0;
    for (int i = 0; i < (studentId.length() - 1); i++) {
      partial += ((i + 1) * Character.getNumericValue(studentId.charAt(i)));
    }
    return (partial % 10) == Character.getNumericValue(studentId.charAt(studentId.length() - 1));
  }
}


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Soon after, Afiniti contracted with Caesars on a pay for performance basis.
In 2011, Afiniti partnered with Caesars to use behavioral pairing technology to improve their contact center performance.
Caesars was seeking to optimize sales as part of their strategic plan to improve revenues. Afiniti was initially deployed across 130 representatives focused on general reservations, replacing Caesars's call flow model with Afiniti Enterprise Behavioral Pairing to intelligently match over 750,000 calls annually. This was accomplished without impact to Caesars's contact center operations or changes to their service level agreements.
The design and implementation were also completed seamlessly with no impact to existing telephony infrastructure and processes. Caesars did not bear any upfront investment costs and assumed no commercial risk, as Afiniti agreed to be fully compensated for its services on a pay-for-performance basis.
In 2014, Caesars chose to quickly expand Afiniti's behavioral pairing solution to include an additional 180 agents following the success of the initial deployment.
As part of the expansion effort, Afiniti conducted workshops in which management from Caesars's cross-functional teams, including sales, analytics, contact center operations, and technology, dedicated their time to understanding the fundamentals of Afiniti's design, approach, and benefits. During these sessions, Afiniti proved its ability to deliver significant results under strict operational SLAs, validated by Caesars's Advanced Analytics and Data Science team.
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Afiniti is proud to have played a role in revolutionizing Caesars's contact center environment and in transforming the customer experience, thus contributing to Caesars' profitability and long-term success.


