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Four England rugby stars in rape row named

June 24th, 2008 - 3:38 pm ICT by ANI

London, June 24 (ANI): The four England rugby stars at the centre of Auckland rape allegation have been named by a British tabloid newspaper.

The Sun newspaper claims Danny Care, Topsy Ojo, Mike Brown and David Strettle are the players involved in the sex scandal.

Two of the players have reportedly admitted a three in a bed romp with a lap-dancer while two more watched at the Hilton hotel.

The Sun says the players feel under pressure and they are angry, as they believe they have done nothing wrong.

But they have been banned from speaking out.

Red-faced bosses have warned that they will never play for their country again if they ignore the gag.

It means the four caught up in sex allegations at the team hotel during a tour of New Zealand cannot yet publicly declare their innocence.

“The players involved feel under pressure and angry. They are single guys who said they did nothing wrong. Players who had nothing to do with it are furious too. The whole squad feels it will stay under a shadow until the air is cleared, The Sun quoted a source, as saying.

An 18-year-old lapdancer claimed she was raped at Aucklands Hilton Hotel after a booze-fuelled night.

She has so far made no formal complaint. (ANI)

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Client shoots sex worker dead, kills himself

November 5th, 2008 - 5:52 pm ICT by IANS

Kolkata, Nov 5 (IANS) A man who used to visit a sex worker regularly shot her dead before killing himself at her residence in the city’s largest red-light district of Sonagachi, police said Wednesday. The incident took place in the north Kolkata area under the jurisdiction of Battala police station.

“Shika Singh was shot dead by Dilip Patihar early Wednesday at her residence at Sonagachi. After shooting Singh, Patihar shot himself in the head. Police recovered both bodies from Singh’s bedroom,” Deputy Commissioner (north) P.K. Ghosh told reporters.

According to police, Patihar, a plastic dealer from Howrah town, used to visit Singh regularly.

“Neighbours heard a heated altercation between the two late Tuesday night over Singh’s pregnancy. They also heard some loud sounds, but didn’t pay attention,” said a senior police officer of Battala police station.

Police said around 4 a.m. Wednesday Patihar shot Singh in the chest and then shot himself.

“Singh’s neighbour Tara sent a boy to call her for breakfast in the morning. He found both the bodies lying in a pool of blood,” police said.

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Is 8 inch long Tilly the smallest dog in Britain?

April 20th, 2009 - 6:33 pm ICT by ANI

London, Apr 20 (ANI): Tilly the Chorkie, standing just six inches tall and measuring eight inches from nose to tail, is probably the smallest dog in Britain.

Tilly, a cross between Yorkshire Terrier and a Chihuahua, was born on January 15 and she was around three inches long and weighing less than four ounces at the time of her birth.

Though she is fully-grown, she is only 8 inches tall and her owner Karen McPhearson has been told her growing days are over.

“Tilly is so boisterous and enthusiastic for someone so small. We took her to the vets last week and we were told that she will not grow any more,” the Telegraph quoted Karen, as saying.

“She has not got any bigger since she was four weeks old and now weighs just one pound four ounces and is just eight inches long and about eight inches tall from head to floor or six inches from her back to the floor,” Karen added.

Though Tilly is just 8 inches in size she has an incredible appetite.

“Tilly weighs just one pound four ounces but she has a big appetite,” says 45-year-old Karen. Apart from her usual five meals a day of dog food, she loves to drink tea and eat baby ruskies,” Karen said. (ANI)

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• Thaïsa Way

    (note: image was taken by Easton Branam, MLA at the Suyama Space, Seattle)

    As Director of Urban@UW, I seek to bring together the brilliant research on urban challenges and opportunities at the UW with the deep knowledge and experience of Seattle's urban professionals and practitioners to foster the growth of resilient, healthy, affordable, and just cities, from Seattle to the metropolitan regions far and wide. To achieve this we convene, educate, instigate, and accelerate inclusive data-driven innovations for the future of cities.

    In the fall of 2016 I was delighted to begin my term as the Vice Chair of the UW Faculty Senate. In this role I support the Senate leadership in working with the University leadership to steward our public university. I will serve next year as Chair and look forward to continuing the excellent efforts of Zoe Barsness, the 2016-2017 Chair. The work involved in the Senate shapes the university and the academy in remarkable ways, always with the core value of building access and excellence for all students and generating new knowledge across all fields.

    I am also honored to be a member of the team leading the University of Washington's Population Health Initiative. In this role I am working on ways to support the contributions and participation of faculty, staff, and students from across the schools, colleges, and campuses on improving population health locally, regionally, and internationally. Collaborating with colleagues in Global Health, Public Health, and IHME as well as those in the arts, humanities, social sciences, and professional schools (Social Work, Law, Policy and Governance, and Built Environments) we are building a powerful collective that will have truly remarkable impact on the world. It is an audacious initiative and I am thrilled to be playing a small part.

    I also serve to support other collaborations across our disciplines and domains, including as a member of the Steering Committee for the eScience Institute and the newly launched Earthlab in the College of the Environment. These roles build on my commitment to strengthening the role of inclusive and innovative research in the efforts to improve the lives of all populations around the world. This work happens when we work collaboratively to address the diverse factors that shape human health and well-being, with a focus on improving the health of individuals and communities, enhancing environmental resiliency, and creating greater social and economic equity.

    My scholarship is framed by feminist histories of design and in particular the role of women as professionals and practitioners. I have sought to contribute to the growing body of scholarship in this area with a number of essays and my book , Unbounded Practices: Women, Landscape Architecture, and Early Twentieth Century Design (2009, University of Virginia Press, 2013, paperback edition). I have recently published the essay, "American Landscape Architecture at Mid-Century: Modernism, Science, and Art " in Women, Modernity, and Landscape Architecture edited by Sonja Dümpelmann, John Beardsley.

    Building on this work, I am intrigued by how design is imagined and practiced through history. How does a designer imagine a landscape that is not yet in existence? How does one create a work of art that is also a place of human engagement? How do landscapes as designed places foster human and environmental health and wellbeing. Where does the art of design intersect/ insert/ interact with the science of ecology? How do these become places of culture and social engagement? This is at the core of my forthcoming book on the designed landscapes of A. E. Bye, published by the LALH and Norton Publishing. It is also at the heart of my interviews for the PBS series- "10 that changed America " (with Dan Protess and Geoffrey Baer) for which the show "Ten Parks that Changed America" explored how these parks informed our shared ideas about what a park is and how landscape shapes urban culture. Check it out here. and my interview on the project for the blog DIRT/ ASLA here.

    A critical area of focus building on these interests focuses on urban landscapes and this work is the backbone of my recent publications and those under production- the first Now Urbanism: The Future City is Here (Routledge, 2014) and The Landscape Architecture of Richard Haag: From Modernism to Urban Ecological Design (UW Press, 2015). I am the editor for the book River Cities/ City Rivers that explores the role of river landscapes in the urbanism of a city, with the Dumbarton Oaks Garden and Landscape Studies.

    Recent projects have advanced the practice of sustainable design which must, in turn, address the complex web of environmental sustainability, social justice, and economic viability while creating potential for a rich and meaningful aesthetic experience. Landscape architecture has a critical opportunity to place itself at the center of contemporary discourse and policy-making on issues of ‘sustainable design’ and global warming. The department's vision to advance our knowledge of how we develop ecological infrastructures through our attention to natural processes, ecological planning and design, as well as technology is an important step towards leadership in the discipline and in the larger community of those concerned with sustainable development. Histories of design and the landscape play a critical role in the understanding, articulation, and development of the discipline and, more specifically, the potential of landscape architects to dynamically contribute to the making of exemplar culturally-based places.

    In 2015-2016 I was honored by being selected as the Garden Club of America Fellow at the American Academy in Rome. My project was a history of drawing as well as learning to draw. It was a remarkable experience and has catalyzed new scholarship as well as new approaches to teaching. I am truly grateful for this amazing experience.

    As a urban landscape historian teaching history, theory, and design. This includes lecture courses, seminars, studios, and workshop. My courses are in the history of cities and urban landscapes, the development of the profession of landscape architecture, and the ideas around creativity and innovation. I was thrilled to be awarded the College of Built Environments Pries Award for Excellence in Teaching in 2015, an honor awarded by the students to one faculty member each year.

    For more details see the most recent CV by clicking here.

    an initiative of the UW Office of Research and CoMotion

    Inclusive data-driven innovation for the future of cities

    The University of Washington is launching a major initiative in urban research and practice—Urban@UW—that brings together diverse disciplines and practices to foster healthy, sustainable, resilient, and equitable urban futures. Urban@UW will position the University of Washington as a model urban university across all three of its campuses (Seattle, Tacoma, and Bothell) and the region. In turn we will foster the growth of Seattle as a model city—sustainable, efficient, resilient, livable, healthy, and equitable—building knowledge that can be used in cities and metropolitan regions around the globe.

    Cities house a majority of the U.S. population, provide the economic scaffolding for the nation, and serve as engines of innovation. They also consume a major portion of the nation’s energy resources, are saddled with aging, inefficient infrastructure, and plagued with congestion. Cities face enormous social challenges—poverty, inequality, violence, security, and housing, —as well as ecological and public health issues. Further, cities are vulnerable to major disruptive events (e.g., earthquakes, tsunamis, hurricanes and disease) for which they are ill prepared, and face the uncertainty wrought by climate change. At the same time, cities offer economies of scale, a concentration of political will, and serve as vital incubators for economic, environmental, and social resilience.

