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anonymous

Study: Massive Lava Flows Allowed Dinosaurs to Conquer the Planet - 0 views

blogs.discovermagazine.com/...inosaurs-to-conquer-the-planet

layscience lava study dinosaurs pangea

shared by anonymous on 24 Mar 10 - Cached
  • This week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, paleontologists say they’ve studied the period about 200 million years ago when dinosaurs first came to power, and found that while catastrophic volcanic activity may not explain dinosaur extinction, it could have explained why dinosaurs’ competitors disappeared and the terrible lizards took over the planet.
  • The scientists examined how two different isotopes (or forms) of carbon fluctuated during these volcanic eruptions. They found that the “heavy” form of carbon was depleted relative to the “light” form. They say this reflects disturbances in the carbon cycle at this time, including a spike in atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2) and aerosols (fine solid particles)
  • anonymous on 24 Mar 10
     
    From 80beats (Discover Magazine). Written by Andrew Moseman on March 24, 2010.
anonymous

How mainstream games butchered themselves and why it's my fault - 0 views

www.pcgamer.com/...hemselves-and-why-its-my-fault

gaming

shared by anonymous on 08 Mar 11 - Cached
  • Unskippable cut-scenes exist because idiots like me skip the skippable ones. There’s text on screen because idiots like me don’t listen to the characters, and the characters are repeating what the text says because idiots like me won’t read the text. Friendly characters are invincible because idiots like me would shoot them, and we’re not allowed to shoot them because idiots like me will try anyway.
  • For the most part, Half-Life and its sequel did it right: you could always look wherever you wanted, and after the intro you were usually free to move. You generally couldn’t interact with the scripted sequences, but for logical reasons – they happened out of reach or behind glass.
  • I don’t have Attention Deficit Disorder, designers – you do. Only one of us in this relationship is forcing the other to look at what they’re doing. We’re locked in a destructive cycle of dickification: I resent when you take control away from me, so I’m as much of a dick as the controls permit. You see dicks like me being dicks in your playtests, and you think of new ways to be bigger dicks back: to force me to watch your scenes, play out your script, follow your high-school reading level plot.
  • ...1 more annotation...
  • But in a desperate, frantic attempt to engage disinterested jerks like me, it tried to shove its horrible characters, misjudged script and awkward on-rails sections down my throat before showing me what the game was really about. If it wasn’t for Rich’s review, I’d never have drudged through that miserable dross to the game I like beyond.
  • anonymous on 08 Mar 11
     
    "I'm a horrible gamer. Hopefully it doesn't show in ordinary conversation, but as soon as I start playing something, I become an asshole. The instant the first character speaks, I reflexively want them to shut up. If there's text on screen, I'm not reading it. If there's a cut-scene, I'm skipping it. If there are no enemies to shoot, I shoot my friends, and if I can't shoot my friends, I shoot just next to my friends and then swing my crosshair onto them as quickly as possible in a lame attempt to glance them with a bullet I know won't do anything. I thought that was normal."
anonymous

Agenda: North Korea Resumes Diplomatic Negotiations - 0 views

www.stratfor.com/...esumes-diplomatic-negotiations

geopolitics northkorea southkorea

shared by anonymous on 30 Jul 11 - Cached
  • North Korea has been sitting outside of the six-party format, and in many ways has been sending signals that it has no interest to come back into negotiations for well over a year.
  • Pyongyang’s decision to come back into the talks has in some ways caught the other parties off guard. The question that many are asking is, why suddenly is North Korea doing this?
  • one of the main reasons that North Korea looks to be restarting things now is they’re looking towards the future and they’re looking particularly towards next year which is their anniversary year for Kim Il Sung’s birth in the year they call Juche 100.
  • ...7 more annotations...
  • The North also sees an opportunity right now, given the political situation the United States and South Korea.
  • Their view of what’s happening in Washington is that President Obama, who is heading into the beginnings of the next presidential election cycle, is mired in economic problems that the U.S. president really needs to have a foreign-policy action or a foreign-policy victory.
  • Most people view China as really the power that can, in many ways, turn on and turn off North Korea but ultimately, North Korea perceives China as more of a potential threat to its survival than the United States.
  • China is a massive power, its always been a big population, it pushes up against the North Korean border, the Chinese have asserted their historical ownership what they claim over parts of what North Korea says is its precursor nation.
  • For the Chinese, Korean reunification is not always even a good thing, because if the Koreans reunify, or in particular if the U.S. and the North Koreans sign a peace accord and maybe even move towards diplomatic relations, China loses its leverage and it potentially has the United States able to ultimately push right up to the Yalu River, something that originally brought the Chinese into the Korean War.
  • China is going to be both wanting North Korea to reengage in talks and very concerned that the North Koreans have done this in a way that seems to circumvent China
  • that neither side can fully trust each other and both sides have certain domestic audiences that they need to deal with
  • anonymous on 30 Jul 11
     
    The North Koreans have unexpectedly re-entered diplomatic negotiations with the United States and with the South Koreans. This comes ahead of North Korea's special hundredth anniversary of the birth of Kim Il Sung, the founder of the country, and it also comes at a time it when Pyongyang is looking to take advantage of what they perceive as political problems in the United States and South Korea.
anonymous

100 years of statism, 100 years of neoliberalism - 0 views

www.themoneyillusion.com/?p=10333

econoics politics cycles trends megatrends

shared by anonymous on 01 Aug 11 - Cached
  • 1.  For nearly 100 years statism was on the advance in the US, and indeed in almost every country.
  • 2.  In the US the period of growth of government started at least as far back as 1887 (the ICC) and continued until 1977, after which deregulation, free trade agreements, and MTR cuts kicked in.  In other countries one saw MTR cuts, deregulation and privatization.
  • 3.  During the statism megatrend, the term ‘reform’ implicitly meant bigger government.  That’s how governments reacted to crises.  During the current (neoliberalism) megatrend, the tern ‘reform’ implicitly means less government.
  • ...2 more annotations...
  • 4.  In the US this pattern has recently been hidden by health care, which is one aspect of the welfare state that was never completed in the statist era (although it was completed in all other developed countries.)
  • 5.  During the megatrends, there are periods of consolidation, which are falsely viewed as countertrends.  They are not countertrends.  The trend is still intact.  In the US the 1920s and 1950s were falsely viewed as countertrends.  Don’t be fooled, we are only 1/3 of the way through the neoliberalism megatrend.
  • anonymous on 01 Aug 11
     
    "I'd like to argue that to understand what's going on in the world, one needs to understand the megatrends.  Yes, I know that 'megatrend' is a rather disreputable term, associated with crackpots.  But I'm going to use it anyway.  Here's my basic hypothesis:" Thanks to Adam Gurri for the interesting read.
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