Making goals in a competitive environment can sometimes feel like a fruitless endeavor. Want to qualify for the Pro Tour? Good luck, as you'll still need to win that Regional Pro Tour Qualifier that's eluded you all these years. Make Day 2 of a Grand Prix? Well, you still need to go 6-3 or better to make that happen.
Tangible goals in Magic may feel like they help you find your path, but in reality they may be adding unneeded pressure when trying to perform. Even worse, these types of goals may impede you from working on the things that should've been your goals in the first place.
Focusing on tangible goals related to tournament results is the opposite of what you should do when reflecting on 2017 and looking forward to 2018. It's not like you'll be incapable of succeeding if you don't say what you're trying to accomplish, but it distracts you from how to actually get there. When you say you want to accomplish something, all of a sudden every win gets you closer, and every loss shoves you away. Wins and losses replace the improvements that will turn losses into wins.
Don't overcomplicate things. Instead of thinking about what you need to accomplish to be great, do the things that create greatness, like setting these goals.
When self-worth gets tangled with tournament results, it's a disaster whether you do poorly or well. Good results come with a sense of inflated ego, as someone who invests their self-worth into results will need praise to feel good about their accomplishment. They'll put on airs at the local game store. They may start sentences like this: "That reminds me of the SCG Open/Grand Prix I made Top 8 at."
I really don't need more examples. You know what I'm talking about.
Meanwhile, poor finishes come with a sense of embarrassment or, worse, resentment. Topdecks, pairings, mulligans, and anything else become evidence of just how unlucky they got. The thought of mistake having anything to do with the result is ridiculous. Well, maybe they made a few, but it wouldn't have mattered anyway!
Investing self-worth into a tournament will hinder your ability to evaluate the tournament objectively. Instead of spending Sunday night or Monday morning discussing if you metagamed correctly, built your sideboard well, or even prepared for a certain matchup properly, it will be spent gloating or complaining. Neither is beneficial in the long marathon that is professional Magic.
Now, I don't want you to think you should become a robot (like Ben Stark). You should enjoy the highs, but understand that accomplishment doesn't equate to perfection. I've played great and not made Day 2 of an event, and I know we've all played like literal garbage and won matches on more than one occasion. Results don't define you one way or another.
It's tough to stop investing your self-worth into tournaments at first, but trust me: it gets easier as time goes. Eventually you'll stop and easily be able to dissect your game, no matter how intrusive you may think it will be. You'll begin to enjoy telling your friends how badly you played and whether they can help you find what went wrong. You'll stop blaming external issues for results and begin to realize that maybe your sideboard isn't built how it should be. You may even stop defending that pet deck you know deep down isn't worth your time. Whatever it is, when you stop looking at the whole picture to dig deeper you'll be able to fix tiny issues you never thought existed.
On the subject of getting better, how does one do that? Well, one of the most cliche answers to this question is "surround yourself with competent players and play as much as possible." This answer is easy and often said without conviction. Don't buy into this lackluster answer. Of course playing more and doing it with better players will lead to improvement, but not everyone has unlimited resources to put into Magic.
What will help, no matter what level you're on, is evaluating everything, and I mean everything.
After you play in a tournament, don't just move on to the next one. Go back and try to find mistakes, not just in what happened in games but in all the decisions that went into the event. Did you metagame correctly? Go check out what the metagame was, and analyze how off you were. Did that affect how your deck was built and cause you to have an inferior build compared to those who excelled? What build do you believe was better, and why do you think they came to those conclusions that got them to that design?
What were the reasons to which you were unable to come to those same findings? Was it lack of preparation time? Could it have been bad advice from those around you? Maybe you were just stubborn and thought a matchup was better than it actually was. Perhaps you emotionally added too many sideboard cards for a matchup you simply dislike losing to, and that cost you points against a more threatening deck.
It's difficult to always retrospectively evaluate tournaments with an untarnished mindset. The easiest way to get around the rationalizing mind is to write up a battle plan the night before an event. Think of it like a miniature tournament report you read on this very website. Document what list you're going to play, why you chose it, what you did to prepare for the event, what you think the metagame will be, and how you plan to sideboard in every matchup. Sometimes this exercise will even lead to refining your list and strategies before the event itself. At the very least it will give you an objective look at your pre-tournament ideas and opinions that you can sift through later, unaffected by hindsight bias.
Doing this will help you develop an analytical perspective on preparation. You'll begin to streamline the limited time you have for preparation, as you'll begin to sidestep common mistakes you previously didn't know you made going into every tournament. You won't need a large group to prepare with, as you've begun to find a way for practice to cater to you. Slowly but surely you'll find kinks in your process and weed them out. Eventually you'll see more of the puzzle, and that right there is a step to becoming better at the game.
In the past few years, a new concept on explaining good gameplay emerged in the form of puzzle solving. No, this does not have anything to do with Puzzle Quest.
The idea is that the first goal in decision-making is not to find the answer to what to do, but rather to identify all the puzzles being presented. Sometimes it's simply which land to play on Turn 1, which isn't very interesting, but other times it can be extremely complex, with multiple puzzles within puzzles on a crucial turn.
Missing an on-battlefield trick is missing a puzzle. Forgetting they kept up two mana on Turn 4 in the Temur Energy mirror and thus not playing around Abrade and Harnessed Lightning on a later turn is missing a puzzle. Finding that puzzle could very well have stopped you from making a bad play and thus given you a better chance to win a game.
Some puzzles are mechanical, others judgmental, but they all exist. Your job is to identify as many as you can.
This has slowed my game down. Well, I'd like to blame old age, but lately I feel like I see so much more in a game of Magic than ever before. Numerous possibilities flood my brain, and I try to dissect them all as quickly as possible. Now, this doesn't excuse my slow behavior in the slightest, and I've become aware that I need to find a way to play more quickly, but the fact remains that I feel like I'm aware of vastly more in a game of Magic, which bogs me down.
This is a difficult principle to implement, as it sounds like you should think about all the possibilities before executing one of them. In reality, it's understanding that you may not be capable of seeing all the possibilities in the first place, and that's what you should work on. The less you miss, the easier it is to make an informed decision. But finding what you normally miss isn't easy, and it's only possible after you properly execute the first two goals in the article.
This goal transcends competitive Magic, making it all that much more vital to work on.
Knowing the correct thing to do is important, but when disagreements occur, the "whys" become much more important to understand. For example, why do people think it's not correct for them to play Temur Energy? You can simply believe they're wrong, or you can ask them. You can try to understand why they think that way and possibly find something to internalize from the conversation, even if it's just to not do the thing they do in the future, like fearring mirrors. When disputes in our community come up, maybe some time should go into figuring out why people have opposing viewpoints.
Your ideas are important, but they do not supersede others' opinions simply due to not being yours. This applies even if you've been correct more times than not in the past with the individual, or the topic. There's a chance you're wrong. There's a chance you're not. The truth will be easier to identify if you know where they're coming from. Understand their ideas then proceed however you deem worthy. The dialog will help both parties.
No one wants you to be right when you start by telling them they're wrong.
Sadly, not everyone is willing to do this. Some just need their opinions to be respected, but that's not your burden or your fight. If someone is not willing to hear your opinions, just move on without inflaming the situation. It's their toxicity, but your choice to be infected by it.
In the end, all four of these goals merge into one major task: be open to more ideas and possibilities. Don't get rigid in your beliefs, and always be willing to be wrong. Almost get excited at the possibility you're wrong and thus get to improve in some way, and be willing to improve however possible. Those unwilling to understand additional viewpoints will have the most difficult lives.
Perception isn't like riding a bike. You have to constantly keep re-learning things so that your foundation for decision-making doesn't end up tainted and outdated. Always be aware that there's something you could get better at. Always be willing to get better.
Always be willing to set a new goal.
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text:
Tourism in the Republic of the Congo
the Republic of the Congo recorded a total of 156,000 tourists in 2018, ranking 172nd in the world in absolute terms.
That smaller countries regularly perform lower in a comparison of the absolute number of guests, is obvious. By putting the tourist numbers in relation to the population of the Republic of the Congo, the result is much more comparable picture: With 0.029 tourists per resident, the Republic of the Congo ranked 175th in the world. In Central Africa, it ranked 4th.
The Republic of the Congo generated around 42.90 million US Dollar in the tourism sector alone. This corresponds to 0.35 percent of its the gross domestic product and approximately 3 percent of all international tourism receipts in Central Africa.
A global comparison can be found here › International tourism
Back to overview: Congo
On average, each of the tourists arriving in 2016 spent about 182 US Dollars.
Development of the tourism sector in the Republic of the Congo from 1995 to 2018
The following chart shows the number of tourist arrivals registered in the Republic of the Congo each year. Anyone who spends at least one night in the country but does not live there for more than 12 months is considered a tourist. Insofar as the survey included the purpose of the trip, business trips and other non-tourism travel purposes have already been excluded. The number of people passing through within the same day, and e.g. crew members of ships or flights are also not considered as tourists in most countries. If the same person travels in and out more than once within the same year, each visit counts again.
The red line represents the average of all 8 countries in Central Africa.
Revenues in tourism
In 1995, tourism revenues amounted to 14.67 million USD, or about 0.69 percent of the gross national product. This corresponded to about 37,000 tourists at that time and roughly 396 USD per person. Within 21 years, the country's dependence on tourism has decreased substantially. In the last year of the survey, the revenue now amounts to 42.90 million USD, accounting for 0.42 percent of the gross national product. Each visitor now spends an average of 203 USD for his holiday in the Republic of the Congo.
All data for the Republic of the Congo in detail
Number of tourists
% of GNP
Receipts per tourist
1995 37,000 14.67 m $ 0.69 % 396 $
1998 20,000 9.00 m $ 0.46 % 450 $
2002 22,000 25.60 m $ 0.85 % 1,164 $
2010 194,000 39.00 m $ 0.32 % 201 $
2017 149,000
All data correspond to the information of the World Tourism Organization.
Quality of lifeCompare the quality of life around the globe: In which countries is life pleasant, safe and healthy?
Mega cities - the biggest cities all over the worldRanking of the biggest cities worldwide. On top: Shanghai, Beijing and Delhi
The Worlddata QuizTest your knowledge: 10 new questions every day about geography, demography and economics
You are here: Homepage › Africa › Republic of the Congo › Tourism


