The video game crash of 1983

[I wonder if anyone decided that video games were a fad.]

The video game crash of 1983 was the sudden crash of the video game business and the bankruptcy of a number of companies producing home computers and video game consoles in North America in late 1983 and early 1984. It brought an end to what is considered the second generation of console video gaming.

The crash was followed by a gap of three years, during which there was a much smaller market in games for home computers in North America, and no significant development for video game consoles. That gap ended with the success of the Nintendo Entertainment System (NES) that was first introduced in Japan in 1983 (as Famicom) and then in the United states in 1985 and would break out in popularity in 1987.

This period is sometimes referred to as the "video game crash of 1984," because that was the year the full effects of the crash became obvious to consumers. Hundreds of games were in development for 1983 release, most of which ended up in bargain bins. But few games were developed in 1983 for release the following year, resulting in a drought of new video games in 1984....

The world wide video game crash of 1983 was caused by a combination of factors, though with different factors in several markets:

• In Europe, the boom years of personal computing [1981–1985] were trumpeted by very aggressive marketing of inexpensive home computers, especially the Commodore 64, with the theme “Why buy your child a video game and distract them from school when you can buy them a home computer that will prepare them for college?” Marketing research for both sides tracked the change as millions of consumers shifted their intention to buy choices from game consoles to low-end computers that retailed for similar prices. A similar campaign occured in the U.S. without the same effect, where instead the personal computer industry grew because of the crash and is not seen as directly causing it.
• A flood of consoles on the market giving consumers too many choices. At the time of the U.S. crash, there was a plethora of consoles on the market: Atari 2600, Atari 5200, Bally Astrocade, Colecovision, Coleco Gemini, Emerson Arcadia 2001, Fairchild Channel F System II, Magnavox Odyssey2, Mattel Intellivision (and its just released update with slew of peripherals, Intellivision II), Sears Tele-Games systems (which included 2600 and Intellivision clones), Tandyvision, and Vectrex. Each one of these had their own library of games, and many had (in some cases large) 3rd party libraries. Likewise, you had many of these same companies announcing yet another generation of consoles for 1984, such as the Odyssey3, and Atari 7800. [1]
• A flood of poor titles from hastily financed startups, combined with weak high-profile Atari 2600 games based on the hit movie E.T. and the red-hot arcade game Pac-Man[2].
• The news media sensationalized both the boom days of 1980 and the problems of 1982–83. In particular, the story of Atari burying thousands of E.T. cartridges in a New Mexico landfill shifted the outlook of the video game market in the eyes of many media outlets....

The crash had two long-lasting results. First, dominance in the home console market shifted from the United States to Japan. When the video game market recovered in 1987, the leading player was Nintendo’s NES, with a resurgent Atari battling Sega (actually founded by an American, David Rosen) for the number two spot. Atari never truly recovered, and finally stopped producing game systems in 1996 after the failure of the Atari Jaguar.

A second, highly visible result of the crash was the institution of measures to control third-party development of software. Secrecy against industrial espionage had failed to stop rival companies from reverse engineering the Mattel and Atari systems, and hiring away their trained game programmers. Nintendo—and all the manufacturers who followed—controlled game distribution by implementing licensing restrictions and the implementation of a security lockout system. Would-be renegade publishers could not publish for each others’ lines—as Atari, Coleco and Mattel had done—because in order for the cartridge to work in the console, the cartridge must contain the appropriate key chip for the lock inside the console and the publisher must acknowledge their license to Nintendo in the copyright notices. If no key chip was present or if the key chip did not match the lock inside the console, the game would not work. Although Accolade achieved a technical victory in one court case against Sega, challenging this control, even it ultimately yielded and signed the Sega licensing agreement. Several publishers—notably Tengen (Atari), Color Dreams, and Camerica—challenged Nintendo’s control system during the 8-bit era. The concepts of such a control system remain in use on every major video game console produced today.

Nintendo reserved the lion’s share of NES game revenue for itself by limiting most third-party publishers to only five games per year on its systems. It also required all cartridges to be manufactured by Nintendo, and to be paid for in full before they were manufactured. Cartridges could not be returned to Nintendo, so publishers assumed all the risk.^[5] Nintendo portrayed these measures as intended to protect the public against poor-quality games, and placed a golden seal of approval on all games released for the system. Although most of the Nintendo platform-control measures were adopted by later manufacturers like Sega, Sony and Microsoft, the others never used such strong measures to hold a larger share of the games market for themselves, which later forced Nintendo to follow suit.

The hardware manufacturers of 2005 routinely receive $9 U.S. or more for every licensed software product sold by authorised third party publishers, and defend their legal rights aggressively. This allows console manufacturers to cash in on the success of third-party publishers, and it also gives the console manufacturers control over shoddily produced, pornographic, or otherwise controversial third-party games such as Custer’s Revenge that could taint the console’s reputation.

A lesser effect of the crash that lasted through the end of the 1980s until a new generation of console hardware had arrived: Surviving game development and publishing companies began targeting home computer platforms in the absence of a strong console to target. Electronic Arts, for example, was founded in 1982 and began shipping titles in 1983; it avoided being caught in the crash because of its business plan to develop only to computers. The computer game market was worldwide, but proved to be particularly strong in the United Kingdom....

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Shoegazing

[Corgan, sometimes.]
Shoegazing (also known as shoegaze) is a style of alternative rock that emerged in southern England in the late 1980s. Loveless by My Bloody Valentine, released in 1991 (see 1991 in music) is said to have defined the sound, although this is increasingly disputed by those artists associated with the genre who claimed a closer identification with the more hypnotic, rhythm based bands like Loop....

