Marvel Madness Abounds

SUBHEAD: In "Avengers: Endgame" we see the price of our failure to deal with our self destructive behavior.

By Juan Wilson on 15 May 2019 for Island Breath -
(http://islandbreath.blogspot.com/2019/05/marvel-madness-abounds.html)


Image above: Poster artwork for movie The Avengers:Endgame. From (https://bgr.com/2019/02/03/avengers-endgame-spoilers-avengers-5-release-date/).

Read the excerpt from the review below as an introduction to how far out of touch we are with the problems we must deal with.

“Avengers: Endgame” Is a Liberal War Cry
(https://truthout.org/articles/avengers-endgame-is-a-liberal-war-cry/)

... "Avengers, assemble,” Captain America said to his army as it poured into the battlefield. At the center stood Thanos, the villain who, with a snap of his fingers, killed half the life in the universe. He did it to stop overpopulation. Now the dead have been resurrected and join the fight against him. If they and the Avengers fail, Thanos will erase all life in the universe and start “fresh.”

Audiences cheer and cry as they watch the film. Many of them have seen the 21 films that preceded it, which makes Avengers: Endgame a cultural event. Driving global ticket sales to almost $2.5 billion is a Hollywood liberalism that gives relief from today’s rising fascism.

Endgame is the climax of a decade of movies that tapped into American anxiety over the war on terror, Black Lives Matter, #MeToo and now climate change to give the audience a liberal catharsis...

... Liberalism is refreshed as one by one, the white male leads are honored and replaced by a new diverse cast of heroes. Iron Man has a moving funeral. Thor cedes his kingship to Valkyrie. Captain America goes back in time to replace the Infinity Stones so the timeline doesn’t split but stays in the past with his lost love.

When he reappears, he’s old and wrinkled on a bench and gives his shield to his partner Falcon (played by Anthony Mackie). “I’ll do the best I can with it,” Falcon says heavily, knowing he represents the nation. Captain American responds, “I know, that’s why you have it.” ...

And no, driving to the cineplex and buying a huge bucket of GMO popcorn to be washed down with a half-gallon of GMO sweetened Coca-Cola to see "Avengers Endgame" is not part of the solution - it's part of the problem.

Escapism, unreal expectations, and self-denial are just the beginning of our lunacy as we shit the bed.

Crazy Abounds
As Americans we have a long and close relation to England. To a lesser degree we have close relations to France, Germany and Spain.  At one time or another and together these world navel powers dominated the world for the last few centuries. With the possible exception of Spain they are all going bat-shit crazy - especially France, England and the United States.

France has President Emmanuel Macron and the Yellow Jackets, England has Prime Minister Theresa May and Brexit and America is stuck with POTUS Donald Trump and MAGA!

All you need to do to see how far gone we are is to watch the Trump Administration's plans for taking advantage of the soon to be ice-free Arctic. That planetary disaster is seen as an opportunity to move more fossil fuels and services around the world. 


Image above: Secretary of State Mike "Pompous Ass" Pompeo arrives in Iraq to further bully the Middle East into a war with Iran. From article below.

Washington Heats Up Its Cold War In The Arctic
(https://www.strategic-culture.org/news/2019/05/14/washington-heats-up-cold-war-arctic/)

...  So far as the US Military-Industrial complex is concerned, there is no climate crisis in the Arctic or anywhere else. Trump, Pompeo and the rest ignore their own government department, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, which states that “Arctic sea ice reaches its minimum each September.

September Arctic sea ice is now declining at a rate of 12.8 percent per decade, relative to the 1981 to 2010 average.”

In spite of this, Pompeo refused to sign an Arctic Council Agreement that acknowledged climate change as a severe threat to the region. His other achievement was that this was the first time a declaration has been cancelled since the Council was formed in 1996. Americans must be proud.

Finland’s foreign minister stated later that “A majority of us regard climate change as a fundamental challenge facing the Arctic and acknowledge the urgent need to take mitigation and adaptation actions and to strengthen resilience.” He told reporters “I don’t want to name and blame anyone,” which is polite — but regrettable because it’s about time Pompeo, Trump and Bolton were named and blamed for their campaigns of spiteful aggression.

Pompeo tried to justify Washington’s moves to militarise the region by declaring “We’re concerned about Russia’s claim over the international waters of the Northern Sea Route, including its newly announced plans to connect it with China’s Maritime Silk Road.”

He ignores the fact that Russia has not made any claim involving international waters. In accordance with the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea which Russia ratified in 1997 (and is accepted by 157 signatories, but not the US which refuses ratification) it has submitted a request to extend its continental shelf...

 If we could only get it together
The "solutions", or more like the "feeble compromises" we may be able to make at this late juncture won't be provided by our fossil fuel based corporate overlords. Forget Costco, Amazon, Google, Apple, Microsoft, etc. etc.

All the solutions available to you will soon only be available within an hour or so walking distance to where you sleep. Food, water, shelter, tools, medical service, and yes entertainment, will be off the grid and much more local. The alternative is extinction.