Over the past few months I've had several of my articles published on a popular website. Seeing my name and my work on a website I visited daily felt great, but seeing how many people were reading, sharing, and commenting on it felt amazing. My most recent article published on the site was also featured on their Facebook page and had almost 2,000 comments when I saw it online for the first time. I was ecstatic to see so many comments about something that I wrote until I came across one comment in particular. This person ripped my work (and me) apart, and basically said I was "whiney" and needed "to toughen up". My instant reaction was to type "GO **** YOURSELF" as a response to their comment, but that wouldn't be professional now would it. So I tried to ignore it and read through the other comments, which were amazing. People were sharing it and actually thanked me for writing it because they found it so helpful. There were a few other negative comments, like someone told me I needed to travel more, but the overall reaction to my article was overwhelmingly positive. Even though it felt so good to see this kind of response, I couldn't help but feel the sting of that one unnecessarily mean (and poorly written) comment.
One of the reasons I publish work that is very personal to me is because I want it to help other people. I love writing things that are entertaining and make people laugh (like "If You Do This I Hate You"…I actually laughed aloud while writing that one), but I get a different satisfaction from writing about a struggle or other life lesson I think other people will relate to. So when I share this work and someone says I need to "toughen up" it makes me want to find them and punch them in the face. When I read that all I could think about was yelling "I wrote this for YOU. I wrote this to HELP people. This is not some stupid article about the Kardashian family or some stupid YouTube video. This is REAL. HOW DARE YOU!" But I couldn't let that comment get to me (after my outburst) because as a writer I open myself up to this kind of ridicule, especially when my work is published online.
It's amazing how brave people are behind the screen of their laptops/smartphone/whatever. People seem to have no problem (and even enjoy) writing the meanest and sickest verbal torment online…but why? Why do people need to be such a**holes online? Do they think that because someone is reading this hatred and not hearing it that it doesn't hurt? One of the other thoughts I had after I read the comment of my work was "how much time do you have that you can go around insulting people's work?" If they had left a constructive comment or pointed out a grammar faux pas that would have been different…but no, I'm "whiney". I've read a lot of really terrible pieces of 'writing' thanks to social media. I've left comments that an idea should be further elaborated or the writing style needs to be tightened up, but I've never written that the writer was a moron and should give up now (I've actually read comments like that). That's an inside thought, it's not helpful and it's unnecessarily cruel.
For whatever reason, people think it's ok to spew their inner demons online for all to see no matter whom it hurts. Whenever you feel threatened by something, it's usually because it's hitting a nerve you're not aware of. Perhaps my article hit a little close to home for that jerk. Whatever the case, I didn't respond to that comment. I realize there are a lot of online bullies out there so the best thing to do is ignore them, and hope that their computer gets a virus or they drop their smartphone in a toilet.


text:
Q: MVT/ABn pricing test comparison I have results for a a 5 variant pricing test:
A 0% (control group)
B +5%
C -5%
D +10%
E -10%
Below are my results (all normalised to give if exactly 20% of traffic goes through the variant, this is the number of bookings we'd get)
variant   Bookings
A           100
B            90
C            150
D          60
E           300
If I want to calculate the change in bookings for each % change, how would I do that?
1) +5% change = (B-A)=(90-100)=-10 bookings
or 2) +5% change = (B-A)+(A-C) = (90-100)+(100-150)=-60
  (for 2, I have a feeling I should divide the result by 2 (if this is the right way) since otherwise you're double counting the effect of the +5% change) - this method takes into consideration the +5% change from both direction
Or if theres any other statistically correct/better way to calculate this, please let me know.

A: The relationship between the number of bookings and the price is non-linear in your case. This means that increasing the price by 1% will have a different effect on the price depending on the price you start from.
Starting from the price in the control group, an increase in the price seem to have less of an impact than a reduction in the price.
Given the non-linearity, it is difficult to know for sure the effect of a 1% change of the price upwards or downwards. If we do a linear interpolation to estimate the effect of going from A to B and from A to C, it might be better to use the information symmetrically, both from A-B and from A-C. So you could proxy the impact of 1% change of the price as (B-C)/10 = -6. I.e. an increase of the price of 1% around the price in the control group would be associated with a loss of about 6 bookings.
Now, if you wanted to do something more sophisticated, you could also try to fit a polynomial for the relationship between the price. In your case, it looks roughly like the opposite of a cubic polynomial (especially with the number of bookings in logs). If you're ready to make this functional-form assumption, you can refine the estimate of the local average effect of a 1% change.