Shoegazing is characterised by a self-deprecating, introspective, non-confrontational feel. Generally employed are distortion and the fuzzbox, droning riffs and a Phil Spector-esque wall of sound from the noisy guitars. Another way to describe the guitar effects would be "lead-guitarlessness", typically with two distorted rhythm guitars interweaving together and giving an exceptionally amorphous sound. Although lead guitar riffs were often present, they were not the central focus of most shoegazing songs.

Vocals typically are subdued in volume and tone, but underneath the layers of guitars is often a strong sense of melody. While the genres which influenced shoegazing often used drum machines, shoegazing more often features live drumming. Chapterhouse utilised both samples and live drumming, while drummers such as Chris Cooper of Pale Saints and the late Chris Acland of Lush often displayed complex drum patterns.

The name was originally thought to be coined by the New Musical Express, noting the tendency of the bands' guitarists to stare at their feet (or their effects pedals), seemingly deep in concentration, while playing. In 2006 it was also claimed that the name was invented as a term of mockery by Andy Ross, founder of Food Records, for members of his staff who attended gigs of emerging shoegazing acts such as Lush and Moose [1]. Many of the band members were young, inexperienced & shy. The subdued vocals were not just subdued for effect, but due partly to a lack of confidence in the singers. Some fans will argue another story, that shoegazing music was originally made with the intention of being listened to while taking heroin, and that the name refers to a passage from the book Naked Lunch. Indeed, Spacemen 3 had a record called Taking Drugs (To Make Music To Take Drugs To), but they were pre-shoegazing, so even if they had been inspired by Naked Lunch, neither they, nor their fans or critics, discerned the link to shoegazing. Melody Maker preferred the more staid term The Scene That Celebrates Itself, referring to the habit which the bands had of attending gigs of other shoegazing bands, often in Camden. The key record labels associated with the genre were Creation Records (My Bloody Valentine, Ride, Slowdive) and 4AD Records (Lush, Pale Saints)....

The first stirrings of recognition came when indie writer Steve Lamacq referred to Ride in a review for the NME as "The House of Love with chainsaws". In the U.S. the music is sometimes now referred to as "dream pop".

The genre label was quite often misapplied. Key bands such as Ride, Chapterhouse and Slowdive emerged from the Thames Valley and as such Swervedriver found themselves labelled 'shoegazers' on account of their own (coincidental) Thames Valley origins - despite their more pronounced Hüsker Dü stylings. Curve were once described as "the exact point where shoegazer meets goth" and the genre did overlap with others to some extent. It was certainly the case that bands such as Blur, on occasion, adopted elements of shoegazing ('She's So High' for instance) on a purely commercial basis. The careers of second-wave shoegazers like Thousand Yard Stare and Revolver were caught up in a general backlash which affected the scene. In spite of this, bands like Chapterhouse, Ride and Slowdive ("the My Bloody Valentine Creation can afford" went one wry review) did leave behind several albums that on reflection have stood the test of time as indicative of early-mid 90s British indie....

The coining of the term "The Scene That Celebrates Itself" was in many ways the beginning of the end for the first wave of shoegazers. The bands became perceived by critics as over-privileged, self-indulgent and middle-class. This perception was in sharp contrast to those bands who formed the wave of newly-commercialised grunge music that was making its way across the Atlantic, and those bands who formed the foundation of Britpop, such as Oasis and (despite their advancing years) Pulp. Britpop also offered intelligible lyrics, often about the trials and tribulations of working class life, another contrast to the "vocals as an instrument" approach of the shoegazers which often left vocals as merely another noise in the mix, with little concern for lyrical content.

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Gasoline pill

[But imagine if it were true!]
The gasoline pill or gasoline powder is one of several fictitious or fraudulent concoctions that claim to turn water into gasoline, which can be used to run an automobile. The gasoline pill is one of several suppressed inventions that circulate as urban legends. Usually these urban legends allege a conspiracy theory that the oil industry seeks to suppress the technology that turns water to gasoline. A more current gasoline pill claims to improve gasoline efficiency by 20%....

In the United States, the best known claim to have created a gasoline pill was the work of one Guido Franch, who was active from the 1950s through the 1970s. Franch called the resulting liquid Mota fuel, mota being atom spelled backwards.

Guido Franch was a blue collar worker who lived in Livingston, Illinois. His invention was a green powder that was added to water, which he claimed had actually been invented by a fictitious German scientist named Dr. Alexander Kraft. Franch took money from a number of small investors who read about his claims in the National Tattler or a similar publication. In what became a frequent motif, he claimed that the water-into-gasoline powder formula could not be disclosed for fear that the oil industry would have it suppressed. Franch, when pressed into providing samples of his transmutation powder, produced samples of green food coloring.

As a result of his activities, Franch was prosecuted several times for fraud. His first trial, in 1954, resulted in his acquittal when a prosecution witness admitted that it might be possible that "mota fuel" worked. His second trial, in 1979, resulted in his conviction.^[1][2]

In 1916, Louis Enricht claimed to have a water to gasoline pill. Enricht was convicted of fraud in a related case, claiming to have a method for extracting gasoline from peat, and served time in Sing Sing prison. In 1917, John Andrews pitched a water to gasoline powder to the United States Navy. Andrews disappeared after making his pitch, but it turned out that he had returned to Canada, where he was serving in the Canadian Navy.^[2]

In 1996, Ramar Pillai claimed to be able to transmute water to gasoline by a herbal formula that he claimed was the result of a miraculous bush. Pillai obtained 20 acres of land to cultivate his bush, but in fact it turned out that he was using sleight of hand to substitute kerosene for the liquid he claimed to have derived from the bush....

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R.O.B.

[I had one of these with my Nintendo; I didn't really know how to use it.]



R.O.B. (Robotic Operating Buddy) was an accessory for the Nintendo Entertainment System. It was released in 1984 in Japan as the "Famicom Robot" and in 1985 as R.O.B in North America....