About fifty years ago, when the first report from the Club of Rome was published we saw the writing on the wall...  and ignored it. Had we acted then we might be living in a sustainable alternate universe than we find ourselves in now.

The last time the world went this crazy was in the late 1930's as the world was headed into fascism and World War II. That altercation ended with a bang - an atomic bomb. The current altercation could begin with one.

Get cracking and keep your head down!


 

Jigsaw Dali

SUBHEAD: Artist uses jigsaw puzzles, with the same die cut pattern, to make these surreal mashups.

By Rusty Blazenhoff on 11 November 2018 for Boing Boing -
(https://boingboing.net/2018/11/11/this-artist-uses-jigsaw-puzzle.html)


Image above: Horse meets train in surreal world. From original article.

[IB Publisher's note: There are more images  by Tim Klein in the Boing Boing site's article, as well as a photo essay of the artist's embroidering his car with yarn in hypnotic detailed patterns ASwee (http://www.yarncar.com/).]

Oh boy, I think I have a new hobby. I've just learned that you can combine puzzles, that have the same die cut, to make really awesome pieces of art. It had never occurred to me that manufacturers of mass-produced puzzles cut different puzzles of theirs in the same way, making the pieces interchangeable. It makes complete sense, of course, but my mind is still blown!

I learned about the art of "puzzle montage" from one of the readers of my inbox zine, Marcia Wiley (she's the gal in Seattle who's fixing up that cool old Checker Cab). She was visiting the Bay Area and we met up for the first time this past Friday. That's when she told me about her friend Tim Klein, who makes incredible puzzle montages. I'm excited to share his work with you.

In an email exchange, Tim told me that he learned about puzzle montages from the man who first made them, art professor Mel Andringa of Cedar Rapids, Iowa, "As far as I know, he and I are the only artists ever to pursue it seriously. And I think he's moved on to other things nowadays, so I may be the sole surviving practitioner."

And this is what Tim shared with me about his process:

...By selecting pieces from two or more compatible puzzles, I assemble a single "puzzle mashup" with surreal imagery that the publisher never imagined.

Sometimes the results are merely chuckle-making, such as my combination of King Tut's burial mask with the front of a truck, which I call "King of the Road".

But my favorite montages are ones in which the whimsical is tinged with something a bit deeper, such as "The Mercy-Go-Round (Sunshine and Shadow)", in which a fairground carousel whirls riders around a church from the light to the dark and back again -- or "Surrogate", in which a strange hybrid of beer can and teddy bear opens its fuzzy arms and tells you to "consider yourself hugged".

[editor note: "Mercy", not "Merry"]

The imagery in jigsaw puzzles published nowadays tends to be very busy, often consisting of densely-packed collages constructed with Photoshop. But for my purposes, I favor puzzles from pre-digital years, when the picture was typically a photograph of a single subject, such as a galloping horse or a ballerina or the Empire State Building.

As I visit thrift stores and garage sales in search of vintage puzzles, I sometimes feel like an archaeologist, taking great pleasure in discovering and "reconstructing" strange, shattered images whose shards have been languishing in suburban game closets for decades.

Take a look at some of his work (click to embiggen) and then go here to see the rest and to read Tim's notes about the specific pieces:



Image above: King Tut face on tractor trailer grill. From original article.


Image above: Summer invades winter during global warming. From original article.


Image above: Church goes far to attract worshipers. From original article.


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Young men and imaginary worlds

SUBHEAD: For many men the gaming universe is more enjoyable than the real world.

By Mike Shedlock on 17 July 2017 for Mish Talk -
(https://mishtalk.com/2017/07/17/another-reason-men-dont-work-imaginary-world-more-enjoyable-than-the-real-world/)


Image above: Detail if illustration of the hero characters from the top 70 video games of all time. From (http://www.slayerment.com/top-video-game-songs-all-time).

President Trump, like President Obama before him, point out the low unemployment rate as a measure of success.

What they don’t point out are masses of people on welfare via fraudulent disabilities, people in school wasting money in dead-end retraining exercises, people who have simply given up looking for a job, and people in forced retirement needing Social Security payments to survive.

A team of researchers from Princeton, the University of Chicago, and the University of Rochester discusses another class of individuals who are not working but are not counted as unemployed: People, primarily young men who are addicted to games. For such individuals, games provide a fantasy world that is far more enjoyable than the real world.


Please consider their report on Leisure Luxuries and the Labor Supply of Young Men.

Between 2000 and 2015, market hours worked fell by 203 hours per year (12 percent) for younger men ages 21-30, compared to a decline of 163 hours per year (8 percent) for men ages 31-55.

These declines started prior to the Great Recession, accelerated sharply during the recession, and have rebounded only modestly since. We use a variety of data sources to document that the hours decline was particularly pronounced for younger men.

Not only have hours fallen, but there is a large and growing segment of this population that appears detached from the labor market: 15 percent of younger men, excluding full-time students, worked zero weeks over the prior year as of 2016. The comparable number in 2000 was only 8 percent.

A natural question is how these younger men support themselves given their decline in earnings. We document that 67 percent of non-employed younger men lived with a parent or close relative in 2015, compared to 46 percent in 2000.