You eggheads are in a lot of trouble….
May include: academia ↖ openness ↙ &c.
Now, Nature has learned, a group of big scientific publishers has hired the pit bull to take on the free-information movement, which campaigns for scientific results to be made freely available. Some traditional journals, which depend on subscription charges, say that open-access journals and public databases of scientific papers such as the National Institutes of Health's (NIH's) PubMed Central, threaten their livelihoods.


text:
They create worlds: Outer Wilds
October 23, 2019 October 23, 2019 Matt2 Comments
One of the things that video games can do magnificently is create worlds. These posts are an occasional exploration of games that I love because of where they take me.
One of the biggest differences between computer games when I first started playing them, back in the 1980s, and modern computer games is scope. Open worlds of the kind that we're used to nowadays didn't exist on the 8-bit and 16-bit computers of yore, but these days it's not rare for a game to feature a world many square kilometres in size. In 2001, Grand Theft Auto III let us rampage in a Liberty City that measured 9 km2 in real-world terms; Grand Theft Auto V, which came out in 2013, covered an area of 127 km2. Things get even more insane with the possibilities of procedural generation, so that we got a 1:1 scale simulation of the Milky Way galaxy in Elite Dangerous (released in 2015). As game worlds get bigger and bigger, though, it becomes increasingly difficult to fill them with meaningful content, and arguably Elite's in-game universe is several light years wide and a nanometre deep. Which is one of the reasons why the toy-box solar system of Outer Wilds is so engaging.
Games, They create worlds, Videoapollo, elite dangerous, grand theft auto, groundhog day, gta, le petit prince, liberty city, los santos, mobius digital, outer wilds, the little prince, They create worlds
The Rear-View Mirror: Lemmings (1991)
January 4, 2019 September 26, 2019 Matt1 Comment
Each Friday we travel back in time, one year at a time, for a look at some of the cultural goodies that may appear closer than they really are in The Rear-View Mirror. Join us on our weekly journey into the past!
I've been playing computer games for… well, it's been a while. My parents got a C-64 when I was about nine years old, back in the Cold War-and-neon days of 1983. Many of my fondest gaming memories go back to the time when pixels were the size of your fist and anything more than 16 colours on the same screen was not just luxurious but simply not possible. Later, when I was a teenager, I upgraded to the next Commodore model, the Amiga, but it never felt as iconic as the good old 'breadbox' did. When I think of the games that I grew up with, I think of the likes of International Soccer, Paradroid, Wizball and World Games, all of them on the C-64. Sure, I had some fun times playing Amiga games, but they didn't have that ineffable thing that the technically more primitive games on the older, slower, less capable machine did.
There are a handful of exceptions, though. And the one that comes to mind in an instant is best described by the sound of a squeaky voice going "Oh no!"
Games, The Rear-View Mirror, Videoamiga, breadbox, c-64, commodore 64, dma design limited, fraggles, grand theft auto, gta, international soccer, lemmings, oh no!, paradroid, psygnosis, rockstar games, wizball, world games
The Rear-View Mirror: GTA V (2013)
August 3, 2018 September 26, 2019 MattLeave a comment
If I ever were to write a GTA-themed memoir of a gamer, it'd have to be titled Driving in Cars with Criminals.
Games, The Rear-View Mirror, Videogrand theft auto, gta v, los santos, michael mann, pam grier, quentin tarantino, san andreas
They create worlds: Grow Home
September 14, 2016 MattLeave a comment
The little robot's steps are clumsy, awkward, as if both the use of his legs and the concept of gravity were new to him. B.U.D. is miles away from the usual video game robots – they're often metallic warriors and/or cannon fodder – and closer to the likes of WALL-E, if Pixar's garbage collector was a toddler. And like his precursor, B.U.D. is given a momentous ecological task: he must grow the so-called Star Plant on a faraway planet, and in doing so he has to scale the plant to a height of 2 kilometres – which would be difficult enough for the likes of Mission Impossible's Ethan Hunt, let alone someone who is barely able to walk in a straight line.
Games, Videoassassin's creed, b.u.d., bud, grand theft auto, grow home, gta, star plant, They create worlds, ubisoft, wall-e
They create worlds: Grand Theft Auto
August 16, 2015 July 13, 2016 Matt1 Comment
Rockstar Games' Grand Theft Auto series has received a lot of flak, from all sides of the political and ideological spectrum. They aspire to being The Great American Satire, and sometimes they achieve moments of wit and insight, but while they're great games, all too often as cultural critique they resort to lazy, crass caricature that says little more than, "America, huh?"
Games, Movies, They create worldsGames, grand theft auto, gta, los santos, rockstar games, They create worlds
It's the idiom, stupid!
May 6, 2013 MattLeave a comment
In the conversation about the artistic legitimacy of video games, it's sometimes instructive to take a step back and consider what any given game looks like to a non-gamer. Take the current big-budget game with artistic aspirations du jour, Bioshock Infinite: this is a game that addresses big issues such as racism, revolution, free will and redemption. It throws around allusions to quantum physics, US history and philosophy. Its art design and music are beautiful and filled with a wide range of allusions.
Yet it is also a game where you run around shooting gaudy bad guys in the face with a shotgun just before searching a trashcan to find a hotdog and some popcorn. You scarf them down, healing the damage you've taken from being shot at. And then you throw an exploding fireball at your opponents with a flick of your wrist, just before jumping up 20 feet to catch a ride on a metal rail.
So, to someone who isn't into games much of the actual gameplay may look grotesque. Why is the player eating from trashcans, and why does this heal him? Why is he spending 90% of his time inflicting grievous bodily harm? And doesn't all of this rather hobble any aspirations the game has to resonate with the player's emotions one moment and tickle his grey matter the next? Bluntly put, how can anyone take this sort of tonal mess seriously?
I'd say that there is some justification to this line of argument. As someone who's been playing games for, oh, 30 years, I don't see this sort of thing as weird anymore – I've become largely inured to what has been called ludonarrative dissonance, unless I choose to. But yes, gameplay and plot – or gameplay and a game's striving for meaning beyond "I have big gun. He has big gun. I shoot him. He dies." – do often clash. Take Grand Theft Auto IV's guilt-riddled Nico Bellic and his quest for redemption for the horrible things he's done in his past, which sit oddly next to the multiple killing sprees he engages in during the game's missions.
Ideally games either explore ways to reconcile their gameplay and whatever meaning they aim at, or they use the tension between the two to interesting effect. However, I'm wondering whether to some extent the discussion ignores one important thing: each medium develops its own medium. Yes, to non-gamers a lot of the medium's particular idiom is strange – something that is rife for parody – but then, films and TV series have their own idiom, as do books, and to some extent those idioms don't strike us as weird and ridiculous because we're used to them. They've become invisible to us. (Check out TV Tropes for a comprehensive, time-consuming list of tropes that make up the idiom of various media.)