The R.O.B. functions by receiving commands via optical flashes from a television screen. With the head pointed always at the screen, the arms move left, right, up, and down, and the hands pinch together and separate to manipulate objects on fixtures attached to the base.

Gamers without experience might wonder how R.O.B. relays data back to the NES, and in fact there is no direct way to do so. In Gyromite, one of R.O.B.'s base attachments holds and pushes buttons on an ordinary controller. In Stack-Up the player is supposed to press a button on his or her own controller to indicate when R.O.B. completes a task. While the Robot Series games were among the most complex of its time, they were reliant upon the honor system....

In Japan, the Famicom Robot was sold with Robot Block (a.k.a. Stack-Up).

The Robotic Operating Buddy was sold in two packages. One was the NES Deluxe Set, which featured a control deck, the NES Zapper, two controllers, and two games (Duck Hunt and Gyromite). The other package only included R.O.B. and Gyromite.

While in production, R.O.B. was not widely accepted. The reason why it is not exceedingly rare today is due to its brief inclusion in the NES Deluxe Set. It was compatible with only two games, neither of which were simple enough for a game market that, at the time, was composed almost entirely of younger children.

Its most successful use was as a "trojan horse" to garner interest following the video game crash of 1983. Retailers, reluctant to stock video games, were successfully tricked when Nintendo snuck the NES in with R.O.B. as a "robot toy" instead of a video game. It worked, as retailers stocked the NES, giving Nintendo its first major foothold in the western market ^[1].

On the other hand, most consumers saw R.O.B. only as a novelty. The slow pace with which R.O.B. performed its movements was a source of frustration, since cheating at Gyromite was far easier to set up and play than controlling the game in its intended fashion. In fact, many people did not understand how the accessory worked. These perceptions, along with a high price tag, led Nintendo to exclude R.O.B. from further bundles and discontinue it after only two years on store shelves.

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Automatic double tracking (ADT)

[One of the many ways the Beatles changed music.]
Automatic double tracking (ADT) was an electronic system designed to augment the sound of voices and instruments during the recording process. It used linked tape recorders to create an instant and simultaneous duplication of sound which could then be captured on tape.

During the 1950s it was discovered that doubletracking lead vocals in popular song recordings gave them a much stronger and more appealing sound (especially for singers with weak or light voices). First pairs of tape recorders were used, then later multitrack recording machines, to produce the effect.

However, until the invention of ADT it was necessary to record the vocal tracks twice, with the second vocal in synchronisation with the first -- a process which was both tedious and exacting, and might require several takes and rewinds.

ADT was invented specially for The Beatles on April 6, 1966 by Ken Townshend a recording engineer employed at the EMI Abbey Road Studios in St John's Wood, London. He developed it mainly at the instigation of John Lennon, who hated the tedious doubletracking sessions and regularly expressed a desire for a technical solution to the problem.

In essence, Townshend's system used two studio tape decks which were connected to the recording console, and to each other. As a vocal was being recorded onto the first tape machine, specially installed connections simultaneously fed the signal from the record head of the first deck into the record head of the second deck, onto the tape, out from the playback head of the second deck and back into the record head of the first. If the playback heads of the two decks were precisely the same distance from their respective record heads, the voices would be recorded in perfect unison.

However, the doubletracking effect relied on the almost inaudible millisecond delays between the guide vocal and the doubletracked vocal. This was achieved naturally in the old system, because it was in practice impossible for even the best singer to precisely duplicate a previous vocal.

Geoff Emerick, an EMI balance engineer who began working with the Beatles during the recording of the LP Revolver, was able to introduce the fractional delay required by adjusting the variable speed oscillator (VSO) that controlled the speed of the motor on the second tape deck, so that the tape ran slightly slower than on the first deck. With this slight delay now introduced, the signal coming out of the playback head on the first deck would be audibly 'doubled', but the delay was not enough to cause the vocals to be noticeably out of sync.

An alternate method of creating the required delay, if the second deck did not have a variable speed motor, was to simply apply pressure to the rim (or 'flange') of the feed reel on the second tape deck to slow down the tape speed. This led to the invention being dubbed 'flanging' by The Beatles, who were thrilled by Townshend's invention and used it throughout the Revolver LP and on all their subsequent recordings. The invention of ADT soon led to the development of other related studio effects, besides flanging, including chorus and phasing.

ADT quickly became a universal practice in popular music and since its invention it has become rare to hear popular music recordings that do not use it, especially on vocal tracks. Although the tape-based ADT system has since been superseded by digital sound processing technology, doubletracking is still a common production technique.

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Fandom

[Also be sure to check out the site for the Portman-related movie of the same name.]
Fandom (from the noun fan and the affix -dom, as in kingdom, dukedom, etc.) is a subculture composed by like-minded fans (aficionados) characterized by a feeling of closeness to others who share the same interest (Thorne&Bruner 2006). Such a community of keen aficionados can share a common interest in a wide selection of phenomena, such as authors, hobbies, genres or fashions. Fandom as a term can also be used to refer to the single interconnected social network of these individual fandoms, many of which overlap. While the term is applied to social networks surrounding many novelty interests, it has its roots in appreciation for science fiction.

Fans typically are interested in even minor details of the object of their fandom; this is what differentiates them from those with only casual interest.

The objects of a fandom typically relate to the arts, sports or entertainment. For example, it would be unusual to refer to an accountant who is very interested in the details of accounting as a "fan" of accounting.

The plural fen is often self-applied in science fiction and related fandoms. This is an example of fannish jargon.

Members of a fandom associate with one another, often attending fan conventions (such as science fiction conventions), and publishing and exchanging fanzines. Today, these communities are often online, especially for less well-known source material. Some fans also write fan fiction, stories based around the universe and characters of their chosen fandom. Some also dress in costumes ("cosplay") or recite lines of dialogue either out-of-context or as part of a group reenactment. Such activities are sometimes known as "fanac," an abbreviated form of the phrase "fan activity."