One avenue to gauge how younger men perceive their fortunes is to use survey data on happiness. In this spirit, we complement the patterns in hours, wages, and consumption with data on life satisfaction from the General Social Survey.

We find that younger men reported increased happiness during the 2000s, despite stagnant wages, declining employment rates and increased propensity to live with parents/relatives. This contrasts sharply with older men, whose satisfaction clearly fell, tracking their decline in employment.

See also:

 http://www.theonion.com/video/warcraft-sequel-lets-gamers-play-a-character-playi-14240

Island Breath: Man's Nintendo Memories 6/14/08
Island Breath: California imitates GTA 10/25/07
Island Breath: Virtual World & Apocalypse 12/19/05
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Google, Pokemon Go, Apocalypse

SUBHEAD: How a Google April Fools' joke unleashed the zombie apocalypse on the world.

By Tyler Durden on 16 July 2016 for Zero Hedge -
(http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2016-07-16/how-google-april-fools-joke-unleashed-zombie-apocalypse)


Image above: "Am I real?" Is he real? "Was I just driving? he real?" From (http://multiplayer.it/notizie/168301-pokemon-go-aperte-le-iscrizioni-per-la-closed-beta-americana-di-pokemon-go.html).

Remember the "Google Maps Pokemon Challenge"? Probably not. It was a one time event that took place on April Fools day in 2014. This is how Google explained it.

Dozens of wild Pokémon have taken up residence on streets, amidst forests and atop mountains throughout Google Maps.

To catch 'em all, grab your Poké Ball and the newest version of Google Maps for iPhone or Android. Then tap the search bar, "press start," and begin your quest.

And, follow Google Maps on Google+, Facebook or Twitter for hints and tips for the most dedicated trainers.

The ad in question:


Video above: From original article and (https://youtu.be/4YMD6xELI_k).

Many laughed and quickly brushed it aside... but not Niantic Labs, a software development company founded in 2010 incidentally as one of Google's own internal startups. Niantic - which all the way back in 2012 was developing location-based mobile games - was spun off as an independent entity in September 2015 and less than a year later released Pokemon Go together with Ninentdo (quickly resulting in Nintendo becoming the most-traded stock in Japanese history).

And while we are delighted that Niantic CEO John Hanke has been unquestionably successful with his adaptation of an "April Fools" joke in the form of Pokemon Go, we are a little concerned that he has also unleashed the Zombie Apocalypse.

Dont believe us? This is what USA Today wrote today, when the sighting of a rare Pokemon made hundreds of New Yorkers into Central Park-stomping zombies.

First, some quick Pokemon background:

Eevees are cute little fox-type Pokemon that, unlike other Pokemon, can evolve in eight different directions. They only evolve once, and after they do, they can’t evolve any more.

What that means is that if you want to catch all the Pokemon, you have to either catch eight different Eevees and evolve them all in different ways — which is really tough to do — or you have to catch the other, rare evolutions when they do appear.

And, well, one appeared in Central Park late on Saturday night. A Vaporeon. Here’s what that one looks like…

And here’s what it looks like when a bunch of Pokemon addicts actually see one.


Video above: Pokemon Go causes Vamporeon stampede in Central Park NYC. From original article and (https://youtu.be/4YMD6xELI_k).

It's not just the Vaporeon. This is what happened when something called a Charizard appeared.


Video above: Then the appearance of a wild Charizard in this park... From original article and (https://youtu.be/eDDTjTuCLNE).

In retrospect, if ISIS had really wanted to destroy western civilization it should have skipped all the suicide bombers and "made in the San Fernando Valley" decapitation videos, and just hired a few good programmers... 
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War over Olympic National Forest

SUBHEAD: Did the US Navy break federal laws to push war games over our Olympic National Forest?

By Dahr Jamail on 26 October 2015 for Truth Out -
(http://www.truth-out.org/news/item/33387-us-navy-allegedly-broke-federal-laws-to-push-forward-electromagnetic-war-training-over-national-forests)


Image above: Shoreline of Olympic National Forest. From (http://www.stateparks.com/olympic_national_forest_in_washington.html).

The US Navy aims to begin conducting electromagnetic warfare training across much of Washington State's Olympic Peninsula soon.

Meanwhile, it is being accused of breaking federal laws in order to secure the permits necessary to move forward with its training operations.

Karen Sullivan worked for the US Fish and Wildlife Service for 15 and a half years, and is an expert in the bureaucratic procedures the Navy is supposed to be following.

She is now part of the West Coast Action Alliance, one of two large multistate and international citizen groups who have tasked themselves with watchdogging the Navy, due to what they believe are ongoing violations of the law, blatant acts of disrespect toward human and environmental health, and ongoing bellicose behavior by the military branch in their areas.

"Ethical and legal questions about the Navy's conduct abound: hidden notices, comment periods that have been shortened or wholly eliminated, and last-minute publication of key documents coupled with total disregard for NEPA's [National Environmental Policy Act] prohibitions on segmentation present a clear and present danger that the Navy is hastily proceeding with plans regardless and in defiance of federally mandated processes," Sullivan's organization wrote recently in a memorandum to the Navy.