Compare, for instance, someone who watches his first opera. Is the tragic heroine's extended death aria, possibly while she's clutching the dagger in her ample bosom, any less silly than the trashcan hotdog imbued with healing powers? Or Shakespeare: are end-rhymed heroic couplets or stage directions expressed via dialogue any more believable than conventions in games?
I'm not saying that we should give games a free pass because we're so used to the medium's tropes that they're invisible to us. Tropes can be useful shorthand, but they can also be a crutch – and ludonarrative dissonance is something games have to contend with. After all, how would we react to a big-explosions, brutal action flick doubling as a harrowing intimate drama if the tonal inconsistencies weren't addressed, let alone resolved? At the same time, critics have to accept that all media and all genres rely on cultural conventions and tropes to some extent, and a certain familiarity with (and, indeed acceptance of) these conventions is required when it comes to enjoying games as much as movies, TV series, stage plays, ballet, opera – and even paintings. After all, wouldn't I be silly to dismiss most of the paintings of St. Sebastian out there because the arrow-addled martyr usually looks mildly bored rather than in agony?
So, rather than pointing at gaming tropes and saying something along the lines of "This is why we can't have nice things", perhaps it would make more sense to become more aware of these conventions, how they are used, and how they can be used better, more intelligently, more subversively – how they can be played with, for want of a better word.
Games, Videobioshock infinite, but is it hygienic, grand theft auto, grievous bodily harm, hotdog, ludonarrative dissonance, st sebastian
Dark is L.A. and full of terrors
April 29, 2012 May 3, 2012 MattLeave a comment
When it comes to creating virtual worlds, Rockstar may just be the true heir of Origin Systems. Whether it's the Liberty City of Grand Theft Auto 3 or GTA4, the fictionalised versions of Los Angeles, San Francisco and Las Vegas in GTA San Andreas, the boarding school and small town of Bully or the dying Old West of Red Dead Redemption, in my opinion Rockstar's greatest creation to date.
L.A. Noire's sun-drenched yet crime-riddled 1950s Los Angeles is both an amazing feat and, quite possibly, Rockstar's greatest wasted opportunity. It's an impressive recreation, looking just like the movies, from Chinatown to L.A. Confidential – but where I enjoyed exploring San Fierro, New Austin and Liberty City, I never felt at home in this noirish L.A. In Rockstar's other games, I'd forgo all automated options of getting around the place, I'd drive everywhere myself, just because I enjoyed hanging around in these cities. The games and their locations, they were one and the same. In L.A. Noire, though, I quickly started to ask my partner to do all the driving. In spite of the game's title the place itself, Los Angeles, is a mere backdrop – and as it's rarely integrated well into the game, it feels like an elaborate loading screen, or like a technically impressive but essentially lifeless cardboard backdrop – like The Truman Show's Sunhaven, and I was the unwitting Truman stuck there.
Unfortunately, L.A. Noire is full of wasted opportunities. The writing is great, as is most of the (voice) acting, but the game's signature motion-capture technology veers into Uncanny Valley as often as it succeeds at bringing its characters to life.
The occasional disconnect between the characters' faces and their bodies is one thing; another is that L.A. Noire doesn't do photo-realism, doesn't try to, so the animations, realistic down to the imperfections of involuntary twitches, don't gel with the more stylised look. It doesn't matter whether the latter is due to technical limitations – the result, while often impressive, does pull its audience out of the moment too often.
L.A. Noire could have managed to pull everything together with its gameplay, but alas, that's another strike against the game. It's not so much that it plays badly – what hurts L.A. Noire is that as a game it is bland. Rockstar's other titles tend to be generous to a fault in the gameplay department, where you might get new elements introduced two thirds into a game's plot. In its '50s crime-and-punishment saga you'll be doing pretty much the same from the first case you're working to the last. Here a foot chase, there a car pursuit – and the game's signature interrogations suffer from a lack of internal logic (seriously, guys, at times the choice between Doubt and Lie seems to have been down to a coin-toss).
In spite of all this, though, I'd be lying if I claimed that L.A. Noire didn't have its compelling moments. As you progress from the first crime desk (Traffic) to the second (Homicide), the single cases start to connect, and the story ties in cleverly with the Black Dahlia murder. As the plot begins to cohere, the characters become more interesting, and the protagonist Cole Phelbs, while rarely likeable, turns into one of Rockstar's trademark flawed anti-heroes. By the game's ending, I felt for the guy and his messed-up issues.
In the end, L.A. Noire is a weak game with strong elements – and for a Rockstar game, it's a failure. It's a fascinating failure, though, and I'm curious to see how its experiments and assets – the motion-captured acting, the story structure, the 'real' location – pay off in future titles by the developer. Grand Theft Auto V will again be set in Los Santos, Rockstar's earlier take on LA; I, for one, wouldn't mind seeing L.A. Noire's fingerprints on it.
Games, Movies, Videoangel reunion, black dahlia, grand theft auto, la noire, mad men cast outing, rockstar
Are you going to San Andreas?
November 1, 2007 MattLeave a comment
Okay, it's "Plug an old game" time. Yesterday I finished my second or third playthrough of Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas. And it's still one of the most versatile games I know – it's probably the truest "sandbox game" that's out there. For those of you who aren't computer game nerds like myself, here's a handy definition from Wikipedia:
A sandbox-style video game (or a video game with an optional sandbox mode) is a video game with an open-ended and non-linear style of gameplay, or a mode of gameplay within a game that is more often played in a goal-directed manner. The sandbox analogy is used to describe this style of gaming because, as with a physical sandbox, the user is simply allowed to do what he or she wishes (with the available game elements and within the limitations of the game engine — the metaphoric toys within, and boundaries of, the sandbox).
Now, what does that mean in concrete terms? San Andreas is a story-heavy game, it's "played in a goal-directed manner", but it gives you a lot of freedom in a) how you go about achieving the goal and b) how you spend your time in between missions. The game world is huge – you're given three virtual cities/states to play around in: LA-inspired Los Santos, San Fierro (based on San Francisco) and Las Venturas, which is eerily similar to a certain desert city replete with casinos and organised crime. And while the story itself is enjoyable enough, some of the most fun can be had just boarding one of the many vehicles (cars, bikes, boats, planes) and zooming around. Personally, I get most of a kick out of navigating the hills of San Fierro on my trusty BMX bike, but here's some of the fun'n'games that others came up with.
Crazy jumps
Bike stunts
Games, PS2 gaming, Videobase jumping, Games, grand theft auto, gta, referencing, san andreas, sandbox, stunts, video games