    Cities are complex systems that result from the dynamic interaction of people, the natural and built environments, landforms and land use, transportation, culture, and economic development. History, the environment, human choice, and social institutions all shape the trajectory of how cities have developed and what they will become. Many disciplines intersect in the study of cities and colleges and schools across the university are already contributing to the collaborative focus of Urban@UW. Research in the humanities explores the multiple meanings, ideas and representations of cities and citizens in the past and present, and imagined in the future. Environmental scientists provide a path for mitigating the adverse effects of human activities on the ecosystem. Social scientists generate knowledge of how cities are socially, spatially and culturally created and understood. Engineers, statisticians, and computer scientists harness new sources of data to advance our fundamental understanding of these dynamic interactions. Urban designers and planners use this knowledge to design and construct livable and resilient urban environments. Finally, the professions of social work, education, nursing, medicine, law, and public health among others address how we foster and grow healthy and socially just communities.

    Why the University of Washington?

    The University of Washington is a public university with a mission to serve the State of Washington and its citizens, as well as serving as the city’s largest employer. As such, UW has a need and, indeed, an obligation to engage with public institutions and serve as a strong regional partner. Creating a bridge between the extraordinary research and teaching that occurs at UW and the issues faced by the city of Seattle and the greater metropolitan area, not only aligns with the academic mission of a public university but the broader community’s social, human, and economic needs.

    The University of Washington has a distinguished history of research and application in urbanism across the academic community, including but not limited to the Cities Collaboratory, the West Coast Poverty Center, the Urban Ecology Laboratory, and the eScience Institute as well as the Urban Studies program at the UW Tacoma campus. UW’s three campuses are home to a growing community of faculty members researching and teaching urban subjects, comprising a rich, multidisciplinary body of work on cities. It has established strong partnerships with nearby institutions, in particular the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory. This breadth of expertise and knowledge encompasses all aspects of city life and is essential to shaping urban research and practice in innovative and disruptive directions.

    Why the Seattle metropolitan region?

    As a result of its remarkable concentration of nationally and globally significant leaders and organizations and a long history of urban resilience and adaptability, Seattle is recognized internationally as a bellwether city. Located within a still evolving metropolitan area with interconnected urban, suburban, and rural environments and metro governance structure, the Puget Sound region offers opportunities for research and policy distinct from those of larger cities. As a global hub for technology and innovation, the Seattle metro area is “ground zero” for advanced computing technologies and especially cloud computing, with Microsoft and Amazon based here, a strong presence from Google, and a vibrant startup community. Socrata, the leading provider of open data solutions for government, is also based in Seattle. Additionally the region is a global leader in social and health innovation and investments with many leading agencies and organizations including the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.

  • Research Areas

    Feminist histories, urban narratives, design and theory

    Feminist Histories and Alternative Narratives

    My interest in the narratives of women in landscape architecture has led to research engaging issues of gender, design, and social history in distinct ways. My dissertation was transformed, translated, altered, modified to become Unbounded Practice: Women in Landscape Architecture in the Early Twentieth Century. The book explores the narrative of landscape architectural history within the larger framework of the emerging profession in the twentieth century.

    Building on these explorations I have concentrated on how collective narratives of practice might inform the broader domain of landscape architecture history.I was a Beverly Willis Architecture Foundation Fellow in 2008 and was invited by the Foundation to present my research at the Guggenheim Museum (New York) in June 2009. The paper, “Constellations and Collective Histories: Women and Landscape Architecture,” described how a collective narrative expands our understanding and reading of the past and present, and by implication, the future.

    More recently I have extended my research to consider women designers at midcentury, which was the topic of my lecture, "Emerging Modernisms: Women at Midcentury for Women and Modernism in Landscape Architecture at the Graduate School of Design, Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts on February 17, 2011. This is currently being transformed into a chapter to be included in “Women in Post-War Practice in the United States” in Rewriting the Modernist Landscape: Gender and Geography, John Beardsley and Sonja Duempelmann, editors, forthcoming by Routledge Publishing 2014.

    For a recent blog post:

    About Marjorie Sewell Cautley and Phipps Houses: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CWNpR0F2hMs

    Urbanism and Cities Collaborative Research

    Urban@UW is an initiative of the Office of Research and CoMotion at UW to foster a community of urban researchers, teachers, and practitioners. As the recently appointed director, I will be building the scaffold to nurture a growing community across the academy and the region committed to addressing the grand challenges of urbanism in the 21st century.

    While my research is primarily historical, I have sought to contribute to the intense discourse around sustainable design and urbanisms. Working closely with Margaret O’Mara in the History Department at UW, we developed the program, Now Urbanism: City Building in the 21st Century and Beyond, awarded a John E. Sawyer Seminar on Comparative Cultures grant ($174,000) funded by the Mellon Foundation with significant support from the Simpson Center for the Humanities, the College of Built Environments, and the College of Arts & Sciences (September, 2010 - December, 2012.) The project hosted nine monthly three-day symposiums on perspectives on urbanism for a year followed by quarterly workshops for faculty and practitioners. At the end of the two-year period we had engaged over 100 faculty participants and 1500 public attendees in the urban- oriented discussions.

    The project framed new avenues of investigation through trans-disciplinary scholarship and practice and more specifically, the role of digital tools to enrich historical investigations and analysis. It generated a larger project: the UW Cities Collaboratory with the shared framework that considers cities as sites and agents of economic expansion, social interaction, political development, and cultural and intellectual incubation.To address these complexities, we must bring the best minds and ideas to the table

    Now Urbanism

    Op-Ed on Environmental Justice and Earth Day

    An annotated list of related and interesting projects others are leading....click here

    more details...

    For more publications, lectures, and professional engagement, you can read the whole cv by clicking here or going to my faculty webpage

  • Landscape Architecture Histories

    Exploring the histories of built environments

    Describing a new discipline

    History of landscape architecture is a complex endeavor as it engages narratives of our built environments, in their entirety and spans the entirety of human's existence,at least in theory. It is also the history of settlements on the land, making of place in the landscape. Thus it is about the history of cities, or the process of urbanization, by which cities are generated. Or it can mean the history of the profession of Landscape Architecture beginning with the emergence of design disciplines or professions in the Rennaissance. For others it is more recent, in the history of the profession that we know today, thus beginning in the mid-nineteenth century. For most it is a combination of these- a history of intentional design, making of the first settlements and cities, all the way through what we call a profession today in the 21st century.

    In my research, landscape history engages multiple and diverse narratives about human relationships to landscape and our efforts to design, shape, manipulate landscape as a spatial medium for pleasure, for production, and for settlement. For my research, it is the intentionally spatial nature of  designed landscapes that interest me rather than the production for example of agriculture which is generally focused on what can be produced, not how the land is shaped or formed. Cities and urban landscapes (streets, buildings, neighborhoods, transportation systems, infrastructural networks....) play critical roles as designed landscapes as do gardens, parks, and national parks. Together, as a whole, these designed landscapes frame our existence, our past, present, and futures on the planet aesthetically, socially, culturally, economically, politically, .... Furthermore I am intriqued by the designers, who imagines the design and how is it constructed? used and received? How do designed landscapes shape how we live in the world, an increasingly urban world? How can design foster civil society and sustainable life habits?

    Here in the USA, there are a select few organizations of landscape historians or landscape architectural historians, each offering a different framework:

    Landscape History Chapter of the Society of Architectural Historians

    Dumbarton Oaks Garden and Landscape Studies

    Library of American Landscape History

    Foundation for Landscape Studies

    Society for Landscape Studies

    There are regionally based groups that focus on education, outreach, and preservation practice:

    California Garden and Landscape History Society

    New England Landscape Design & History Association

    Southern Garden History Society

    There are also excellent associations that support the work of landcape historians, particularly in research of preservation issues:

    The Cultural Landscape Foundation

    Garden Conservancy

    This is by no means a comprehensive list but provides a sense of the breadth and depth of current research, pedagogy, and engagement within the broad discipline and practice of landscape history. There are more organizations and associations in Europe, and around the world.

    Teaching and researching history and design from within the College of Built Environments at the UW offers a means to bridge practice and theory, to study our past in order to define our potential futures as designers, planners, and visionaries (paraphrased from Confucius).

  • “Study the past if you would define the future.”
    ― Confucius

    Book Projects

    Landscape Architect A.E. Bye: Sculpting the Earth, Modern Landscape Design Series, Library of American Landscape History & W.W. Norton Publishing, expected publication Fall 2016.

    From Modern Space to Urban Ecological Design: the Landscape Architecture of Richard Haag, 2015, University of Washington Press. See a trailer by clicking here

    For an interview at Seattle Town Hall between Thaisa Way and Richard Haag, see

    with Jeff Hou, Ben Spencer, and Ken Yocom, eds. Now Urbanism: The Future City Is Here, 2014, Routledge Publishing.

    Unbounded Practice: Women and Landscape Architecture in the early Twentieth Century. University of Virginia Press, 2009, 288 pages (**paperback Fall 2013).

    Unbounded Practice: Women in Landscape Architecture in the Early Twentieth Century, explores the narrative of landscape architectural history within the larger framework of the emerging profession in the twentieth century. The book was selected to be the Faculty Book Award in the department of Landscape Architecture at the University of British Columbia and was awarded the 2009 Faculty Award for Completed Work by the UW College of Built Environments. In 2010 it was awarded the John Brinkerhoff Jackson Award by the Landscape Studies Foundation

    A co-edited book with Jeff Hou, Ben Spencer, and Ken Yocom titled Now Urbanism: The Future City has recently been released by Routledge. This collection of essays by practitioners and researchers draws on a continued interest in how history and theory contribute to stronger and more resilient futures. This research focus builds on the practice, teaching, and research of the UW faculty in compelling ways.