Some of the points of concern about the Navy's actions include: failure to provide reasonable notice to the public about their planned war games, failure to provide adequate comment process, failure to address functionally connected activities and their cumulative impacts, and failure to adequately consider impacts to Olympic National Park's World Heritage designation, among others.

Sullivan, who worked for over 15 years in the US Fish and Wildlife Service's Division of Endangered Species and External Affairs, told Truthout she believes the Navy's final environmental impact statement (EIS) about their upcoming warfare training is "unlawful and fatally flawed."

"The Navy has an astonishing sense of entitlement to public lands and waters," Sullivan said about how the Navy has approached the public's concerns over its operations. "Northwest Training and testing range manager Kent Mathes told me last year after a public meeting, 'We own the airspace and there's nothing anyone can do about it.'"

As Truthout previously reported, if it gets its way, the Navy would be flying Growler jets - electronic attack aircraft that specialize in radar jamming - in 2,900 training exercises over wilderness, communities and cities across the Olympic Peninsula for 260 days per year, with exercises lasting up to 16 hours per day. Naval surface fleet ships will also be participating by homing in on ground-based emitters - a topic that was never discussed in the Navy's environmental assessment.

Dozens of naval EA-18G Growler supersonic jet warplanes will fly as low as 1,200 feet above the ground in some areas in order to conduct war games with 14 mobile towers on the ground in national forests.

Medical doctors, scientific reports and even the Navy's own documents show that enough electromagnetic radiation will be emitted to be capable of damaging human eye tissue, causing breast cancer, causing childhood leukemia and damaging human fetuses, let alone impacting wildlife in the area. The Navy has denied that these impacts will occur.

Medical doctors also told Truthout that noise from the Navy's jets is a major health risk.

Nevertheless, the Navy appears to be rapidly moving forward with its plans to war game over the Olympic Peninsula. In doing so, Sullivan believes it is opening itself up to major lawsuits - because it is taking blatantly illegal actions.

Fatal Flaws
John Mosher, the Navy's northwest environmental manager for the US Pacific Fleet, has stated that its planes will be flying as low as 1,200 feet above the ground.

Yet the Navy's environmental impact assessment does not even mention jet noise pollution or the sound of the Navy's jets, and states that there are "no significant impacts" on public health and safety, biological resources, noise, air quality or visual resources.

Tens of thousands of outraged residents from around the Olympic Peninsula have expressed their opposition via letters to the US Forest Service, public meetings, letters to the editor in newspapers across the peninsula, flooding article comment sections and via social media.

"Olympic Forest Coalition is extremely concerned with all aspects of the Navy's proposal, but of primary concern is for the disruption to wildlife activities in both the national park, the forest and our coast.

Endangered species such as the marbled murrelet are at a 5 percent population decline due to loss of habitat and other disruptions," Connie Gallant, president of the Olympic Forest Coalition, which co-authored the recent memorandum to the Navy, told Truthout. "The Olympic Coast Marine Sanctuary area is also in peril due to the many 'takes' the Navy plans. It is as if our entire ecosystem has been targeted for destruction and, so far, the Navy is showing very little concern for it."

But apparently the Navy is not having any of it: It has simply ignored or neglected to address residents' outcries about its actions.

The October 13 memorandum sent to the Navy by the West Coast Action Alliance states, "Reasonable concerns and objections presented by the public and allied organizations continue to be utterly disregarded, and this controversy intensifies by the day."

Even some politicians have become concerned about the Navy's negligence; in fact, Rep. Derek Kilmer (D-Washington State) requested that the Navy undertake a sound study under the auspices of the Federal Interagency Committee on Aviation Noise (FICAN).

But according to Sullivan's group, "The Navy failed to do so. Instead it reconstituted an older study using data from Prowler jets, which are no longer being flown, to justify no significant impacts on the soundscapes of Olympic National Park."

Sullivan explained to Truthout that the Navy's EIS is "fatally flawed" for a number of reasons. One of the requirements of the law is for the Navy to give the public reasonable time to read and comment on their proposed operations, before the review period ends.

"Notices in local papers did not appear until five to seven days into the 30-day 'review' period, and as of October 10 only one individual we knew of had received the copy as requested, with more than one-third of the allotted 30 days already past," Sullivan explained. "Libraries in northern California have still not received their copies as of October 20. The public review period ends November 2, and the documents are more than 4,000 pages long."

This was just one of several examples of how, according to West Coast Action Alliance, the Navy has been in violation of the law.

"The bottom line is the Navy doesn't care how we feel about it and they don't want to hear from us," Sullivan said. "If they did, there'd be a real person manning the jet noise complaint hotline, and there'd be a way to get information from them in a timely manner, and there'd be a way for the public to be heard on the record. Their message to communities on the Olympic Peninsula is: Go away. Your comments don't count."

Sullivan is far from alone in feeling this way. Even naval veterans are troubled by the Navy's current behavior.