The term "fandom" is particularly associated with fans of the science fiction and fantasy genres, a community that dates back to the 1930s and has held the World Science Fiction Convention since 1939. The Oxford English Dictionary traces the usage of the term back as far as 1903, with many of its documented references referring to sports fandom.

The term is also commonly associated with anime/manga. Serious fans of this subject are also called otaku.

"Fandom" is also the name of a documentary / mockumentary about a fan obsessed with Natalie Portman.

Fanac is an abbreviation for "fan activity" which arose within science fiction fandom. It consists of such activities as editing zines, writing fanfic, attending cons and cosplay.

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Generalissimo

[When a general just won't do.]
A generalissimo is a commissioned officer of the highest rank; the word is often translated as "Supreme Commander" or "Commander in Chief". It is an Italian superlative substantive, which grammatically would actually be disallowed in Italian (superlatives can be made with adjectives only). When used as a noun, the correct sense is "General of the highest degree" (or commander in chief of the entire armed forces of a specific country); as an adjective, the closest English form is "most general," but the concept is best expressed by the grammatically incorrect expression "most generalest." The term "Generalissimo" in English has come to refer to a kind of ruler who has ascended to that position by a military coup. In most developed English-speaking countries, the term commonly evokes the image of corrupt dictatorships and so-called "banana republics."

The dictator Francisco Franco, Chief of State of the Spanish State, also held the title Generalísimo de los Ejércitos Españoles, or "Generalissimo of the Spanish Armies", a title which expressed his supreme command of the Army, Navy, and Air Force of the Spanish State.

Chiang Kai-shek also used the term (although he was technically a general special class or "five-star general") as did Joseph Stalin; the latter, however, was appointed to the position on June 27, 1945, at the conclusion of World War II and did not use it as a title to designate his position of commander in chief, but rather bore it as a title of rank, Generalissimo of the Soviet Union, above the rank of Marshal of the Soviet Union. The Japanese title of Shogun is in a way comparable to that of generalissimo.

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Jews for Jesus

[Sometimes they hand out fliers and such...]
Jews for Jesus is a Christian Evangelical organization based in the United States. It was founded in 1973 by Moishe Rosen, an ordained Baptist minister of Jewish heritage who self-identifies with the Judaic tradition. The long-term goal of Jews for Jesus is one of religious conversion of all Jews to accept Jesus Christ as the Messiah — a position which is usually characterised as Christianity and is incompatible with Judaism (see Schism between Jews and Christians, Anti-Judaism, Supersessionism, Dispensationalism). The organization claims to be "one of the most extensive evangelistic outreaches to Jewish people in the world today." While Jews for Jesus is based in the United States, they have also sent their branches as far afield as Ukraine, Germany, France, England, Brazil, Canada, Australia, Russia, and South Africa....

Jews for Jesus' official mission statement is "to make the Messiahship of Jesus an unavoidable issue to our Jewish people worldwide." They claim that belief in Jesus as Messiah is a fulfillment of the prophecies of Hebrew scripture. Rosen argues that Christianity is the fulfillment of scriptures....

Jews for Jesus is widely opposed by both Jewish groups (secular and religious) and Christians who oppose attempting to convert Jews. Many Jewish groups see Jews for Jesus as a thinly-veiled attack on Judaism, while many Christian churches, particularly the more liberal denominations, see Jewish religious practice as valid in and of itself and thus object to evangelizing Jews.

Another criticism of the group is that one of the most important Jewish principles of faith is the belief in one God and one God only with no partnership of any kind, and it is therefore impossible to profess Judaism and believe in Jesus at the same time.

The Interfaith Conference of Metropolitan Washington, an umbrella organization that includes Muslims, Jews, and church groups from the Roman Catholic, Methodist, Baptist, Lutheran and Presbyterian churches, has condemned Jews for Jesus as promoting activities "harmful to the spirit of interreligious respect and tolerance." The conference is opposed to religious proselytizing in general. The conference also denounces the group's "deceptive proselytizing efforts", stating that when practiced on "vulnerable populations" such as the young or the elderly, these efforts are "tantamount to coerced conversions." (2) The Rev. Clark Lobenstine, a Presbyterian (PCUSA) minister and executive director of the Conference, has stated that his group condemns Jews for Jesus and other messianic Jewish groups by name because they "go beyond the bounds of appropriate and ethically based religious outreach." (3) Rick Ross, an alleged "cult expert", has been critical of the organization as well and has included them on his website.(5)

The Board of Governors of The Long Island Council of Churches, a group that is opposed to proselytizing of Jews in general, voiced similar sentiments in a statement that "noted with alarm" the "subterfuge and dishonesty" inherent in the "mixing [of] religious symbols in ways which distort their essential meaning", and named Jews for Jesus as one of the three groups about whom such behavior was alleged....

Jews for Jesus defends its actions against these charges, stating:

"If a person believes the Bible and believes that Jesus is the only way of salvation (John 14:6, Acts 4:12, Romans 10:9,10) and then that person declines to tell a Jewish friend about Christ, it indicates one of two things. Either that person has decided that the Jews are not worthy of the gospel, in which case he would be a racist, an anti-Semite and a hater of people instead of the lover of people that God wants him to be. Or perhaps he has judged the gospel as being unworthy of the Jews in which case he has trivialized the passion of Calvary and the awesome significance of Christ's resurrection." (4)

Jews for Jesus is a member of numerous evangelical Christian groups: The World Evangelical Alliance, Canadian Council for Christian Charities, Interdenominational Foreign Mission Association, Evangelical Alliance of Great Britain, Evangelical Council on Financial Accountability, Lausanne Consultation on Jewish Evangelism, National Association of Evangelicals, The Internet Evangelism Coalition, and the World Evangelical Fellowship....