    As for my book on Richard Haag, it is part a monograph on his work as a landscape architect and founder of the Landscape Architecture program at the University of Washington, and it is a book on the emergence of urban ecological design as a framework for practice in the 21st century. While numerous essays note Haag's designs for the post industrial landscapes of Gas Works Park and Bloedel Reserve, there is little else published. My book offers a critical examination of Haag's praxis positioned within the histories of ecological design, post industrial landscape theory, and the discourses of modernism. In addition I was awarded a Graham Foundation exhibition grant for a two-part exhibit that considered Haag's influence on the profession of landscape architecture, in particular his legacy in ecological design, adaptive reuse of post-industrial sites, and design activism. In support of the Haag project, I was awarded a grant from the Royalty Research Fund ($15,401) and teaching release as a Royalty Research Fellow for 2009 and 2010. I was also awarded a Graham Foundation exhibition grant for a two-part exhibit on the work and legacy of Richard Haag from 2010-2012. More recently I was honored with an award for publication from the Marion Dean Ross Chapter of the Society of Architectural Historians.

    I am finishing a manuscript on A.E. Bye (to be published by Norton Press in 2016), focused in particular on his experiments with land form, his ecological design interests, and his collaborative efforts with modernist architects from Marcel Breuer to John Hejduk. This work has led to both serving as the Inaugural Bye Fellow and to my appointment as the Stuckeman Professor of Interdisciplinary Design at Pennsylvania State University in 2014. In the latter position I will co-lead with an architect a design studio on practicing collaboration as revealed through a study of the Wall house and garden by A.E. Bye and John Hejduk.

  • Teaching

    Design, history, and theory

    Design Studios

    College of Built Environments, University of Washington

    LARC 507 Lake 2 Bay: The Healthiest Neighborhood in the World, an Urban Design Advanced Studio for LARCH and ARCH graduate students, Fall 2014.

    LARC 301 Introductory Design Studio, taught with Julie Parrett, Fall 2012. LARC 323 Planting Design (Introduction to Trees), Fall 2012.

    LARC 507 Acqua Romane: Re-imagining the urban waterfront, Studio taught at the UW Rome Center with Rob Corser and Ann Huppert, Architecture, UW Rome Center, Rome, Italy. Fall 2011.

    BELAB 598 InBEtween Climate and Built Environments: Designing for Urgent Change on the Pacific Rim, Collaboratively led with Ken Tadashi Oshima, Architecture, including travel to Japan for 12 days with students, Spring 2011.

    LARC 700 Design Thesis Studio, Collaboratively led with Julie Parrett, Winter 2010. LARC 507 Landscape & Art /The Japanese Garden as Cultural Translation, Spring 2009.

    LARC 301 Design Foundation Studio, Fall 2007/ 2008 /2012 (Jointly taught).

    State University of New York: College of Environmental Science & Forestry

    LSA 326 Design Studio I: Site Inventory and Analysis, Fall 2006 (Jointly taught).

    LSA 227 Foundations Design Studio II, Spring 2006/ 2007 (Jointly taught).

    LSA 226 Foundations Design Studio I, Fall 2005/ 2006. (Jointly taught).

    Lecture Courses and Seminars

    College of Built Environments, University of Washington

    LARC 4/598 Urban Environmental History: An American Context, Winter 2013.

    LARC 590B Introduction to Faculty Research, Fall 2012.

    LARC 452 History of Urban Design, Fall 2009/ Spring 2012.

    LARC 498 History of Roman Urbanism: Architecture and Landscape, with Ann Huppert, Architecture, UW Rome Center, Rome, Italy. Fall 2011.

    LARC 412 Advanced Communication: Graphic Representation, with Rob Corser, Architecture, UW Rome Center, Rome, Italy. Fall 2011.

    LARC 352 History of Landscape Architecture, Fall 2008/ 2009/ 2010/ 2012.

    LARC 552 History of Landscape Architecture Graduate Seminar, Fall 2008/ 2009/ 2010.

    LARC 353 History of Modern Landscape Architecture, Winter 2008/ 2009/ 2011/2012/2013

    LARC 553 Modern Landscape Architecture Graduate Seminar, Winter 2008/ 2009/ 2011/2012/2013.

    LARC 570 Scholarship and Inquiry: Theory in Landscape Architecture, Winter 2011.

    ARCH 591 Architecture & Landscape, Spring 2009/ Spring 2010/ 2011.

    LARC 571 Research Methods in Landscape Architecture, Winter 2008.

    LARC 590A Cultural Landscapes and Vernacular Architecture, Spring 2008.

    LARC 590B Urban Agriculture: Readings, Winter 2008 (MLA research group).

    LARC 590C Teaching / Design Critique, Autumn 2007.

    State University of New York: College of Environmental Science & Forestry

    LSA 640 Research Methods in Landscape Architecture, Spring 2006/ 2007.

    LSA 496 Modernist Manifestos in Landscape Architecture, Spring 2006.

    LSA 496 Modernisms in Landscape Architecture, Fall 2005.

    LSA 496 Architecture Across Cultures, Spring 2007.

    LSA 425 Off Campus Design Studio (Japan) Spring/Summer 2007.

    LSA 498 Aesthetics of Sustainable Design, Spring 2007.

  • How to contact me

    348F Gould Hall
    Box 355734
    Seattle WA 98195-5734
    206 685 2523

     CBE/Landscape Architecture/Faculty


text:
Saturday, February 13, 2010

“Character” Advancement in Games of Skill

First, Global Agenda institutes an annoying leveling treadmill that turns an otherwise very fun tactical shooter into a timesink and unnecessarily punishes new players in a game where skill deficits are already a huge issue. Now Command and Conquer 4 is committing the same sin in the RTS genre. (Read Bilsybub’s impressions.)

Rewarding people for playing a game longer when the game consists of repeatedly playing matches that are supposedly skill-based? This accomplishes a few things, none of them are particularly good for players or game balance.

  1. Punishing newbies.
  2. Supplementing the power increase of player skill improvement, leading to a further advantage to players who should be better at the game anyway.
  3. Introducing a timesink that the player cannot get around.

Learning to play the game is enough of a timesink—why augment that with an advancement system that is guaranteed to progress slower than your pace of learning? It will only handicap newbies and make their matches less fun.

The people who really benefits from this nonsense? Whoever sells the game. Now you must play for 20 hours in order to even have access to a competitive set of abilities, units, weapons, or whatever.

Gating aspects of a competitive game of skill may prove to be a profitable business decision, but it’s a painful game design decision and can only erode player patience among competitive players. This takes the most soul-sucking part of themepark MMOs and shoves it into games that could not be further from the themepark design philosophy. These games will probably see much financial success because of the addictive quality of vertical character growth—this pattern will spread to more and more titles and continue to bother me and other supporters of skill-based games.

Now the same business vs game design conflict that has brutalized the design of themepark MMOs has come to roost in skill-based games. The future seems to be turning a skill-based game into an MMO by adding some “impact” PvP and vertical growth timesinks. This is bad for skill-based game design—but who cares about game design? Everyone’s in it to make money who has enough money to make such a game, so we’ll see this frustrating trend continue.

Brian 'Psychochild' Green said...

I think the main problem here is that "MMO = character advancement" to many people. The persistence of the character is what sets an MMO apart from other games, and what makes it (usually) worth paying a monthly fee (or being invested enough to buy items).

What are the alternatives? What system could Global Agenda have implemented to keep people playing the game and perhaps even eager to throw down a subscription?

Logan said...

Brian is right... there really aren't a lot of other options... if you take out the character advancement then you basically have TF2 with jetpacks... but who in their right mind is going to pay a monthly fee for TF2 with jetpacks?.. let alone buy the game in the first place. the character advancement is a big selling point, and helps GA stand out from the crowd... you take that out and now there is no reason whatsoever (other than jetpacks) to leave TF2 and give GA a try.

if you want a game of skill, with no character advancement, there's always QuakeLive... and it's free!

evizaer said...

You both have missed the point. I'm not arguing that GA should be an MMO and is doing it wrong, I'm arguing that GA shouldn't be an MMO considering the way its gameplay is structured (highly instanced 10v10 PvP and PvE, no open world, no "quests" or exploration whatsoever). GA is set up as a game of skill, not as an MMO, then they tacked on "MMO elements" and are now selling it as an MMO.

Changing GA into a real MMOFPS ala Planetside is not tenable considering the form the game takes now. They'd have to basically rewrite the majority of the game and do some serious class redesign.

I would suggest that GA just pull back from its MMO pretensions and make the game a great futuristic tactical team-based shooter. The MMO stuff is primarily a distraction--and a poor one at that.

GA isn't work even $5/month as it stands. I'd rather them pull back and do what they clearly can do well instead of shoehorning an MMO into their game unnecessarily.

Anonymous said...

I agree that having a player basicly waste time doing stuff that is obviously repetitive and hauling out time for no good reason. Such would imo be the worst kind of pacing in a game.

My example, is Mass Effect 2. Sure flying around the planets seem to have a purpose, in so far as you collect minerals, but it seem obvious to me that despite the little function of planet probing, it is all a waste of time. What is the fun of this? The challenge? Hardly. Looking at the planetary textures? Nope.