"I'm one of them, and always will be," Navy and Vietnam veteran Patrick Noonan told Truthout. "I'm deeply committed to what it is the Navy has to do. Given that, they need to learn to be better neighbors rather than worse neighbors to the surrounds and the cities they fly over."

Noonan, who was also a naval test pilot, added, "They are going in the wrong direction. They are becoming worse neighbors and becoming more belligerent. These people just want the Navy to be more considerate."

Other "fatal flaws" in the Navy's final EIS, Sullivan told Truthout, include "segmenting connected actions into smaller pieces that get evaluated separately. What this means is nobody gets to evaluate the totality of effects, or what agencies would call cumulative impacts."

Another issue she takes with the Navy's EIS is that it fails to consider the impacts to the soundscape of Olympic National Park, which is a World Heritage site.

"They did not conduct a 'neutral' study on the effects of jet noise after being specifically requested to do so last May by Congressman Derek Kilmer," Sullivan said. "The Navy ignored Congressman Kilmer's request and reconstituted an old study using data from aircraft that are no longer being flown."

She went on to point out how the Growlers are notably more powerful and far louder than the Prowlers, the aforementioned aircraft the Navy used in the reconstituted study. Her data came from calculations performed by Noonan, the former Navy test pilot.

"The new airplane is dramatically louder than even that monster F4 I used to fly," Noonan said.
As Truthout has previously reported, doctors have shown that the intense jet noise from the Navy's warplanes causes our bodies to go into functions that cause hypertension, increased triglycerides, lack of sleep, anxiety, lack of enough REM and other negative impacts. Several medical studies also show that the higher the decibels and the longer the hours, the higher potential for increased myocardial infarction, hypertension, anxiety and other issues.

Possible Lawsuits
The Navy has left itself open to being sued on many fronts. Sullivan said the Navy failed to provide adequate public notice nor provide libraries the Navy listed with their EIS in hard copy or CD format for the public to read.

"They also violated NEPA by pre-selecting an alternative long before making anything public," Sullivan said. "The Navy applied for an incidental take permit [permit allowing the Navy to kill certain numbers of wildlife] from NOAA [National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration] last April, long before this EIS was finalized, yet they still have not announced their preferred alternative, so what this means is they have already selected it, applied for the permit and the public's comments don't matter a bit with regard to their final choice. That's illegal."

This leaves the Navy potentially vulnerable to Endangered Species Act and National Historic Preservation Act violations. The types of violations in which the Navy has engaged, according to Sullivan, are not simply routine blunders.

"The release of the EIS before consultation is complete is unprecedented," Sullivan said. "To sign a record of decision before consultations are complete, while not strictly illegal, is unethical. Basically, it would amount to making up one's mind before knowing what the impacts are."

The US Forest Service has to grant the Navy the permit it needs to use national forest roads for driving its mobile emitters for the war games. The Forest Service has said it will issue its decision in November, but many activists involved in the situation believe the Forest Service is poised to rubber-stamp the Navy's permit, despite thousands of formal public comments made in opposition to naval plans.

Consequently, Sullivan said, the Forest Service has also now left itself open to lawsuits.
"This could leave them [Forest Service] vulnerable on many fronts," she said. "For example, they did not conduct their own scientific investigations to validate the Navy's claims of no significant impacts."

She believes there are "egregious" factual errors in the Navy's environmental assessment, yet the Forest Service has nonetheless indicated it may adopt it wholesale anyhow.

"This violates the National Forest Management Act, among other laws, which basically prohibits them from accepting scientific conclusions from other agencies without verifying them," Sullivan explained. "The fact that they received 4,000 comments from the public, all but 31 opposed, and that they are prepared to ignore that as well as the laws they've violated, makes them vulnerable."

Resistance
Gene Marx is a former Navy pilot who flew as an airborne electronic warfare officer in Vietnam. Nowadays, he lives in Bellingham, and is publicly critical of the Navy's plans for the Olympic Peninsula.

"They will be flying over the Olympic Peninsula without restriction to altitude or speed; this will without a doubt have major negative consequences on the environment," Marx told Truthout. "The Navy isn't telling you a thing about what the overflights will be doing to the environment - so if we look at the noise impact, that alone will have a major impact on the peninsula."

Marx called the Growler aircraft the Navy is using "a killing machine and a jamming machine," and does not believe the Navy is doing anything in the best interests of the environment. "They are being disingenuous telling us they will be stewards of the environment and that they will not impact the peninsula with their training," he added. "That is just crazy."
Sullivan agrees.

"We have the right and the duty to oversee the actions of federal agencies, including the military, and to insist that they follow the law and their own policies," she said. "We have the right to be heard on the official record, a right that is currently being denied. It is not unpatriotic to insist on these rights, and to demand that our government follow the law and its own policies."

And similar to Marx, she is extremely disappointed by the Navy's actions, on a personal level.
"Not that many years ago I used to feel a sense of pride whenever a Navy ship would pass by," she said. "Being a mariner, I used to dip the ensign, or lower my boat's American flag, to them in salute, and they always returned the salute. I used to be proud when they'd pass by."