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Trypanophobia

[The fear of getting stuck.]
Trypanophobia is the extreme and irrational fear of medical procedures involving injections or hypodermic needles. It is occasionally referred to as aichmophobia, belonephobia, or enetophobia, names that are technically incorrect because they simply denote a “fear of pins/needles” and do not refer to the medical aspect of trypanophobia. The name that is in common usage is simply needle phobia, while the correct scientific term is trypanophobia....

The condition was officially recognized in 1994 in the DSM-IV (Diagnostic and Statistical Manual, 4th edition) as a specific phobia of blood/injection/injury type. Phobic level responses to injections cause sufferers to avoid inoculations, blood tests and in the more severe cases, all medical care.

It is estimated that at least 10% of American adults are trypanophobic, and it is likely that the actual number is larger, as the most severe cases are never documented due to the tendency of the sufferer to simply avoid all medical treatment....

It is suspected that the genetically linked forms of trypanophobia date from early human history. In early time periods, genes that predisposed a person to avoid physical injuries such as piercing, stabbing or other skin penetration would be more likely to survive, given that in those days, death from bleeding, hemorrhaging or subsequent infection of a wound, were far more common than they are today. Over time, the complex bundle of symptoms that comprise a vaso-vagal shock response were hard-wired into the genetic makeups of certain humans, and these symptoms are still expressed today in the form of vaso-vagal trypanophobia....

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Flatulence

[You thought you knew what this meant. You had no idea.]
Flatulence is the presence of gas under some degree of pressure, in a confined space. The term is normally used of the presence of gas in the digestive tract of mammals. However, a balloon is flatulent as is a fizzy drink until the gas is released by opening the bottle containing it. ^[1] Though confused by the word's use as a euphemism for 'fart', flatulence is distinct from flatus, which is the release of such confined gas. ^[2] The distinction becomes very important in cases of bloat. In the animal digestive tract, the gas is produced by symbiotic bacteria and yeasts....

Flātus is a Latin word meaning a puff or blowing of a gas such as air. Flatulence is a French noun derived from flātus, which as a medical term means 'accumulation of gas in a natural cavity'. ^[3] More generally, flatulent means 'of a windy nature' or 'full of air and wind'. By extension, foods such as beans may be called 'flatulent', as they generate gas in the digestive tract which then becomes flatulent as it is liable to produce flātūs - puffs, blows and breathing, via the œsophagus (gullet) and mouth or via the anus. Flatulence is therefore a tendency to produce puffs and blows so the word can be applied to the character of a haughty person or to the wolf of the Three Little Pigs story, as well as to the more usual use in alluding to a physiological tendency to break wind.

'Meteorism' is a near-synonym of flatulence in the medical sense. However, it may arise from a blockage which prevents the escape of gas. It is therefore not strictly, a synonym. It is derived from Greek rather than Latin. It will have influenced English by way of the writings of Hippocrates, whose works were long a major influence on the thought of western medical doctors. It is a 'flatulent distension of the abdomen with gas in the alimentary canal' ^[4], and is used as a synonym of bloat in veterinary use. The Greek original, μετεωρισμοσ (meteorismos), means 'being raised up, swelling' ^[5] alternatively, 'elation, excitement of mind'.... ^[6]

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Cat righting reflex

[Despite this, it's still dangerous to leave a cat near an open window. Be careful!]
The cat righting reflex is cat's innate ability to orient themselves as they fall so as to land on their feet, often uninjured. The righting reflex begins to appear at 3-4 weeks of age, and is perfected at 7 weeks. They are able to do this as they have an unusually flexible backbone and no collarbone. After determining up from down visually or using their vestibular apparatus (in the inner ear), they rotate their upper body to face downwards and their lower body follows. In addition to the righting reflex cats have a number of other features that will reduce damage from a fall. Being small, having a light bone structure, and thick fur decreases their terminal velocity. Furthermore, once righted they may also spread out their body to increase drag and slow the fall to some extent. A falling cat's terminal velocity is 60mph whereas a falling man in a free-fall position is 130mph. At terminal velocity they also relax as they fall which protects them to some extent on impact. Padded paws will also soften impact.

Using their righting reflex, cats can often land uninjured. This is, however, far from always the case, and cats can still break bones or die from falls. In a study (in the Journal of the American Veterinary Medical Association) of 132 cats that had fallen from buildings, it was found that cats were most likely to die if they had fallen about seven stories.^{[citation needed]} Below that height they may not have reached terminal velocity and would hit the ground with less force. However, if falls were further than seven stories the chance of cats dying also decreased as they had more time to right themselves, spread to increase drag, and relax.

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Problem of evil

[A dilemma indeed!]
In the philosophy of religion and theology, the problem of evil is the problem of reconciling the existence of evil or suffering in the world with the existence of an omniscient, omnipotent, omnibenevolent God or Gods. An answer to the problem of evil is called a theodicy....

Epicurus is generally credited with first expounding the problem of evil, and it is sometimes called the Epicurean paradox (or the riddle of Epicurus). In this form, the argument is not really a paradox or a riddle, but rather a reductio ad absurdum of the premises. Epicurus drew the conclusion that the existence of evil is incompatible with the existence of the Gods. More generally, no paradox or problem exists for those who do not accept the premises, in particular the existence of a benevolent god or Gods.

"Either God wants to abolish evil, and cannot; or he can, but does not want to. ... If he wants to, but cannot, he is impotent. If he can, but does not want to, he is wicked. ... If, as they say, God can abolish evil, and God really wants to do it, why is there evil in the world?" (Epicurus, as quoted in 2000 Years of Disbelief)

Epicurus himself did not leave any written form of this argument. It can be found in Lucretius's "De Rerum Natura" and in Christian theologian Lactantius's "Treatise of the Anger of God" where Lactantius critiques the argument....