text:
package net.novaviper.zeroquest.common.item;

import net.minecraft.entity.player.EntityPlayer;
import net.minecraft.item.ItemStack;
import net.minecraft.util.EnumChatFormatting;
import net.novaviper.zeroquest.ModAchievements;
import net.novaviper.zeroquest.common.api.interfaces.IBits;
import net.novaviper.zeroquest.common.entity.EntityZertumEntity;
import net.novaviper.zeroquest.common.helper.ChatHelper;
import net.novaviper.zeroquest.common.lib.Constants;

/**
 * @author ProPercivalalb
 **/
public class ItemAlphaBit extends ItemZQ implements IBits {

	public ItemAlphaBit() {
		super();
	}

	@Override
	public EnumFeedBack canGiveToDog(EntityPlayer player, EntityZertumEntity dog, int level) {
		if (level >= 70 && level < Constants.stage2Level && dog.getGrowingAge() >= 0) {
			return EnumFeedBack.JUSTRIGHT;
		}
		else if (dog.getGrowingAge() < 0) {
			return EnumFeedBack.TOOYOUNG;
		}
		else if (level > Constants.stage2Level) {
			return EnumFeedBack.LEVELTOOHIGH;
		}
		else if (level == Constants.stage2Level && !dog.hasEvolved()) {
			return EnumFeedBack.EVOREADY;
		}
		else {
			return EnumFeedBack.LEVELTOOLOW;
		}
	}

	@Override
	public void giveTreat(EnumFeedBack type, EntityPlayer player, EntityZertumEntity dog) {
		ItemStack stack = player.getCurrentEquippedItem();

		if (type == EnumFeedBack.JUSTRIGHT) {
			if (!player.capabilities.isCreativeMode && --stack.stackSize <= 0) {
				player.inventory.setInventorySlotContents(player.inventory.currentItem, (ItemStack) null);
			}

			dog.levels.increaseLevel();
			dog.getNavigator().clearPathEntity();
			dog.setHealth(dog.getMaxHealth());
			dog.getSitAI().setSitting(true);
			dog.worldObj.setEntityState(dog, (byte) 7);
			dog.playTameEffect(true);
			if (isServer(player)) {
				player.addChatMessage(ChatHelper.getChatComponent(EnumChatFormatting.GREEN + dog.getPetName() + " has leveled up to " + dog.levels.getLevel() + "!"));
			}
		}
		else if (type == EnumFeedBack.TOOYOUNG) {
			if (isServer(player)) {
				dog.playTameEffect(false);
				player.addChatMessage(ChatHelper.getChatComponent(EnumChatFormatting.RED + dog.getPetName() + " is too young to be learning skills!"));
			}
		}
		else if (type == EnumFeedBack.LEVELTOOLOW) {
			player.worldObj.setEntityState(dog, (byte) 6);
			if (isServer(player)) {
				dog.playTameEffect(false);
				player.addChatMessage(ChatHelper.getChatComponent(EnumChatFormatting.RED + dog.getPetName() + " can't possibly handle the power in these bits!"));
			}
		}
		else if (type == EnumFeedBack.LEVELTOOHIGH) {
			player.worldObj.setEntityState(dog, (byte) 6);
			if (isServer(player)) {
				dog.playTameEffect(false);
				player.addChatMessage(ChatHelper.getChatComponent(EnumChatFormatting.RED + dog.getPetName() + " cannot gain anything from these bits anymore!"));
			}
		}
		else if (type == EnumFeedBack.EVOREADY) {
			player.worldObj.setEntityState(dog, (byte) 6);
			if (isServer(player)) {
				player.addChatMessage(ChatHelper.getChatComponent(EnumChatFormatting.GREEN + "CONGRATZ! " + dog.getPetName() + " has reached the " + EnumChatFormatting.GREEN + "Alpha Level! Evolution is ready!"));
				player.triggerAchievement(ModAchievements.alphaLevelUp);
			}
		}
	}