But her experience today has changed her sentiment.

"Now it feels like they have nothing but contempt for their neighbors," she said. "The public is being left out of too many major decisions by our government, and that's wrong."

Noonan believes one immediate solution would be for the Navy to use already existing training ranges, instead of "going to pristine lands and imposing their noise on them."

"They have the Yakima range, which gets very little air use," he explained. "That range is vast and totally available to them, and it's eight minutes [flying] from Whidbey. I'm frustrated by the Navy's method and how inconsiderate they are being of the environment when they don't have to be. I don't understand that."

Sullivan is acutely aware of how the deck is stacked against the public when it come to standing up against any arm of the US military.

"The Navy has teams of lawyers, and we citizens have only our powers of observation and freedom of speech," she said. "However, we have the right and the obligation to speak out as informed citizens, across the country, wherever unwarranted encroachment into public and private land is happening, and it's happening in a lot of places."

In other words, she intends to fight.

"We are not giving up," Sullivan said. "We will make them follow the law."

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Time for The Last Guardian

SUBHEAD: Can a video game character become a real friend? Should you care?

By Laura Hudson on 21 June 2015 for Boing Boing -
(http://boingboing.net/2015/06/22/e3-2015-best-games.html)


Image above: A young boy meets who is to become his companion - Trico - a dog, cat, chicken beast the size of a dragon. Click to embiggen. From (http://www.gamesradar.com/last-guardian-believe-games/).

The annual video game onslaught of E3 is finally over, and as expected, it served up plenty of big-budget sequels, like Halo 5, Fallout 4, Dishonored 2, Uncharted 4, and of course, the Final Fantasy VII remake that made everyone lose their collective minds.

But a lot of other cool things happened at E3, like yarn, robot dinosaurs, and a giant, awesome dog, not to mention a comparatively remarkable number of titles with female protagonists. Join me now on a whirlwind tour of all the exciting new games that weren't popular franchise names followed by numbers!

The moment I saw the beginning of The Last Guardian trailer I said aloud, "oh man, please let this entire game be about this giant dog." Great news: it is. People have been waiting for The Last Guardian since 2007, largely because it's the newest title from Fumito Ueda, the guy who made super beloved puzzle-ish action games like Ico and Shadow of Colossus.

You play as a young boy who befriends a giant dog-cat-bird and has to help guide him across a lot of precarious platforms, and if the trailer is any indication it will simultaneously trigger both your "oh god, don't kill the dog!" and "oh god, don't kill the kid!" anxieties near constantly.

Where: PlayStation 4

When: 2016


Video above: Recent trailer for The Last Guardian. From (https://youtu.be/zXLZvsSmBIs).


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First Person Shooter

SUBHEAD: Video-Game makers face more scrutiny after massacre in Connecticut elementary school.

By Michael White on 20 December 2012 for Bloomberg News -
(http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-12-20/video-game-producers-face-scrutiny-over-violence-after-killings.html)


Image above: A still frame from "Doom 3", the grandaddy of the first-person-shooter "kill anything that moves" video game franchise. From (http://www.theandroidarcade.com/news/doom-3-running-on-an-android/).

Video-game makers and retailers are facing growing pressure from Washington and advocacy groups concerned about possible links between violent games and tragedies like the school massacre in Newtown, Connecticut.

A bill introduced yesterday by U.S. Senator Jay Rockefeller directs the National Academy of Sciences to examine whether violent games and programs lead children to act aggressively, the West Virginia Democrat said in a statement. He will also press the Federal Trade Commission and Federal Communications Commission to expand their studies. The advocacy group Common Sense Media cheered the moves.

“Recent court decisions demonstrate that some people still do not get it,” Rockefeller said. “They believe that violent video games are no more dangerous to young minds than classic literature or Saturday morning cartoons. Parents, pediatricians and psychologists know better.”

Shares of video-game makers and retailers fell as investors weighed possible fallout. Combat titles like the top-selling “Call of Duty” series from Activision Blizzard Inc. (ATVI) generate more than 20 percent of video-game software sales. U.S. retail sales of games, consoles and accessories fell 8 percent to $17 billion last year, according to NPD Group Inc., an industry researcher.

‘Ultraviolent Games’
“We don’t know the facts yet about Newtown and the shooter,” said James Steyer, head of Common Sense Media, a San Francisco-based group that backed California limits on sales of violent games before they were overturned by the U.S. Supreme Court in 2011. “We do know that ultraviolent video games and other forms of violent media more broadly contribute to a culture of violence in American society.”

The renewed focus on violent games will deter some parents from buying such games for their children, said Colby Zintl, a spokeswoman for the group.

Activision Blizzard, the largest video-game company, fell for a fourth day after the Dec. 14 shooting, losing 2.7 percent to $10.56 at 11:14 a.m. in New York. It’s down 7.4 percent this week. Maryanne Lataif, a spokeswoman for the Santa Monica, California-based company, didn’t respond to requests for comment.