The biblical book of Job is, perhaps, the most widely known formulation of the problem of evil in Western thought. Other books of note include Psalms 1 and 82, and Ecclesiastes (Koheleth)....

Many terms and concepts must be decided upon before the problem of evil may be sufficiently analyzed. This is due to the nature of religious belief.

• Who or what is God?

For example, the problem of evil changes radically depending on whether God is a personal God, as in most forms of Christianity, distant Gods, as was the case in ancient Egyptian religions, as well as whether there is only one (monotheism) or many Gods (polytheism). (See also demiurge)

• What is evil?

• What is the nature of omnipotence?

A frequent error is the notion that an omnipotent God would be able to make an agent morally free yet incapable of doing evil to others. This is an error because no amount of power can allow one to make a logical contradiction true. (See the Omnipotence Paradox)

• What is the nature of omnibenevolence?

To what extent would God desire to spare people from evil? It is, perhaps, too hasty to assume that not experiencing any evil or harm is in the best interest of the universe....

Responses

The fifth century theologian Augustine of Hippo mounted what has become one of the most popular defences of the existence of God against the Epicurean paradox. He maintained that evil was only privatio boni, or a privation of good. An evil thing can only be referred to as a negative form of a good thing, such as discord, injustice, and loss of life or liberty. If a being is not totally pure, evil will fill in any gaps in that being's purity. This is commonly called the Contrast Theodicy — that evil only exists as a "contrast" with good. However, the Contrast Theodicy relies on a metaphysical view of morality which few people, even theologians, agree with (that good and evil are not moral judgments). In On Free Choice of the Will, Augustine also argued that Epicurus had ignored the potential benefits of suffering in the world. However, it is pointed out that an omnipotent God could give the world any benefits derived from suffering without those in the world having to suffer....

Some theists argue that God allows evil to exist so that humans can have freedom of choice, to do good or evil, so that they are whole beings, and not mindless machines.

Some critics of this argument say that beings which are not omnipotent do not have freedom of choice in any case. But others say that free will should be understood as "wanting" and "trying" but not necessarily "getting". For example, not everyone has the ability to become a successful Major League Baseball player, even though they have the freedom to try.

Another argument is that the choices a person can make are determined by one's inherent nature. If someone were naturally good, he would still have some degree of free choice. Many people who have enjoyed this partial free will have lived their lives without causing suffering or other evil. Why wouldn't God make everyone predisposed to being good? Why would he make some who are predisposed to performing evil acts?

The other side of this argument is that there "are no" naturally good people. All people are capable of both good and evil acts. An individual does either good or evil acts, depending not only on their inherent nature, but also upbringing, experiences, morals, choices, circumstances, society, and many other factors. The same group of people might be good or evil depending on the society they live in.

Additionally, some critics note that if a god simply cannot create people that are both entirely good and enjoy free will, then it cannot be considered all-powerful....

A unique response to the problem of evil comes from the ill-defined body of early Christian belief known as Gnosticism. Many Gnostics claimed that the god of the Jewish Bible or Old Testament who created the world, is not God, but an inept, though highly powerful, being that they call the Demiurge. They view him as a malicious being who made the world of matter and flesh as a prison to hide humanity's true spiritual nature. Hence, part of their answer to the problem of evil is that the true God, whom they sometimes call "the True Father," did not in fact make this world of suffering, evil and pain. However they do not provide an explanation for why the true God would allow another being to create them instead, and in such an evil manner.

[More....]

1995 Chicago heat wave

[Pardon the absence; staying cool.]
The 1995 Chicago heat wave led to approximately 600 heat-related deaths over a period of five days. It is now considered to be one of the worst weather-related disasters in Chicago history.

The scale was shocking, although the event itself may not have been that unusual. Eric Klinenberg, author of the 2002 book Heat Wave: A Social Autopsy of Disaster in Chicago, has noted that in the United States, the loss of human life in hot spells in summer exceeds that caused by all other weather events combined, including lightning, rain, floods, hurricanes, and tornadoes....

The temperatures soared to record highs in July with the hottest weather occurring from July 12 to July 16. The high of 106° F (41° C) on July 13 set the record for the warmest July temperature since records began at Midway Airport in 1928. Nighttime low temperatures were unusually high (upper 70s and lower 80s °F - about 25 °C) as well. Record humidity levels also accompanied the hot weather.

Most of the heat wave victims were the elderly poor living in the heart of the city, who either had no working air conditioning or could not afford to turn it on. Many older citizens were also hesitant to open windows and doors at night for fear of crime. Elderly women, who may have been more socially engaged, were less vulnerable than elderly men. By contrast, during the heat waves of the 1930s, many residents slept outside in the parks or along the shore of Lake Michigan.

Because of the nature of the disaster, and the slow response of authorities to recognize it, no official "death toll" has been determined. However, figures show that 739 additional people died in that particular week above the usual weekly average. Further epidemiologic analysis presented by Eric Klinenberg (author of Heat Wave: A Social Autopsy of Disaster in Chicago) showed that blacks were more likely to die than whites, and that Hispanics had an unusually low death rate due to heat. At the time, many blacks lived in areas of sub-standard housing and less cohesive neighborhoods, while Hispanics at the time lived in places with higher population density, and more social cohesion....

A contributing factor in the heat wave is an effect called an urban heat island. Urban heat islands are caused by the concentration of buildings and pavement in urban areas, which tend to absorb more heat in the day and radiate less heat at night into their immediate surroundings than comparable rural sites. Therefore, built-up areas get hotter and stay hotter. Other aggravating factors were inadequate warnings, power failures, inadequate ambulance service and hospital facilities, and lack of preparedness. City officials did not release a heat emergency warning until the last day of the heat wave. Thus, such emergency measures as Chicago's five cooling centers were not fully utilized. The medical system of Chicago was severely taxed as thousands were taken to local hospitals with heat-related problems. In some cases, fire trucks were used as substitute ambulances.