There is the thing with planets where you pick up transmissions on rare occasions, but as a player I found the whole travel-to-planets thing a great distraction and a fake way of pacing the game. And I do believe that this silly space-travel-functionality work as hauling out time. A fisher Price variant of RPG's.

Bilsybub said...

I should clarify that I'm actually fine with Command and Conquer's levelling set up.

I think there are two paths advancement can take. One is the WoW path, where higher levels means you're strictly better. Not only do you have acess to a larger array of abilities, but every possible stat will be higher at higher levels (generally).

The other path is the path Modern Warfare, Command and Conquer, and Shattered Galaxy (to a different extent) take, which is to allow levels to expand the versatility of the player, without increasing their power relative to the population as a whole.

For instance, in Modern Warfare, you really can do just fine with many of the starter weapons (this is mostly in an ideal sense, certain weapons can be and are imbalanced, but that's not a fault of the levelling so much as it is of the design team).

In Command and Conquer, everyone starts with bread and butter units that you will use the rest of the game. Rather rapidly, you will gain access to a few important supplementary units that round out your arsenal. Everything beyond that is simply choice addition; nothing has seemed to be out-and-out better in all situations than the starter units.

Shattered Galaxy offered something similar, though it did so by forcing players to specialize in any one battle and then having hard counters to everything. Your AA may be crappier than a high-level AA, but even a max-level player will pull their Air to Ground out when your ships sail in, because you'll still kill them pretty darned rapidly.

It sounds, however, like GA didn't do it quite like that, which is a shame. Modern Warfare really did demonstrate how to effectively have character persistence without killing the balance between low and high level players. GA probably should have looked more to that.

Logan said...

so without the character advancement, would you ever have picked up the game?

also i'd like to reiterate what Brian said, MMO does NOT mean character advancement... just because a game has character advancement doesn't mean that it's trying to be an MMO... it seems like you looked at the game's features, saw character advancement, and immediately thought "well this is an MMO"... it's not.. and Hi-Rez has always said that "it's not your typical MMO"... i think the problem most people has is that their expectations don't line up with what the game is actually trying to achieve... some would blame Hi-Rez for this disconnect, but honestly i don't know how they could have done it much differently without screwing themselves out of a lot of money.

basically the world doesn't need another TF2 clone, so Hi-Rez had to do something to set their game apart... i think what they did is very reasonable, and if there wasn't any character advancement i don't think the game would have done nearly as well as it has.

going total skill based like Quake or TF2 would have limited their player base a lot... going total MMO based like Planetside would also have limited their player base... so they compromised with somewhere in the middle... and i think it's worked fairly well... i won't personally be paying $12 a month for it, but it's still a solid game that i'm sure myself and many others will be playing for quite some time.

Void said...

They could do horizontal expansion instead of vertical. Like Bilsybub mentioned, they could go the Modern Warfare 2 route and slowly give you access to more items but not increase player power. That would help even the playing field.

I would even say that they should implement more specialized classes which you don't have access to until later. That way you can balance the classes and still give the player a sense of progression.

I also think they could simply have the MMO aspect be the worldwide conquest mode. Let skill determine who wins, but give everyone the chance to carve out their own little part of a giant hex grid. I think they need to open up the hex grid to individuals as well as guilds or add a few main factions for non guild minded players to join.

This ties into a post I made about length of time it takes before hitting endgame.


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The (Almost) Case of Doctor Who and JKR

Sep 16, 2008

Posted by: SueTLC | Comments

Great leaping Tardis! New reports are online tonight regarding how Harry Potter author J.K. Rowling had been favored to be a guest on the popular UK program Doctor Who for the Christmas 2007 show. The BBC is reporting that Doctor Who writer Russell T Davies had wanted Jo to star in the episode, however the star of the program, actor David Tennant (Barty Crouch Jr.) nixed the idea. “David doesn’t like the JK idea, he thinks it sounds like a spoof, so we’ve paused slightly, wondering whether to win him round or just abandon something that he’s not going to be happy with,” Davies said.

Excerpts from new book by the chief writer are detailed in the Times newspaper and we can read more of the plan for the purposed J.K. Rowling guest shot as follows in an email exchange:

From: Russell T. Davies

To: Benjamin Cook

Sunday July 29, 2007 20:21:48 GMT

I had an idea on holiday. Such a mad idea that I phoned Julie, to start setting it in motion. I was in the shower on Saturday morning (you may avert your eyes), thinking about how much I’d enjoyed that last Harry Potter book, how I’d love to write something like that, remembering that, back in 2004, I asked J.K.Rowling to write an episode of Doctor Who, though she politely declined, and reflecting that we can’t possibly get someone to star in next year’s Christmas Special who’s as famous as Kylie…when all those things coalesced. BAM! I thought, don’t ask J.K. to write a Doctor Who, ask her to be in a Doctor Who! We’ve done Dickens, Shakespeare, Agatha Christie…why should kids think that all great authors are dead? Imagine it. A cold Edinburgh Christmas Eve. J.K.Rowling walking through the snow, pursued by a journalist. “What are you going to write after Harry Potter?”

The diffcult second album…Later, J.K. sits down to write. At the same time, a Space Bug (maybe the same as Donna’s time-psych creature in 4.11), probably put there by the Rita Skeeter-type journalist, leaps onto her back. ZAP!

J.K.’s imagination becomes real! A world of Victorian magic replaces the present-day world. The Doctor arrives and has to battle through a world of witches and wizards, with wands and spells and CGI wonders, to reach J.K. Rowling at the heart of it all… That’s either brilliant or more like a Blue Peter crossover.

But worth trying. It’s different, certainly. So, Julie is trying to set up a meeting with J.K. …Imagine those opening titles: DAVID TENNANT flying at you, then J.K.ROWLING!…Imagine the Doctor in a world of magic made real – that would be glorious. So, there we go. That’s under way.

From: Russell T. Davies

To: Benjamin Cook

Tuesday August 21, 2007 23:04:21 GMT

Christmas 2008 is steaming up on the horizon! I should be writing that in January. That’s like tomorrow! That could be J.K. Rowling, or Cybermen in Victorian London [This was Davies’s first idea]. David doesn’t like the J.K. idea, he thinks it sounds like a spoof, so we’ve paused slightly, wondering whether to win him round or just abandon something that he’s not going to be happy with. We’ve got to keep him happy. He keeps us happy. (You should see the rushes of him and Catherine [Tate] chasing Agatha Christie in vintage cars – it’s a hoot!) Plus, he might be right. So that idea has parked itself, while Julie tries to find ways to approach J.K. anyway. And I doubt we’d ever get J.K. – she doesn’t need to do it – so Cybermen in the snow are hauling themselves back into my head.

Readers will also recall of course that David Tennant has made no secret how much he does enjoy the Harry Potter series, and you can watch a clip from an episode via our galleries of Doctor Who starring David Tennant, where magical events from Harry Potter and JKR are specifically mentioned.

Thanks much Roonwit!

Finding Hogwarts

The Leaky Cauldron is not associated with J.K. Rowling, Warner Bros., or any of the individuals or companies associated with producing and publishing Harry Potter books and films.


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The Amazing Race Unfinished Business Episode 7 Recap

After a week off, our intrepid teams return for another week of racing. In an amazing way. Hey, it's not Wipeout, but it's still fun.

The Cowboys were the only team not to get on the 10:45 flight in India, putting them an hour behind all the other teams.

The roadblock involved finding holy men on an extremely crowded street. Jet and Cord arrived well back, as would be expected, but they still finished before Ron and Christina, as Ron may still be wandering the streets of India narrating his adventure to himself.

One of the detours involved cow poop. Much retching ensued.

The Globetrotters came in first place.

Kent and Vyxxyyynnn had a water taxi mishap that resulted in V ditching her taxi by jumping in the water. I could have sworn at one point, Kent called Vyxxyyynnn "sis" which ... uhhh ... Let's just move on, shall we? (Or maybe it was "Vix.")

The Cowboys moved up to 5 after being behind much of the leg. Good for them.

Ron and Christina came in last and were eliminated.

Next week: Phillip is still ... Oh, sorry, wrong show. The teams eat in Austria and Ken and Vyxnnnn have another meltdown.
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Friday, July 1, 2011

Probably I should spend more time with girls

"Nevermind.  I'm not even gonna talk to you."  This is what Bryan just told me.  Not because he's mad.  It's not anything like that.  Actually, it has more to do with books.  Sort of.

When Bryan and I first got married his brother and sister in law lived about a five minute drive away.  And--without fail--every time we went over to visit his brother would show off some book or other seemingly interesting item to us.  It was one of those entirely reliable and subtly hilarious things you just come to look forward to in life.  Also, we teased him about it all the time.  (I still do.)

Well, that's sort of what Bryan has been up to lately.  Showing off books.  Except, instead of pulling recently read titles off the shelf to show visitors, he's been peppering me with "interesting things."  I put it in quotations because they were really only interesting the first time.  But since neither of us are working or in school right now and we're always together, we've been spending more time together than normal and it's starting to show through in our conversations.

It goes something like this:

Katie: doing something
Bryan: doing something

Bryan: "Interesting fact."
Katie: "Oh."
Bryan: (sensing that the first interesting fact didn't appropriately impress me) "Another interesting fact."
Katie: "Oh?"
Bryan: (really digging deep now) "Another interesting fact."
Katie: "Sorry, honey, I was distracted and I wasn't paying attention.  What did you say?"