The game companies, through the Entertainment Software Association trade group, say their products are protected speech under the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution. Like movies, games are rated for violent content, with retailers voluntarily limiting sales of products rated M (Mature) and AO (Adults Only) to customers over ages 17 and 18, respectively. The industry adopted a voluntary rating system in 1994 under congressional pressure.

Industry Comment
“The Entertainment Software Association, and the entire industry it represents, mourns the tragedy at Sandy Hook Elementary School,” the group said. “The search for meaningful solutions must consider the broad range of actual factors that may have contributed to this tragedy. Any such study needs to include the years of extensive research that has shown no connection between entertainment and real-life violence.”

Adam Lanza, 20, the shooter in last week’s murders of 20 children and six women at the Sandy Hook Elementary, spent hours playing computer games such as “Call of Duty” and studying weapons in the basement of his mother’s home, the Sun newspaper in the U.K. reported on Dec. 17.

Legal efforts to limit or bar the sales of violent video games to minors have been struck down by federal courts. In June 2011, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled such a ban is an unconstitutional infringement of speech rights.

“Even where the protection of children is the object, the constitutional limits on governmental action apply,” Justice Antonin Scalia wrote for five justices. The vote to strike down the law was 7-2, with the majority divided in its reasoning.

Christmas Sales
The attention generated by the Connecticut school shooting is unlikely to reduce sales during the Christmas season, according to Doug Creutz, an analyst at Cowen & Co. who recommends investors buy shares of the largest game companies.

“If you go to Amazon.com right now, and you look at their top selling games, four of the five are what you’d classify as violent games,” Creutz said. “People are still buying these games. It’s not kids playing these games, by and large. Parents already don’t buy their kids these types of games.”
Those top sellers at the site include Microsoft Corp. (MSFT)’s “Halo 4,” “Call of Duty” and “Assassin’s Creed 3” from Ubisoft Entertainment SA. (UBI)
The drop in the shares is largely a kneejerk reaction, Creutz said.

Stocks Retreat
Electronic Arts Inc. (EA), publisher of “Medal of Honor,” fell 3.1 percent to $13.95. Shares of the Redwood City, California- based company have lost 9.5 percent in the past three days. Take-Two Interactive Software Inc. (TTWO), the New York-based maker of “Grand Theft Auto,” fell 4.2 percent to $11.48. GameStop Corp. (GME), the video-game chain, slid 5.2 percent to $26.13.

Alan Lewis, a spokesman for Take-Two, referred inquiries to the Entertainment Software Association. Jeff Brown, a spokesman for EA, also referred calls to the group. Beth Sharum, a spokeswoman for Grapevine, Texas-based GameStop, didn’t respond to e-mailed and phone requests for comment.

While sales may not suffer, the threat of increased regulation may be weighing on the stocks, said Daniel Ernst, an analyst with Hudson Square Research in New York.

“One should assume that as of today there is greater likelihood of regulation,” Ernst said. “I think that translates into the cost to the industry going up,” possibly in the form of more detailed labeling on packages.

Staying Quiet
The companies themselves will probably remain quiet on the issue, Creutz said.

“It’s tough to come out in the midst of a very emotional situation like this and defend your product,” 

Creutz said. “They’ve been through this cycle before, and it’s never impacted their industry before. The likely scenario is neither will this.”

Past studies have failed to demonstrate a link between violent games and real violence, said Christopher Ferguson, an associate professor of psychology and communications at Texas A&M International University in Laredo, Texas. Policy makers should focus on more important issues including gun control and mental health, he said in an interview.

“We can’t find any evidence to support this idea that exposure to video-game violence contributes in any way to support the idea that these types of games or movies or TV shows are a contributing factor,” Ferguson said. “It doesn’t need to be studied again.” 

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Hawaiian addicted to Lineage II

SUBHEAD: "Lineage II" leaves an Oahu man unable to wake, bathe and dress, a lawsuit alleges.


By Gene Park on 28 October 2010 in the Star Advertiser -
(http://www.staradvertiser.com/news/20100827_Video_game_firm_sued_over_addiction.html) 

Image above: Computer screen background designed from "Lineage II" computer game graphics. From (http://sacredhavens.deviantart.com/art/Lineage-II-Wallpaper-57397620?q=sort%3Atime+favby%3Aarchanfelee&qo=0).

[IB Publisher's note: From the graphics of the game I'd suggest the addiction in question is related to middleage men lusting to be nubile young women who can run around stabbing anything that moves.]  

An Ewa Beach man is claiming he is unable to bathe, dress himself or wake up in the day due to alleged "phenomena of psychological dependence and addiction" to a video game created by a South Korean developer. Craig Smallwood, 51, filed a lawsuit against developer NCSoft Corp. last October with several charges including emotional distress and misrepresentation.

Earlier this month, U.S. District Judge Alan Kay granted NCSoft's motion to dismiss half of the eight charges, allowing the lawsuit to proceed. Smallwood, who did not return a call for comment yesterday, alleges that the 2003 release "Lineage II" caused "extreme and serious emotional distress and depression."