}

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaGithub


text:
Posts matching tags 'holocaust'
In what could be one of the most unfortunate printing errors in recent history: the publisher of the German edition of Donald Duck comics has had to recall a recent issue after one of the speech bubbles seemingly used the word "Holocaust" as a term of congratulation. Oops!
In the episode titled "Where is the Smoke?" a dignitary honors a team of firefighters, with the German words, in the bubble above his beak, boasting of the "awards to our brave and always alert fire lookouts! Holocaust!"
The word "Holocaust" in the text was not the work of a mischievous translator, but rather part of the English-language text which, by mistake, had not been erased. (The question of how that one particular word escaped deletion in the artwork sent to the German publishers has not been answered. One does wonder whether or not it was a prank by some low-ranking staffer at Disney Corp; if so, it might not be the first Nazi-themed prank by a Disney insider.)
¶ disney fail germany holocaust pranks 0
A few recent studies demonstrating the power of cultural transmission of values and attitudes over surprisingly long stretches of time: firstly, a set of surveys in central and eastern Europe has shown that trust in government officials is higher and corruption is lower in areas formerly governed by the Habsburg Empire, whose bureaucracy was considered to be more honest and competent than elsewhere in Europe at the time; the phenomenon has lasted from the end of World War 1 to the present day, surviving the redrawing of borders and different types of regimes, and to this day, levels of trust and corruption differ within the borders of countries between formerly Habsburg and, say, Ottoman or Russian-ruled areas.
On a darker note, another study in Germany has found that towns in which Jews were massacred during the Black Plague were more likely to support the Nazis and participated more enthusiastically in the Holocaust, some six centuries later.
¶ corruption cultural transmission culture europe germany habsburg empire history holocaust 0
In case you were wondering whether Mel Gibson is really the despicable turd he has been made out to be: it turns out that, at a party more than 15 years ago, he called Winona Ryder an "oven dodger" after learning that she is half-Jewish:
"I was with my friend, who's gay. [Gibson] made a really horrible gay joke. And somehow it came up that I was Jewish. He said something about 'oven dodgers', but I didn't get it. I'd never heard that before."
¶ anti-semitism assholes holocaust mel gibson racism 0
A French artist is working on a Nintendo DS game about the Holocaust. Titled Imagination is the Only Escape, the game will place players in the role of a young boy in Eastern France who uses his imagination to escape the horrors of war during the German occupation of World War II. (Sounds like a real barrel of laughs, doesn't it?) That is assuming that Nintendo sign off on this; the New York Times reported that they had refused to release it in the US, though this report has since been denied.
(via Wired News) ¶ genocide history holocaust issues nintendo ds videogames ww2 0
Pope Benedict XVI, the first German-born pope, recently visited Auschwitz. However, his remarks there have left a bad taste:
He stood in the extermination camp where millions died, but he did not utter the word "anti-Semitism", he did not offer an apology on behalf of Germany or the Church, he said nothing about the silence of Pope Pius XII during the Nazi years, nor did he, the former member of the Hitler Youth, offer any sort of account of his own dawning awareness of the horror created by the people democratically elected to rule his country.
The Holocaust, then, according to Benedict, was only incidentally the extermination of the Jews. The true goal was the extermination of God and Christianity. So the German people were the Nazis' victims, used and abused by them, and Christians and Christianity even more so. In Ratzinger's Christo-centric vision, the Jews find themselves bit players - bystanders at their own extermination. The true victim was a metaphysical one.
¶ history holocaust nazism pope benedict xvi 0
Santiago Sierra, the Mexican conceptual artist who, in the past, hired labourers to masturbate, created casts of prostitutes' genitals and invited patrons to an art opening which was blocked off (thus demonstrating that they were more concerned with free champagne than aesthetic experiences), is back. His latest project involved turning a former synagogue in Germany into a gas chamber:
The Mexico-based artist has parked six cars outside the synagogue and attached their exhaust pipes to the building using plastic tubes. It is then filled with deadly gas. Visitors are invited to go inside one by one wearing a gas mask, escorted by a firefighter. Before being allowed in, they have to sign a disclaimer stating they realise the room is full of carbon monoxide.
Sierra claims that the installation, titled 245 Cubic Metres with chilling blandness, is a protest against the "banalisation of the Holocaust". Germany's Jewish groups, however, don't see it that way and have denounced the exhibit as "scandalous". Visitors' reactions have been mixed. The exhibit has since been suspended until Sierra meets his critics to discuss the project.
The comments in the Guardian's blog raise some interesting points, with some claiming a second subtext, equating personal automobiles with genocide, and others comparing it to a notional installation spraying the inside of a mosque with pigs' blood.
¶ art conceptual art holocaust jewish judaism performance art 0
Right-wing hoaxers are believed to have submitted a maliciously modified Michael Leunig cartoon to an Iranian competition to find cartoons poking fun at the Holocaust. The cartoon in question was believed to have been one contrasting the Holocaust with Israeli military actions against Palestinians, which The Age refused to print in 2002; the version submitted apparently had the words changed to something appropriately rabid and mean-spirited to stand a chance against the fierce competition from the Middle Eastern press's finest. Leunig, a renowned humanist and anti-war campaigner, is considering legal action.
(via RRR) ¶ anti-semitism holocaust iran leunig 2
The hard-line government of Iran has announced that it will be holding a conference to question whether the Holocaust really happened. The announcement comes shortly after Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadine-Jihad called for the annihilation of Israel and stated that the extermination of Jews by the Nazis was "a myth".
I bet Holocaust denier David Irving's kicking himself that he got arrested in Austria; were he a free man, he'd probably have a university chair waiting for him in Tehran or something.
¶ anti-semitism holocaust iran 0
This evening, I went to see The Pianist. It's a great film; starkly realistic and profoundly moving (the acts of bestial sadism committed by the Nazi troops, for one); it's one thing reading about these things, and another seeing them in front of you. The sets, effects and photography were also very good, and the acting was superb. Highly recommended.
¶ film holocaust nazi roman polanski the pianist 0
Sarah Kane: a theatrical Ian Curtis?
Her last work ``4:48 Psychosis'' -- was completed only a week before Kane took an overdose and then hanged herself in hospital with her own shoelaces.
She wrote at night in intense bursts, confessing: ``I hate it. I get no pleasure from writing. It kills me.''
``Being in love was like being in Auschwitz,'' she said of the play's theme.
¶ art culture holocaust sarah kane theatre 0