Now multiply this by ten and you start to get a feel for our entire day.  Oh, and feel free to reuse the same "interesting facts" a few times.  Then your mental depiction will be a bit more accurate.  And you should probably also account for the fact that I'm a really terrible listener.  Not a terrible hearer--my ears work just fine--just a terrible listener.  I tend to get bored partway through conversations and stop paying attention.  Especially if I'm trying to multitask.  I would tell you I'm great at it.  Bryan would have other words to describe my multitasking.

Anyway, the point is, spending time together (lots and lots and lots of time together) is great, no?

I'm trying to soak it all in and store it up for when optometry school starts in the fall.  Because I keep hearing rumors about never seeing him again once it starts.  Boo hoo.

In other moderately-related news, our new place is starting to look like people actually live in it.  I'll try to buckle down and take pictures soon.  We'll see.  In the mean time, I hope you all have fun spending time together this weekend!  :)

P.S. Believe it or not, the picture in this post was not staged.  It was taken quite candidly on the way home from the zoo a couple days ago.  And I definitely don't plan that far in advance about my posts.  :)

Kathy Haynie said...

Hahahaha...Mark and I have summer vacations together. And we carpool together during the school year. And we eat lunch together almost every day. And sometimes we even share the same classroom (not at the same time).

What saves us - we have lots to do. Some of it we do together...some of it is parallel play.

Have fun with each other this summer! Are you getting out for walks and things?

Polly @ Helping Little Hands said...

Uhhh...If Bryan needs a support club, he could call Eric. We have that conversation multiple times a day...although it's not always an interesting fact...sometimes it's something I really should be trying to pay attention to :)


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License article

Coach Cathryn Fitzpatrick a fan of CA Southern Stars contract system

Cricket Australia's decision to implement changes which made the Southern Stars the highest-paid female sporting team in the country has been hailed as a key factor in the team's third consecutive international Twenty20 world title.

Coach Cathryn Fitzpatrick, captain Meg Lanning and former skipper Alex Blackwell all believe last year's pay increase for the country's elite players has played a big part in lifting the standard of women's cricket in Australia.

For the coach, it means better access to players to hone their skills. For the players, it means they can take time off work or study to concentrate on their game.

Fitzpatrick, who represented her country from 1991-2006, recalled worrying about her finances while on tour, but said she would not have had as many concerns today.

The top female player in the country can earn as much as $80,000 a year while all team members are given $250 a day on tour, which means Fitzpatrick's proteges do not have to fret about making ends meet like their coach once did.

"It does help because there's less stress around other things," Fitzpatrick said on Wednesday at the team's welcome home reception at the SCG.

"It helps their preparation off the field. You go to bed and you're thinking about your plan and strategy not about "I'll be home in a couple of day's time and where am I going to find the rent or rego money?' It makes them more relaxed on tour and that helps."

The added financial rewards have reduced the pressures on players to find work outside cricket, which means there is more time for training.

"What I've found since the contracts is I'm doing more one-on-one training sessions with the girls because they don't have the work and study requirements," Melbourne-based Fitzpatrick said.

Blackwell was able to take two days off a week from her job as a genetic counsellor. That meant she could train during the day, reducing the need to burn the candle at both ends.

"Traditionally we've been 6-8 on a Tuesday and Thursday night, you get home late and there's a snowball effect – you get tired for the next day," Blackwell said.

"[Now] there's great opportunity for us to keep improving and create a gap between us and the next best."

Blackwell said the Australian team could become "scary good" in the coming years but they might need to be. The team they beat on the weekend, England, announced their own funding increase this year which its board said would create the country's first full-time professional women's cricket side.

"I've been in the team a long time and never thought I'd be a semi-professional athlete – it's always been a dream," Blackwell said.

"I often looked at the guys and thought if I could be a full-time athlete, how good can I be? It's come a long way in the 10 years I've been involved."


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Survivor guilt? No, just yellow

LANCE Armstrong has responded to the loss of his seven Tour de France titles as a man does to a passing hurricane, by going underground.

After a career of denial and facade, it's possible that he has nothing left to say. Indeed, the more we learn about Armstrong the clearer it becomes that he never had much to say. But if I had Lance's audience I'd still like to ask him, ''What will you do now?''

History tells us that to go on in the world, a figure like Armstrong will eventually have to apologise. If he managed this with civility, he may even be spoken of someday as the greatest cyclist of a tainted era. But his problem has become one that extends beyond his broken sports-career. His other great raison d'etre has been his cancer charity, the Lance Armstrong Foundation. Last week, the foundation tried to remove itself from its founder entirely by changing its official name to Livestrong. This symbolises a significant loss for Armstrong.

The removal of his name is, in part, a concession that Armstrong's unlikely cancer survival and his subsequent charity have inadvertently acted as a crutch, a moral ruse that has helped enable Armstrong's deception. ''He overcame cancer, the worst odds,'' the story went. ''Maybe he's telling us the truth. Maybe he's something special.''

The success of Armstrong's foundation was built, in allegory, on the common image of cancer as a ''battle'' to be fought, a kind of contest. As an athlete, Armstrong inserted himself as the symbolic hero. ''You chose the wrong body,'' he told his cancer, ''You chose the wrong guy.'' The analogy of struggle is in principle a decent one, but Armstrong was a false prophet, ultimately an unsporting man who couldn't restrain himself from self-congratulation and extended his belief in his own importance into his sports career.

In his hugely overrated autobiography is the underlying and, at times, explicit suggestion that he is endowed with qualities that other people lack and that these helped him to survive.

Armstrong tries to check himself by inserting moments of humility such as: ''There's a lot of luck. I'll never know how much of a part I played in my own cure.'' But elsewhere he underhandedly employs others to deliver on his real feelings. He quotes his doctor: ''Lance, I think you were fated to get this type of illness. One, because maybe you could overcome it and, two, because your potential as a human was so much greater than just being a cyclist.''

He doesn't bother to explain what this might mean in the book but implies that he started the foundation soon after. Nor does he acknowledge that his own usefulness in raising money came precisely from his fame as a cyclist and that these two things would be inseparable for him. ''I started to think that my role in life was not to be a cyclist,'' he wrote, ''but to be a cancer survivor.''

Charities are essentially inviolable things and it's because they provide immunity to people that it's important to critique their beneficiaries. Armstrong did not choose cancer, it infiltrated his life and he shifted along with it, starting the foundation partly because he could afford to and, in fairness to him, because he was moved by cancer's effect on people. But Armstrong has benefited from his charity because he surrounded himself with the solidarity of good will and evangelised the power of hope and belief to the benefit of his sports career.

It remains an impossible task to reconcile the gesture of Armstrong's humility with the deception of his actions. In his own writings he speaks of a dichotomy between a Lance pre- and post-cancer. He reported to us that cancer had ''humbled him'' but what we find post-cancer is Armstrong's greatest misdirection - his succession of seven Tour wins and his perpetual promise that he was clean.

Armstrong is clearly a person of rare extremes; he is extremely talented, extremely driven, extremely solipsistic and extremely deceptive. All of these things make him a person of note but not of admiration.

After his comeback from illness and his initial Tour win Armstrong, in his shout-out to the regular people, wrote this: ''I want to tell the truth. I'm sure you'd like to hear about how Lance Armstrong became a Great American and an Inspiration To Us All, how he won the Tour de France, the road race that's considered the single most gruelling sporting event on the face of the earth. You want to hear about faith and mystery, and my miraculous comeback. You want to hear about my lyrical climb through the Alps and my heroic conquering of the Pyrenees, and how it felt. But the Tour was the least of the story.''

What will become of Armstrong, I wonder? His guise as a role model has been undone, both in his sporting and philanthropic careers. Just last week he defiantly incited his critics by tweeting a picture of himself luxuriating at home in front of his seven framed Tour de France yellow jerseys. He looked like the loneliest man in the world.

Needless to say, there needs to be another book - so long as it's written about him and not by him.


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Main objective of this post is to give you an idea about how to make iOS App

Make an iPhone app:

This tutorial teaches you how to make iPhone app. You will learn how to make iPhone app as a single view app and fundamentals of iPhone app development, including how to build a simple iPhone app. The following steps may be easier to make than you think. Follow the Step 1 below to get started and go through for creating application and successfully run it.

Step 1 Create Xcode Project

Install and Setting Up Your Development Environment Download and install Xcode. Xcode is an Integrated Development Environment (IDE) to create all iPhone apps but it requires OS X 10.8 or later to be installed. It contains a suite for software development tools for iOS application. After Installation Xcode; open Xcode.

The following screen will appear:

Wecome to Xcode

To create a new Xcode project select option Create a new Xcode project. It appears a Choose a template for your project dialog box as shown in given figure.

Choose Template For your project

From the dialog box select Single View Application option and press next button.

The following screen will appear:
project details

The above screen contains number of fields:

  • Product Name
  • Organization Name
  • Company Identifier
  • Bundle Identifier
  • Class Prefix.

User has to provide basic information into specific field which is very helpful to create a new project. Also it includes list of devices for which you want to develop application iPhone/iPad. If you want to develop an application for both then simply select option Universal. After giving appropriate application name press next button. It appears “directory dialog box” as following screen:

directory dialog box

Select the directory for your new project from “directory dialog box” where exactly you want to save your application and select “Create” Button.

The following screen will appear:
setting dialog box

Above screen allow you to select the supported orientations, build and release settings. One of the fields is very important say Deployment Target. It means that what is the earliest OS that you want to run this application? If you set deployment target to iOS 6, you must have iOS 6 to install and run the application.