Smallwood, who says he is a disabled veteran, also alleges that he has been "unable to function independently in usually daily activities such as getting up, getting dressed, bathing or communicating with family and friends."

He claims to have been hospitalized for three weeks and that he now needs treatment and therapy three times a week because of the game. In his Aug. 4 decision, Kay dismissed the charges of misrepresentation/deceit, unfair and deceptive trade practices, intentional infliction of emotional distress and punitive damages. NCSoft still faces counts of defamation, negligence, gross negligence and negligent infliction of emotional distress.

"Lineage II" is a massive multiplayer online role-playing game with a medieval fantasy setting. Smallwood claims he spent more than 20,000 hours playing the game from 2004 to 2009. "NCSoft is discretionary and discriminatory in its applications of the rules," Smallwood said in his original October complaint. "Often they will allow certain players to break rules ... while they enforce these rules on others."

Smallwood asserts that he continues to this day to have a "compulsive urge and need" to play the game, that he never received any warning from the company about the danger of addiction and that he would not have bought and played the game if he would become addicted to it.

 Local law firm Bronster & Hoshibata, which represents NCSoft in the case, said Smallwood "fails to properly allege facts that would support each element of the emotional distress claim.

As such, Smallwood has failed to properly give notice to NCSoft of the claims levied against it." NCSoft also claims that Smallwood was banned from his game accounts because of his involvement with real money transfers, which is forbidden by the user agreement and rules of conduct of the game.

See also:

Ea O Ka Aina: The Taliban Side of Video Game 8/15/10

Island Breath: World of World of Warcraft 6/18/08
Island Breath: Synthetic World Apocalypse 12/19/05

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Taliban side of Video Gaming

SUBHEAD: Electronic Arts upcoming game release allows players to play against US troops in Afghanistan. Image above: Scene from "Medal of Honor" game where you are the Taliban. From article. It's a standard feature of World War II-themed video games like Electronic Arts' best-selling "Medal of Honor" series: In multiplayer sessions, while some players take the roles of Allied troops, the other half wind up playing as soldiers of the Third Reich. Now EA's next "Medal of Honor" release is set to up the discomfort factor that comes with such an option. Set in modern-day Afghanistan, it will allow users to play as the Taliban. Developer DICE has emphasized that it isn't trying to make any grand political statements with the game. Along with publisher EA, it says it's not possible to make a game about a contemporary war without including this kind of feature -- and facing the controversy that comes with it. "Most of us having been doing this since we were 7 -- if someone's the cop, someone's gotta be the robber, someone's gotta be the pirate and someone's gotta be the alien," Amanda Taggart, senior PR manager for EA, told AOL News. "In 'Medal of Honor' multiplayer, someone's gotta be the Taliban."

The new version of "Medal Of Honor" will allow players to play as the Taliban in multiplayer gaming. "It's a game," explained the title's producer.

While the Nazis in the old "Medal of Honor" came at the safe remove of history, having U.S. children portray Taliban insurgents trying to gun down U.S. forces via the game is indisputably more in-your-face. The game is also set to launch amid the deadliest stretch of the Afghan war for the American military, which has lost more than 1,200 soldiers in the conflict so far. "Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2" caused a stir when it allowed the player to take part in a terrorist attack on a Russian airport, and that wasn't connected to a real American war. One gamer who got to play an early version of the game couldn't help but feel conflicted. Dan Whitehead wrote at eurogamer.net:

"Watching virtual coalition troops gunned down by insurgents in the ruins of Kabul, I felt more than a little weird, especially since a friend lost his brother in Afghanistan only a few weeks ago. This is a real war that is happening right now, real blood is being shed, and simulating that for fragfest fun while being rewarded for kill streaks. ... Well, there's just something a bit icky about that.

But Joseph Olin, president of the Academy of Interactive Arts and Sciences, argues that depictions of war shouldn't be pretty to start with. He also feels that a role of the arts in wartime should be facilitating empathy for the enemy. He told AOL News:

"In all combat simulations that we've entertained ourselves with, from pen and paper to movies and literature, you've always been able to experience combat from the enemy's perspective. That's always been a draw about some of the best films that have been done about World War II."

At the end of the day, "It's a game," the title's producer, Patrick Liu, told PSM3 magazine, adding that DICA and EA had no intention of provoking a reaction. American Legion spokesman Marty Callaghan seemed to agree about the place the new "Medal of Honor" has in political discourse.

"The content of video games is not a concern of the American Legion. We are concerned with the real world, and the troops who are fighting overseas, and the veterans who have served their countries with honors. We're concerned with that reality."

Game Developers have tread dangerous waters before when Konami planned to publish "Six Days in Fallujah," a planned Iraq war game that the company claimed was even developed with input from insurgents. That game, however, was ultimately scrapped due to political considerations. Video above: Ultra-Realistic modern warfare game features awaiting orders, repairing trucks. From (http://www.theonion.com/video/ultrarealistic-modern-warfare-game-features-awaiti,14382). See also: Ea O Ka Aina: Military Welcomes Students 7/19/10 Ea O Ka Aina: Globalized Free Fire Zone 6/27/10