Another powerful factor in the heat wave was that a temperature inversion grew over the city, and air stagnated in this situation. Pollutants and humidity were confined to ground level, and the air was becalmed and devoid of wind. Without wind to stir the air, temperatures grew even hotter than could be expected with just an urban heat island, and without wind there was truly no relief. Without any way to relieve the heat, even the inside of homes became ovens, with indoor temperature exceeding 90 °F (33 °C) at night. This was especially noticeable in areas which experienced frequent power outages. At Northwestern University just north of Chicago, summer school students lived in dormitories without air conditioning. In order to ease the effects of the heat, some of the students slept at night with water-soaked towels as blankets.

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Eskimo words for snow

It is a popular urban legend that the Eskimo have an unusually high number of words for snow. Often this number is quoted as being dozens or hundreds, sometimes even as "thousands." The actual answer as to "how many Eskimo words for snow are there?" depends on how we define Eskimo (there are a number of languages), how we define snow, and how we count numbers of words in languages that have quite different grammatical structures than English....

The first citation dealing with multiple Eskimo words for snow is found in the introduction to The Handbook of North American Indians, the 1911 work of linguist and anthropologist Franz Boas. Boas mentions that Eskimos have four separate words for snow: aput ("snow on the ground"), gana ("falling snow"), piqsirpoq ("drifting snow"), and qimuqsuq ("snowdrift"), where English has only one. It is, of course, inaccurate to say that speakers of the English language have only one word for snow. Boas' intent was to connect differences in culture with differences in language.

Benjamin Whorf's theory of linguistic relativism holds that the language we speak both affects and reflects our view of the world. In a popular 1940 article on the subject, he referred to Eskimo languages having seven distinct words for snow. Later writers inflated the figure. By 1978, the number quoted had reached 50. On February 9, 1984 the New York Times gave the number as one hundred in an editorial.

The idea that Eskimos had hundreds of words for snow — indeed, hundreds of unique and fairly unrelated words — has given rise to the idea that Eskimos viewed snow very differently than people of other cultures. For example, when it snows, others see snow, but they could see any manifestation of their great and varied vocabulary. Vulgarized versions of Whorf's views hold not only that Eskimo speakers can choose among several snow words, but further, that they were unable to understand categorizing all seven (or however many) as "snow". To them, each word is supposedly a separate concept. Thus language is thought to impose a particular view of the world — not just for Eskimo languages, but for all groups. Whorf himself, a well-informed and respectful student of Native American cultures, held more sophisticated views than this caricature would suggest....

There is no one Eskimo language. A number of cultures are referred to as Eskimo, and a number of different languages are termed Eskimo-Aleut languages.

Like English, Eskimo languages have more than one word to describe snow. Yup'ik, for example, has been estimated to have around 24. This may seem impressive until one realizes that English has at least 40, including "berg", "frost", "glacier", "hail", "ice", "slush", "flurry", and "sleet".

Of course, it is perfectly possible that some Eskimo languages would have several extra words to describe snow, which is specifically the point of Boas's theory. This is because they deal with snow more than other cultures, just as artists have more words to describe the various details of their hobby. Where someone without artistic experience would simply identify a particular item as "paint", the artist calls it "oil paint", "acrylic paint", or "watercolor". This does not mean that these two individuals see two different things, nor does it mean that the artist would be confused by the idea that oil paint and acrylic paint are related.

The actual number of Eskimo words for snow is not hundreds — it is, in fact, limitless. This is because Eskimo languages (like many native North American languages) are polysynthetic; that is, a word can be composed of a large number of morphemes, such that a single word can express the equivalent of a sentence in a language like English. There is a system of derivational suffixes for word formation to which speakers can recursively add snow-referring roots. As in English, there is a handful of these snow-referring roots, words for "snowflake", "blizzard", "drift", and so on. This means that where an English speaker would describe what he or she is seeing as "soft, easily-packed snow", a speaker of an Eskimo language could describe the same thing in one word. And when the snow began to melt, she could change a few suffixes and describe, once again in one word, "soft, melting snow that is not easily-packed". If the snow became dirty, she could add a suffix and say, "soft, dirty, melting snow that is not easily-packed." All this in one word, where an English-speaker would need an entire phrase. And yet, the concept is the same in both languages....

There are two major errors in this myth. The first is that Eskimo speakers have more words for snow than English speakers do. In fact, they have about the same number, perhaps a few more and perhaps a few less depending on which Eskimo language one is focusing on. And as in English, these words are related to each other. Blizzards and flurries are two different types of snow, but they are snow nonetheless, and we recognize that. Speakers of Eskimo languages categorize snow in the same way.

The second error comes from a misconception of what should be considered "words". When it comes to describing snow in Eskimo languages, the words are limitless. And as in other polysynthetic languages, this rule is the same regardless of whether they are describing snow, cheese, trees, cars, or anything at all. This is because their language is structured differently than English. Because Eskimo is polysynthetic, it describes things in words of unlimited length.

[More....]

CAPTCHA

[There's a name for it.]
A CAPTCHA (an acronym for "completely automated public Turing test to tell computers and humans apart", trademarked by Carnegie Mellon University) is a type of challenge-response test used in computing to determine whether or not the user is human. The term was coined in 2000 by Luis von Ahn, Manuel Blum, Nicholas J. Hopper of Carnegie Mellon University, and John Langford of IBM. A common type of CAPTCHA requires that the user type the letters of a distorted image, sometimes with the addition of an obscured sequence of letters or digits that appears on the screen. Because the test is administered by a computer, in contrast to the standard Turing test that is administered by a human, a CAPTCHA is sometimes described as a reverse Turing test. This term, however, is ambiguous because it could also mean a Turing test in which the participants are both attempting to prove they are the computer....