Step 2 How to run your project?

Select Simulator (Top Left corner) from the drop down, which is near Run (denoted in following screenshot) button and select run. Following figure will gives you brief idea.

simulator view

Step 3 Main.storyBoard Design

When your application builds successfully and run then following output will be displayed.

output view

Step 4 Xcode default generated Files

The main files are given below screen that is generated when you have created your application. By implementing code in following files you can perform various operations to the application. They are listed as given below:

listed files

I hope you found this blog helpful while developing your own iPhone App in iOS. Let me know if you have any questions or concerns regarding iOS, please put a comment here and we will get back to you ASAP.

Got an Idea of iPhone App Development? What are you still waiting for? Contact us now and see the Idea live soon. Our company has been named as one of the best iPhone App Development Company in India.

I am iOS developer, as a developer my basic goal is continue to learn and improve my development skills , to make application more user friendly.


text:
 Palestinians worry US embassy move will counter peace efforts

Palestinians worry US embassy move will counter peace efforts

Experts agree that if Trump moves embassy, it would be last nail in coffin of two-state solution.

Motorists driving past US embassy in Tel Aviv

2017/01/22 Issue: 90 Page: 2

The Arab Weekly
Malak Hasan

Ramallah - US President Donald Trump has insisted that he is serious about his promise to move the US embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv, the metropolitan coastal city, to Jerusalem, the focus of Palestinian-Israeli tensions.

The step is not new; many US presidential candidates have promised during election campaigns to move the US embassy to Jerusalem but none carried out that commitment after arriving at the White House.

The move, it is believed, would spark violence and tensions. It would be a clear contradiction of international consensus regarding the status of the holy city.

Johnny Assi, an expert in international law, said: “Capitals host embassies and other cities have consulates. Even though Israel considers Jerusalem its capital, the world doesn’t recognise the administrative measures imposed in Jerusalem by Israel.”

The Palestinian leadership, Arab countries, Europeans and the just-departed Obama administration have expressed concerns that Trump will implement the Jerusalem Embassy Act. It was passed by the US Congress in 1995 to relocate the embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, no later than May 31st, 1999.

US presidents Bill Clinton and George W. Bush, who made the same promise to move the embassy, invoked a waiver, saying a bilateral peace agreement between the two sides was the only way to determine Jerusalem’s final status.

Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, during a news conference in Bethlehem, called on Trump not to move the embassy, which would hinder the peace process.

“We heard President-elect Trump say this but we have not been informed of an official position yet,” Abbas said. “However, if he decides to move the embassy, it would be an illegal step that would ruin the two-state solution. If this happens, we will have a political and diplomatic response.”

Palestinian politicians and experts agree that if Trump moves the embassy, it would not upend US foreign policy and be the last nail in the coffin of the two-state solution, the only viable and just solution for both Palestinians and Israelis in the view of more than 70 foreign ministers who gathered January 15th for an international peace conference in Paris.

“This is dangerous. Moving the embassy would counter all measures and agreements reached before. Going back to square one will not be easy for us,” said Palestinian Minister of Jerusalem Affairs Adnan Husseini.

The embassy move would also challenge the Oslo accords, signed between the Palestinians and Israelis and which govern relations between the two sides and leave permanent issues such as the status of Jerusalem, Israeli settlements, security arrangements, international borders and the rights of Palestinian refugees to be resolved jointly.

Tensions have been building following clashes in 2015 at Jerusalem’s al-Aqsa mosque, one of Islam’s holiest sites, and increasing Israeli settler violence and intrusion into the mosque yard, which they refer to as the Temple Mount.

Assi said the embassy move would not calm the situation in Jerusalem and might result in more tensions.

“Israel’s occupation of the city of Jerusalem does not equal sovereignty. Jerusalem is an occupied territory since 1967. The reaction to the move might resemble that of the first intifada,” he said.

The city of Jerusalem has always been a sensitive issue that made reaching a solution between the Palestinians and Israel extremely difficult. The Palestinians are adamant that East Jerusalem would have to eventually serve as the capital of a sovereign state of Palestine under the two-state solution. Israel considers Jerusalem its declared undivided capital, which already serves as its seat of government.

The city, however, is not recognised by almost any country as the capital of Israel. The US embassy has been in Tel Aviv — like other countries’ embassies — and to move it to Jerusalem would cause many problems, said Ahmad Rabaya, a resident of Ramallah.

“To move the embassy is to recognise that Jerusalem is the capital of Israel, which means the United States will no longer be an accepted broker of peace,” Rabaya said. “It will be an official declaration of the failure of negotiations and that the Palestinians have no political, historical or religious rights in the city.”

“For decades all we have known was tension, violence and injustice and Trump will only fuel the hatred and violence by denying our right in Jerusalem,” Rabaya concluded.

Malak Hasan, based in Ramallah, has covered Palestinian-Israeli issues for more than five years.

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From Europe to the Middle East,and North America, The Arab Weekly talks to opinion formers and influential figures, providing insight and comment on national, international and regional news through the focus of Arabic countries and community.

Published by Al Arab Publishing House

Publisher and Group Executive Editor: Haitham El-Zobaidi, PhD

Editor-in-Chief: Oussama Romdhani

Deputy Editor-in-Chief: Dalal Saoud

Senior Editor: John Hendel

Chief Copy Editors: Jonathan Hemming and Richard Pretorius

Analysis Section Editor: Ed Blanche

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Society and Travel Sections Editor: Samar Kadi

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Libertarian Party

October 12, 2013 - 7:45am
posted by Jim Rosenbeck in jim rosenbeck, Batavia City Council, Libertarian Party.
My name is Jim Rosenbeck. I live with my wife,  Debbie Kerr Rosenbeck at 13 Lewis Avenue in the city. Nine candidates are running for Batavia City Council at Large this Fall. You will be electing three of those candidates to serve on City Council.
I am running as an independent candidate with the endorsement of the Genesee County Libertarian Party ( to which I belong. The Libertarians are also endorsing Lisa Whitehead for City Council at Large.  She is a good person and I enthusiastically support her candidacy.
However, you won't find Lisa's name and my name together on any yard signs or on any campaign material. That is because we are different people with unique strengths and abilities. We don't have the same view on every issue and we won't try to convince you  to vote for us because we represent some inherently superior political party. In fact, I am convinced that big government run by Libertarians would be just as corrupt and wasteful as big government run by republicans and democrats.  I will be voting for the person not the party.  Voting for three names on a placard scares me.  I am not willing to accept that any one party has cornered the market on good candidates.  It is too simplistic a view.  I personally know many of the individuals running for City Council. Some of them are my friends. What I don't buy is party line politics. That idea is too old, worn out and fraught with poor results.
The courage and conviction of Council candidate Rosemary Christian who stepped outside the safety of party politics and entered this election as an independent is admirable.  She might agree with me that the debate is no longer about republican values vs. democrat values  That debate is a tired old exercise.  Frankly, I have a difficult time telling the difference between the two big parties at times.
As a result,  I no longer participate in the red state/blue state faux debate.  I don't support the faux wars on terror, the faux war on drugs or the faux war on poverty that are all filled with rhetoric and tax dollars but fall short on results.  The real debate is between those who  support big, authoritarian  government vs. those who support liberty and personal responsibility.  This is true at the state and national level, and locally as well.
There are nine candidates asking for your vote.  It doesn't matter what team we say we are on. We owe you more than the willingness to wave a team flag.  We need to tell you our vision and listen to your concerns. To that end, I am in the process of walking every street in Batavia to meet as many city residents as possible. My promise to you is one of transparency and trust.  We need to move away from party politics and elect people with a vision and a willingness to lead.  You can read the specifics of my vision by visiting the Facebook link below. Every position I take on an issue is and will be clearly communicated. My position doesn't change to fit the audience. I welcome the opportunity to discuss any local issues with you. To find out more about my candidacy please contact me at [email protected] or by phone at 585.356.8623. Follow my campaign at I ask for your vote in November.
Jim Rosenbeck
Candidate for City Council at Large
January 21, 2013 - 10:07pm
posted by Howard B. Owens in politics, Libertarian Party.

Phil Ricci, upper right, leads a discussion at Coffee Culture among the more than 20 people who showed up to help form the Libertarian Party in Genesee County.

I was only there for a few minutes to get a picture. I'll let Phil, in comments, if he wishes, discuss what went on tonight and what progress was made.

January 8, 2013 - 1:51pm
posted by Howard B. Owens in politics, Phil Ricci, Libertarian Party.

The time might be right for a third party to try to make a difference in Genesee County politics, the way Phil Ricci sees it, so he along with a small group of like-minded residents are working getting the Libertarian Party established locally.

The process involves signing up members for the committee, holding a convention and finding a candidate or two to run for local offices.

"I think this has been coming for a long time," Ricci said. "There's a growing interest in the breakdown of the two-party system. People see either Republican or Democrat and they just don't fit in. I think what the ideology of Libertarian stands for is vastly misunderstood. More people have what I believe are libertarian beliefs and are looking for viable options to the two-party system. They want less intrusive government and people in government who are responsible financial stewards."

Rather than trying get candidates elected to national and state offices, Ricci thinks any viable third-party effort needs to start at the local level where it's easier to build an organization.

And localism fits well with the basic Libertarian tenant of less intrusive government.

"Here's the big thing -- I'm tired of people far away telling people here, where we live, what's best for us," said Ricci, who ran for Batavia City Council in 2009 and is currently a member of the Batavia City School District Board of Education.