text:
Q: Recursive sine sequence and non recursive expression
Let $(a_n)$ be the sequence defined as $$a_{n} = \begin{cases}\sin(a_{n-1})&\text{if $n>0$}\\k &\text{if $n=0$}\end{cases}$$
  where $k\in[0,2\pi)$. Prove that

*

*$\lim\limits_{n\to\infty}a_n = 0$

*Exists $b\in\mathbb{R}$ such that $\lim\limits_{n\to\infty}(\sin(a_n)^b-a_n^b)\neq0$

*Find an alternative form for $(a_n)$

I already prove that the sequence converges to $0$. And that if $b$ exists it must be negative, but I can't arrange to see that it must exists. Any idea to proceed?

A: The Taylor series for $\sin x$ is $x-x^3/6+...$.
So $(\sin x)^b-x^b\approx x^b(1-x^2/6)^b-x^b$.
Choose a value of $b$ so the leading term is $O(x^0)=O(1)$.


An RV road trip can be exciting, but it can also lead to disaster if we don't take steps to stay alert while driving.
According to the National Highway Transportation Safety Administration, an estimated eighty-three-thousand drowsy driving related crashes occurred in America between 2005 and 2009. In 2014 alone, eight hundred forty-six deaths were caused by drowsy driving!
RV travel can be a safe and enjoyable experience if we know how to stay alert while driving on RV road trips. Use these ten tips to keep your RV between the lines on your next journey.
1. Set a Realistic Schedule: You may be tempted to rush the long drive to arrive at your destination sooner. Setting a realistic schedule for your trip is the first step to staying alert while driving. A sixteen-hour drive may sound doable, but that's two full work days' worth of driving! If getting there quickly is a must, see below for ways to stay alert while keeping to your schedule.
2. Get Good Rest Before You Go: If you're a last-minute packer, you're probably loading the RV at midnight the night before you leave. It also means you're missing sleep before driving long distances. Try to get to bed early and get a good night's sleep so you'll be alert and refreshed for your drive.
3. Admit Your Limits: This one's related to tip number one, but it's a little more personal. It may be hard to admit when you hit the wall of exhaustion, but throwing in the towel instead of 'toughing it out' could make the difference between a memorable journey and tragedy.
4. Know Your Warning Signs: Do you know the signs that you're too tired to drive? For most people, it's blinking or yawning excessively, having trouble focusing on traffic, an increasing temptation to close your eyes "just for a second" or beginning to swerve to the shoulder or outside your lane of traffic. By the time these signals appear, you may already be in danger of causing an accident.
5. Set a Schedule for Trading Drivers: If more than one person is a licensed driver with experience driving an RV, set a schedule for trading off driving duties. Every two to three hours is a good timeframe.
6. Take a Stretch Break: If you're the sole driver, exercise executive privilege and take stretch breaks when you need them. You may get some grumbling about stopping too often, but your first responsibility is to get everyone to your destination safely. Roadside rest areas are ideal for getting out of the vehicle, taking in some fresh air and stretching those road-weary muscles. Take a quick inventory before you get back on the road; if you're still too drowsy, it's time to stop and rest.
7. Try Caffeine: Caffeine can increase alertness, so drinking coffee, tea or a caffeinated soda can help. Keep in mind that at some point you'll feel the 'caffeine crash' when the effect drops off.
8. Exercise to Increase Alertness: If you're in a place where it's safe to move around outside your vehicle, try a few minutes of cardio—jogging in place, jumping jacks, anything to increase blood flow and break the monotony of sitting behind the wheel for hours.
9. Find a Safe Place to Take a Nap: If you're far from your destination campground and can no longer drive safely, have someone use the All Stays app to find a Walmart or truck stop that allows you to park and sleep a few hours. It could be a life-saving decision.
10. Go to Plan B: There comes a time, thanks to weather delays, poor planning, road construction and other obstacles to reaching your destination, that it's time to change your plans to fit reality. Going to Plan B might mean deciding you'll slow down your pace and not spend as many days at your destination. It could mean finding a campground to spend the night instead of pushing through.
Maybe it means exploring attractions along the way and stretching out your trip to allow you to drive more rested. It might be disappointing, but deciding to flex your RV vacation rather than driving while exhausted is always the better plan.
RV travel to America's beautiful places can provide some of life's best moments. Keep your RV trips safe and sane by using these ten tips for staying alert on the road.
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