Since the early days of the Internet, users have wanted to make text illegible to computers. The first such people were hackers, posting about sensitive topics to online forums they thought were being automatically monitored for keywords. To circumvent such filters, they would replace a word with look-alike characters. HELLO could become |-|3|_|_() or )-(3££0, as well as numerous other variants, such that a filter could not possibly detect all of them. This later became known as "13375p34k" (leetspeak).

The first discussion of automated tests which distinguish humans from computers for the purpose of controlling access to web services appears in a 1996 manuscript of Moni Naor from the Weizmann Institute of Science, entitled "Verification of a human in the loop, or Identification via the Turing Test". Primitive CAPTCHAs seem to have been later developed in 1997 at AltaVista by Andrei Broder and his colleagues in order to prevent bots from adding URLs to their search engine. Looking for a way to make their images resistant to OCR attack, the team looked at the manual to their Brother scanner, which had recommendations for improving OCR's results (similar typefaces, plain backgrounds, etc.). The team created puzzles by attempting to simulate what the manual claimed would cause bad OCR recognition. In 2000, von Ahn and Blum developed and publicized the notion of a CAPTCHA, which included any program that can distinguish humans from computers. They invented multiple examples of CAPTCHAs, including the first CAPTCHAs to be widely used (at Yahoo!).

Accessibility

CAPTCHAs based on reading text — or other visual-perception tasks — prevent visually impaired users from accessing the protected resource. However, CAPTCHAs do not have to be visual. Any hard artificial intelligence problem, such as speech recognition, can be used as the basis of a CAPTCHA. Some implementations of CAPTCHAs permit users to opt for an audio CAPTCHA.

The development of audio CAPTCHAs appears to have lagged behind that of visual CAPTCHAs, however, and presently may not be as effective. Other kinds of challenges, such as those that require understanding the meaning of some text (e.g., a logic puzzle, trivia question, or instructions on how to create a password) can also be used as a CAPTCHA. Again, there is little research into their resistance against countermeasures.

Some interesting tests came on the idea of image recognition. One such example is the KittenAuth, a test that asks the user to recognize some certain animal (kittens) in a series of pictures of multiple species (dolphins, puppies, foxes...)

For non-sighted users (for example blind users, or the color blind on a color-using test), visual CAPTCHAs present serious problems. Because CAPTCHAs are designed to be unreadable by machines, common assistive technology tools such as screen readers cannot interpret them. Since sites may use CAPTCHAs as part of the initial registration process, or even every login, this challenge can completely block access. In certain jurisdictions, site owners could become target of litigation if they are using CAPTCHAs that discriminate against certain people with disabilities. In other cases, those with sight difficulties can choose to identify a word being read to them.

While providing an audio CAPTCHA allows blind users to read the text, it still excludes those who are both visually and hearing impaired.

The use of CAPTCHA thus excludes a large number of individuals from using significant subsets of such common Web-based services as PayPal, GMail, Orkut, Yahoo!, many forum and weblog systems, etc.

Even for perfectly sighted individuals, new generations of CAPTCHAs, designed to overcome sophisticated recognition software, can be very hard or impossible to read. Even some of the demo CAPTCHAs at the software sites listed below are indecipherable to many if not all humans.

Circumvention

There are a few approaches to defeating CAPTCHAs: using cheap human labor to recognize them, exploiting bugs in the implementation that allow the attacker to completely bypass the CAPTCHA, and finally improving character recognition software.

[edit]

Cheap human labor

It may be possible to subvert CAPTCHAs by relaying them to a sweatshop of human operators who are employed to decode CAPTCHAs. The W3C paper linked below states that such an operator "could easily verify hundreds of them each hour". Nonetheless, some have suggested that this would still not be economically viable. (e.g. [1]) Paying the human operators with access to pornography instead of money has also been considered.[2]

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Implementation bugs

Some poorly designed CAPTCHA protection systems can be bypassed without using OCR simply by re-using the session ID of a known CAPTCHA image.[3] Sometimes, if part of the software generating the CAPTCHA is client-sided (the validation is done on a server but the text that the user is required to identify is rendered on the client side), then users can modify the client to display the unrendered text, etc.

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Computer character recognition

Although CAPTCHAs were originally designed to defeat standard OCR software designed for document scanning, a number of research projects have proven that it is possible to defeat many CAPTCHAs with programs that are specifically tuned for a particular type of CAPTCHA. For CAPTCHAs with distorted letters, the approach typically consists of the following steps:

1. Removal of background clutter, for example with color filters and detection of thin lines.
2. Segmentation, i.e. splitting the image into segments containing a single letter.
3. Identifying the letter for each segment.

Step 1 is typically very easy to do automatically. In 2005, it was shown that neural network algorithms have a lower error rate than humans in step 3.[4] The only part where humans still excel computers is step 2. If the background clutter consists of shapes similar to letter shapes, and the letters are connected by this clutter, the segmentation becomes nearly impossible with current software. Hence, an effective CAPTCHA should focus on step 2, the segmentation.

Neural networks have been used with great success to defeat CAPTCHAs as they generally are indifferent to both affine and non-linear transformations. As they learn by example rather than through explicit coding, with appropriate tools very limited technical knowledge is required to defeat more complex CAPTCHAs.

Some CAPTCHA-defeating projects:

• Mori et al. published a paper in IEEE CVPR'03 detailing a method for defeating one of the most popular CAPTCHAs, EZ-Gimpy, which was tested as being 92% accurate in defeating it. The same method was also shown to defeat the more complex and less-widely deployed Gimpy program 33% of the time. However, the existence of implementations of their algorithm in actual use is indeterminate at this time.

• PWNtcha has made significant progress in defeating commonly used CAPTCHAs, which has contributed to a general migration towards more sophisticated CAPTCHAs.

• A number of Microsoft research papers describe how computer programs and humans cope with varying degrees of distortion.

[More....]