"We control were we live, and we do that as an individual, so why does our government, which has no real local connection, even think about telling us what we should do for our local community? We need local ideas, local vision, to fix local issues."

At a minimum, Ricci would like to have Genesee County Libertarians well enough organized by late summer to run at least one candidate for city council, perhaps a candidate or two in village or town elections and maybe the county legislature.

"Our first goal is to allow people who support individual liberty to have a viable choice at the local level," Ricci said.

On Facebook: The Genesee County Libertarian Committee.

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Saudi Cleric Encourages Syrian Rebels to Engage in ‘Temporary Marriages’ With Girls as Young as 14

A hardline Wahhabi cleric from Saudi Arabia is encouraging rebel fighters in Syria to engage in “temporary marriages” with Syrian females as young as the age of 14, multiple international news outlets have reported.

Iran’s PressTV has more on what they describe as a “special religious decree”:

Sheikh Mohammed al-Arifi said that the marriages between the foreign-backed militants and Syrian women will satisfy the militants’ sexual desires and boost their determination in killing Syrians.

He added that the marriages, dubbed by him as “intercourse marriages,” can be with Syrian females as young as 14 years old.

He also promised “paradise” for those who marry the militants.

Arifi has issued similar decrees in the past in support of the violence in Syria.

He has also been organizing a fundraiser for the militant groups fighting Syrian government forces.

Eretz Zen, a YouTube channel by a “secular Syrian opposed to having [his] country turned into a Taliban-like state,” also posted a newscast describing the declaration from Lebanon’s al-Jadeed TV:

The broadcaster had more on the story:

[The cleric] expressed his annoyance with the deprivation of the fighters of Islam, who are fighting in Syria alongside the armed opposition forces, from earthly pleasures.  He clarified that it has been two years since the jihadists last were with women.  Al-Arifi’s fatwa allows the fighters in Syria to engage in a marriage…that lasts for a few hours from Syrian females, in order to give each fighter a turn.  [Emphasis added]

Obviously, critics are pointing out that the fatwa encourages rebel fighters to rape Syrian women, and feel religiously justified in doing it.

(Photo: Facebook/Shaykh Muhammed Al Arifi)

Commenters took the cleric’s Facebook page to weigh in on the fatwa, many hurling insults at the religious figure.

There are doubts, though, that the cleric would issue such a decree (though he wouldn’t be the first):

(Photo: Facebook/Shaykh Muhammed Al Arifi)

Less than one week ago, the Middle East Broadcast Center said Al-Arifi “should be at a psychiatric hospital” for saying a girl shouldn’t be alone with her father because she might “tempt him into lusting after her,” al-Arabiya relates.

(H/T: Gateway Pundit)


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‘Snap Out of It’: CNN Host Likens Drawing the Prophet Muhammad to Saying the N-Word

Activist Pamela Geller clashed with CNN’s Chris Cuomo on Thursday morning, accusing him of “very shallow journalism” and pushing back against a comparison that he made between saying the N-word and drawing cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad.

The heated segment started with Cuomo discussing the Garland shooting that unfolded earlier this month when “would-be jihadists” attacked the venue where Geller’s Muhammad cartoon contest was held, before asking why she’s now trying to publicly post the winning cartoon on Washington D.C. buses.

“The media and the political and academic elites are censoring this cartoon and we think the American people should see that you are self-enforcing the Shariah,” Geller responded.

The conversation heated up after Cuomo, who called the shooters “crazy extremists” who “bought into an ideology that is sick,” accused Geller of calculating her event in a way that would be provocative — a claim that she dismissed as “nonsense.”

“The N-word gets treated the same way that depictions of Muhammad does,” Cuomo said. “We don’t say it because it’s offensive, not because legally I can’t.”

Geller dismissed that comparison and called it a “dishonest narrative,” defending cartoons of Muhammad as political speech that is permissible under the First Amendment. While Cuomo didn’t dispute that fact, he continued to question the wisdom behind it.

“Since when do you care about being offensive?” Geller asked, accusing the CNN host of making past negative statements about her, before continuing to lambaste the N-word comparison. “It’s not analogous … it’s outrageous. It’s a dishonest narrative and I am not going to debate intellectual dishonesty.”

Watch the clash below:

Geller also accused Cuomo of “very shallow journalism” after he asked why she opposed the controversial mosque that was planned near Ground Zero. While she said that she has no problem with mosques in general, she found the proposed house of worship problematic.

“A 15-story megamosque in a building that was destroyed in the 9/11 attacks by the landing gear is deeply humiliating and deeply offensive,” she said. “It was a middle finger to the American people.”

To that, Cuomo countered, “And you don’t see that as what you’re doing with the Prophet Muhammad?” Geller answered that the two are very different from one another, before challenging the host to reveal where he would “draw the line” when it comes to free speech.

“You’re saying no cartoons — that to me is so much more destructive to a free society than alcohol,” she said. “I mean, it’s free speech. It’s a cartoon, Chris. Snap out of it.”


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The Body: The Complete HIV/AIDS Resource
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Phenotype HIV 1 Virtual
Sep 10, 2002

Dr. Little,

I'd appreciate your thoughts. 300k VL cd4 4 nadir hep B. 09/01 Trizivir Viracept drug naive. 100 adherent <50 cd4 10 by week 24. 7/02 vl 114 cd4 10, 8/02 vl 344 cd 10. 9/02 getting test in title. We want to switch but need to know the nucleoside resistance if any.

Will this test give me the answers I need. I'd like a genotype but can't wait for enough verimia to get one. I can't stop meds cd4 to low vl to high at nadir. I want to use a Sustiva based group. Viread and Epivir for HIV and Hep B. I want to keep ABC on board too because we treated through a 104 degree fever when I started and I'd be afraid to ever restart it. What do you think. Of course this is all if I have resistance.

Response from Dr. Little

In the short time that you will need to wait for a phenotype test result (if your viral load is high enough - you are right on the edge of what is routinely possible) - I would be inclined to make a conservative switch that would probably result in a short period of overtreatment (i.e. with more than the necessary number of drugs), but would not risk the further development of any additional drug resistance in case you guess wrong based upon the clinical history alone. In this case, I would think that the most likely drug resistance mutations would be to lamivudine (M184V) and possibly nelfinavir (D30N). Based upon this - if you know that you were drug sensitive before you started any antiretroviral therapy, you could consider an efavirenz (i.e. sustiva)-based regimen. You could consider dropping nelfinavir and keeping trizavir and adding tenofovir while you wait for your drug resistance tests. You will have to make some "best guess" decisions though if your viral load ends up too low to permit performance of a phenotype test. In this case - my guess would still stand, though you might want to continue the 3TC despite the chance you have HIV drug resistance in the hopes that it will add to your potency for Hep B. And although not as popular, you might still find that a protease inhibitor based regimen was also a good option. I would discuss all these options with your doctor to come up with a treatment regimen that you are both comfortable with.

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Virus Levels

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why don't you ever recommend the RNA tests?

Jul 31, 2008

Dear Dr Frascino, Thanks for answering my previous question. When I'm not so poor, I will make a donation to your fantastic organisation. My question to you is simply this: why do you only ever recommend the HIV antibody test (which necessitates a 3 month wait post-exposure)? I've been tested several times here in San Francisco and they have always given me the new RNA test - which they tell me can detect the virus with 100% accuracy only 10 days post-exposure. Is this because you think the RNA test is less accurate than the traditional antibody test, or is it the case that this test is not available countrywide and you want to recommend a test everyone can obtain access to?

Response from Dr. Frascino

Thanks for your question. It's one that comes up quite often. There are several reasons for recommending HIV-antibody tests over RNA-PCR tests for diagnostic purposes.

1. HIV-antibody tests are FDA approved for diagnosing HIV disease. PCR tests (RNA and DNA) are not. Large epidemiological studies have been conducted to verify validity, sensitivity and specificity of HIV-antibody tests. The false-negative/false-positive percentage is acceptably low, particularly when combining a Western Blot test for confirmation of positive ELISA/EIA/rapid tests.

2. PCR-RNA has a risk of false-positive results. Getting a false-positive result when screening for a condition as catastrophic as HIV can lead to significant anxiety. Just check the archives for a number of testimonials that provide concrete examples of this. (Or, just imagine if it happened to you!) RNA tests were not designed (or approved) for routine HIV screening and diagnosis. HIV PCR RNA tests are used to monitor how much HIV is growing (how rapidly HIV is replicating). It is very possible to be HIV infected but have an "undetectable" PCR-RNA if someone is on antiretroviral therapy (PEP, for instance). This could lead to confusion: The person tested might think he is HIV negative when in reality he is HIV positive but at the same time RNA undetectable.

3. Availability and cost. PCR-RNA testing is very costly and not available worldwide. My comments on this site are read throughout the cyber-universe.

Finally, I should mention I recommend quantitative PCR RNA and qualitative PCR DNA tests. Lots of them! However, I recommend them for specific purposes and routine HIV screening is not one of them.

Hope that helps.

Dr. Bob

worrid well!
RNA testing in conjunction with HIV test

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Julien/By S. Bradley

It wasn’t that long ago that the Bruins were a laughingstock that couldn’t qualify for the playoffs the first two years out of the lockout.

But every season since head coach Claude Julien arrived in Boston, the Bruins have pushed those dark days farther into the past.

With a 2-1 win at Philadelphia tonight, the Bruins clinched a fourth straight playoff berth. Next up, the Northeast Division title, which will be the Bruins’ second in three seasons.

Amazingly, the Bruins finished the season series by taking three out of four, and seven points, against the Eastern Conference-leading Flyers. You combine that with three wins against second-place Washington, two wins (five points) against Pittsburgh and three wins against Tampa Bay, and it cannot be denied that Boston has proven it’s one of the teams to beat in the East.

Here’s a glance at the box score:

•Brad Marchand scored the game-winning goal with just 3:43 left in regulation. It was his 20th of the season and first after a 12-game drought.

•In goal, Tim Thomas earned his third straight win with 27 more saves, including a couple point-blank stops on Kris Versteeg (who scored the Flyers’ goal) and Andrej Meszaros when the Bruins were behind 1-0.

•You can consider this a power-play eruption for the Bruins. They scored two goals on the man-advantage tonight, the first time they’ve scored more than once on the power play since Jan. 18 at Carolina. Boston’s power play is now 4-for-15 over the last four games.

•With an assist on the game-winning goal, Mark Recchi tied Paul Coffey for 12th on the all-time assist list with 1,531.


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2009 GMC Yukon Hybrid Denali 4WD 4-Door Specs

4WD 4-Door
MSRP based on 4WD 4-Door

Quick Specs

Gas Mileage 20 mpg City/20 mpg Hwy
Engine Gas/Electric V8, 6.0L
EPA Class No Data
Style Name 4-Wheel Drive Denali Hybrid
Drivetrain Four Wheel Drive
Passenger Capacity 8
Passenger Doors 4
Body Style Sport Utility
Transmission Transmission, 4-speed automatic strong hybrid specific, electronically controlled with overdrive

Rear Door Type Liftgate
Weight Information
Curb Weight - Front (lbs) 2924
Gross Axle Wt Rating - Front (lbs) 3600
Gross Combined Wt Rating (lbs) 12000
Curb Weight - Rear (lbs) 2657
Gross Axle Wt Rating - Rear (lbs) 4100
Gross Vehicle Weight Rating Cap (lbs) 7500
Interior Dimensions
Front Leg Room (in) 41.3
Second Shoulder Room (in) 65.2
Third Hip Room (in) 49.1
Passenger Capacity 8
Second Head Room (in) 39.2
Third Leg Room (in) 25.6
Front Shoulder Room (in) 65.3
Second Hip Room (in) 60.6
Front Head Room (in) 41.1
Second Leg Room (in) 39.0
Third Shoulder Room (in) 61.7
Front Hip Room (in) 64.4
Third Head Room (in) 37.9
Exterior Dimensions
Step Up Height - Side (in) NA
Width, Max w/o mirrors (in) 79.0
Ground Clearance, Front (in) 9.0
Side Door Opening Width (in) NA
Wheelbase (in) 116.0
Overhang, Rear w/bumper (in) - TBD -
Rear Door Opening Width (in) - TBD -
Height, Overall (in) 77.0
Ground Clearance, Rear (in) 9.0
Step Up Height - Front (in) NA
Length, Overall w/rear bumper (in) 202.0
Ground to Top of Load Floor (in) 32.7
Side Door Opening Height (in) NA
Overhang, Front (in) - TBD -
Rear Door Opening Height (in) - TBD -
Cargo Area Dimensions
Cargo Area Length @ Floor to Seat 2 (in) 49.4
Cargo Box (Area) Height (in) 41.7
Cargo Area Length @ Floor to Console (in) - TBD -
Cargo Area Width @ Beltline (in) - TBD -
Cargo Volume to Seat 3 (ft³) 16.9
Cargo Area Length @ Floor to Seat 3 (in) 15.2
Cargo Volume to Seat 1 (ft³) 108.9
Cargo Area Length @ Floor to Seat 1 (in) 81.4
Cargo Box Width @ Wheelhousings (in) - TBD -
Cargo Volume to Seat 4 (ft³) NA
Cargo Area Length @ Floor to Seat 4 (in) NA
Cargo Volume to Seat 2 (ft³) 60.3

Fuel Economy

Fuel Tank
Fuel Tank Location - TBD -
Fuel Tank Capacity, Approx (gal) 24.0
Aux Fuel Tank Location NA
Aux Fuel Tank Capacity, Approx (gal) NA
EPA Fuel Economy Est - Hwy (MPG) 20
Fuel Economy Est-Combined (MPG) 20
EPA Fuel Economy Est - City (MPG) 20

Performance Specs

Displacement 6.0L/366
Engine Order Code LFA
SAE Net Torque @ RPM 367 @ 4100
Fuel System SFI
Engine Type Gas/Electric V8
Engine Oil Cooler NA
SAE Net Horsepower @ RPM 332 @ 5100
Trans PTO Access NA
Trans Type 4
Third Gear Ratio (:1) 1.00
Clutch Size (in) NA
Transfer Case Gear Ratio (:1), Low 2.69
Drivetrain 4-Wheel Drive
First Gear Ratio (:1) 3.69
Sixth Gear Ratio (:1) NA
Transfer Case Model - TBD -
Trans Description Cont. Automatic w/OD
Fourth Gear Ratio (:1) 0.73
Trans Power Take Off NA
Transfer Case Power Take Off NA
Trans Order Code M99
Second Gear Ratio (:1) 1.70
Reverse Ratio (:1) 1.70
Transfer Case Gear Ratio (:1), High 1.00
Trans Description Cont. Again NA
Fifth Gear Ratio (:1) NA
Brake ABS System (Second Line) NA
Drum - Rear (Yes or ) NA
Brake Type Pwr
Front Brake Rotor Diam x Thickness (in) 13 x 1.2
Disc - Front (Yes or ) Yes
Rear Drum Diam x Width (in) NA
Brake ABS System 4-Wheel
Rear Brake Rotor Diam x Thickness (in) 13.6 x 0.8
Disc - Rear (Yes or ) Yes
Steering Ratio (:1), At Lock - TBD -
Steering Type Pwr
Turning Diameter - Curb to Curb (ft) 39.0
Steering Ratio (:1), On Center - TBD -
Turning Diameter - Wall to Wall (ft) - TBD -
Spare Tire Order Code - TBD -
Rear Tire Capacity (lbs) 2134
Front Tire Order Code QST
Spare Tire Size - TBD -
Revolutions/Mile @ 45 mph - Rear - TBD -
Front Tire Size P285/45HR22
Spare Tire Capacity (lbs) - TBD -
Rear Tire Order Code QST
Front Tire Capacity (lbs) 2134
Revolutions/Mile @ 45 mph - Spare - TBD -
Rear Tire Size P285/45HR22
Revolutions/Mile @ 45 mph - Front - TBD -
Spare Wheel Size (in) - TBD -
Front Wheel Size (in) 22 x - TBD -
Spare Wheel Material - TBD -
Front Wheel Material Aluminum
Rear Wheel Size (in) 22 x - TBD -
Rear Wheel Material Aluminum
Spring Capacity - Front (lbs) 3600
Axle Capacity - Rear (lbs) 4200
Stabilizer Bar Diameter - Front (in) 36
Suspension Type - Front Coil springs
Axle Type - Rear Semi-floating
Shock Absorber Diameter - Front (mm) 46
Spring Capacity - Rear (lbs) 4100
Axle Ratio (:1) - Front 3.42
Stabilizer Bar Diameter - Rear (in) 28
Suspension Type - Rear Coil springs
Axle Capacity - Front (lbs) 3925
Shock Absorber Diameter - Rear (mm) 46
Axle Type - Front Independent
Axle Ratio (:1) - Rear 3.42

Safety Features

Air Bag-Frontal-Driver Yes
Air Bag-Frontal-Passenger Yes
Air Bag-Passenger Switch (On/Off) No
Air Bag-Side Body-Front No
Air Bag-Side Body-Rear No
Air Bag-Side Head-Front Yes
Air Bag-Side Head-Rear Yes
Brakes-ABS Yes
Child Safety Rear Door Locks No
Daytime Running Lights No
Traction Control Yes
Night Vision No
Rollover Protection Bars No
Fog Lamps Yes
Parking Aid Yes
Tire Pressure Monitor Yes
Back-Up Camera Yes
Stability Control Yes
Other Features StabiliTrak, stability control system with traction controls and...
Air bags, dual-stage frontal, driver and right-front passenger...
Air bags, head curtain side-impact, first and second row...
OnStar, 1-year of Directions and Connections plan. Includes the...
Rear Parking Assist, Ultrasonic with audible warning
Rearview camera system
LATCH system (Lower Anchors and Top tethers for CHildren) for...
Tire Pressure Monitoring System

Basic Miles/km 36,000
Basic Years 3
Corrosion Miles/km 100,000
Corrosion Years 6
Drivetrain Miles/km 100,000
Drivetrain Years 5
Roadside Assistance Miles/km 100,000
Roadside Assistance Years 5

Other Specs

Cooling System
Total Cooling System Capacity (qts) - TBD -
Maximum Alternator Capacity (amps) - TBD -
Cold Cranking Amps @ 0° F (Primary) 730
Maximum Alternator Watts - TBD -
Cold Cranking Amps @ 0° F (2nd) NA
Wt Distributing Hitch - Max Trailer Wt. (lbs) 6000
Dead Weight Hitch - Max Trailer Wt. (lbs) 5000
Fifth Wheel Hitch - Max Tongue Wt. (lbs) NA
Wt Distributing Hitch - Max Tongue Wt. (lbs) 900
Dead Weight Hitch - Max Tongue Wt. (lbs) 500
Fifth Wheel Hitch - Max Trailer Wt. (lbs) NA
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