Basically its in the same universe as the alien franchise but the film is not going to be a direct precursor to alien 1979 , the Xenomorphs are not going to appear in this movie either, Instead its going to be centered around an ancient space faring race that seeded life across the milky way galaxy.
For a while, a lot of people were complaining that Nintendo was making way too many "casual" games. Well, this past year (and a half) has seen a crazy number of awesome titles from Nintendo wouldn't you say?
In the past year, I've played more games on my Wii than my 360 or PS3. It's been really nice to dust that thing off.
Further Super Mario 3D Land is amazing. I'm loving this game so far. It really shows off what the 3DS was meant for, using the 3D for more than just a gimic. Along those lines, I have noticed that this game as well as the 3DS has been selling out in a lot of stores this holiday season. I think the price drop coupled with some really nice NEW games has turned the 3DS sales around, but we'll only know when we see the numbers. The 3DS still has a number of flaws in the design, but I'm overlooking them right now to enjoy the awesome 3D Land.
I present to you an OFFICIAL timeline published in a Nintendo artbook overseen by Eiji Aonuma.
According to this, there are in fact 3 different timeline splits all coming from Ocarina of Time.
Further, this timeline is simply perfect. I can find no flaws in it. It incorporates every last detail we've been told by the official channels over the decades about the chronology, excepting the temporal hiccup that was the Zelda official web site in early 2000 (which no one took seriously anyway). Better yet, it puts the Oracle games and Link's Awakening in their proper place. It seems that the Oracle games took place after Link to the Past (using the same Link), and that same Link went on to do Link's Awakening (which was the original official statement on when that took place anyway). Then a "golden age" happens, followed by the "age of decline" with Zelda 1 and 2. That whole timeline from LTTP onward is the timeline where Link fails in his mission and Ganon is apparently imprisoned during a much more devastating massive war (the imprisoning war that LTTP mentions during the prologue). In fact I think that "failed in his mission" split happened at the exact moment Young Link entered the Temple of Time and grabbed the Master Sword. He was taken out of his world during that time, and I think that event would create a split where he never returned in one line (thus failing) and returned to defeat Ganon in the other, thus leading to the third where he was able to go back and prevent Ganon from coming to power to begin with.
I was confused about Four Swords Adventures for some time because it seemed odd that Ganon would come to power BEFORE OOT and be sealed in the sword with no explanation of how he escaped. Well, this explains it. Apparently when he died in Twilight Princess, he later got reincarnated along with Vaati years later, and that's where Four Swords + stands. For that matter, it explains why there is a dark world in that game. Majora's Mask of course takes place after OOT, though it doesn't mention that that whole game took place with Link travelling to an alternate reality. That's incidental though and doesn't affect the timeline.
Haha! It even notes where the "Tragedy of Princess Zelda the 1st" (described in the Zelda II manual) happens. Apparently that marked the end of the Golden Era, and so apparently during that time princesses stopped being named Zelda until that incident.
We really had a good run, didn't we? I mean, sure, we had our ups and downs, but things mostly went pretty good for the most part. We had our laughs and our cries, good friends came and went. But this is the end and it's time to say all our goodbyes.
Gungnir is the fourth major Dept. Heaven title from Sting, in its loose "series" of titles. The first three -- Riviera, Yggdra Union, and Knights in the Nightmare -- are all interesting, and mostly great (I have issues with Yggdra, but absolutely love the other two) games, and I've been a series fan ever since I first played Riviera, so this is just great news. Gungnir is a PSP only game, so far, so I was really thinking that we'd never see it. Well... we will. Now I've got another reason to be happy I got that PSP, for sure.
I've heard that Gungnir isn't as complex as some of Sting's other strategy games (Riviera is an RPG, but the other titles are strategy games), but hopefully it's as great as the better ones.
I am still unhappy that Yggdra's three spinoff games -- two on PSP, one on DS -- all are Japan-only titles, probably forever (sure, they're spinoffs of the weakest of the three games, but still, they look like they could be pretty good...), but this is fantastic, fantastic news. I'll be getting this for sure.
It's been neglected for ages. So, let's get our debate on.
One of the most hotly-debated subjects of the last century has been whether or not America was justified in using atomic weapons against Japan to end the second World War.
I am not the man of black and white morality I was years ago, which is why I can only say that the ends justified the means in this particular scenario. Certainly, the reason America used the atomic bomb had everything to do with the short-term goal of defeating a very obstinate enemy. Certainly, there weren't too many people involved with the decision who were thinking of how this event would influence the course of human history thereafter. As we all know, the weapon had its effect: Japan realized that fiery nuclear death was the only alternative to surrender, and wisely decided against fiery nuclear death.
But, was this necessary? One opinion is that there is no justification for using nuclear weapons for any reason, towards any end--a laudable goal if perhaps too idealistic. Another is that one was necessary and two was overkill. Maybe this was true.
However, I am firmly convinced that the destruction of Hiroshima, in spite of how horrible it was for those who fell victim to it, the most fortunate decision of the entire 20th century.
Once atoms were confirmed to exist, it was probably inevitable that the potential of the atom to produce amazing amounts of energy would soon be realized. It was certainly inevitable that this revelation would result in a drive to weaponize this phenomenon. It is a simple, yet basically true, statement to say that nuclear weapons were going to happen after certain scientific discoveries were made.
The United States won the nuclear race by several lengths, thanks in large part to the defection of several genius physicists from Europe before and during the rise of National Socialism and Italian fascism. Germany and Japan both had at least some interest in developing atomic weapons, the Germans especially. Had they not been so relentlessly xenophobic, the Nazis may very well have acquired the bomb before the United States. Clearly, it was to the world's benefit that America won this race, because America was, in relation to Nazi Germany, not as crazy and bloodthirsty. I doubt anybody believes the Nazis would have hesitated to use atomic weapons with little or no discretion against anybody they liked, especially if they had exclusive access to the weapons. America simply has not been so inclined. But, America did use two of them, and on civilian population centers rather than military targets.
I believe this was absolutely necessary. Not for the purposes of making Japan surrender; any successful demonstration of the atomic bomb would have probably done that trick. In this, I think the Nagasaki bomb was dropped in the belief that it was necessary to prove to the Japanese military establishment that we weren't fucking around and we could keep on doing this if we wanted to. Maybe this is true, maybe this isn't true. Maybe the destruction of Hiroshima would have been enough to convince Japan to sit down and shut up. We'll never know for sure.
However, Hiroshima had to happen, and the people living there had to suffer and die. A terrible fate for them, and I don't wish to make light of it, but in a sense, they were sacrifices to the future of humanity. Their deaths were not in vain. In fact, I believe they may helped save the world.
Given the situation, completing the Manhattan Project and getting functional atomic weapons was a high priority of the Allies. They were some of the very first, and the destructive power may have been exponentially greater than anything mankind had come up with previously, but they were followed in the coming decades by warheads with yields exponentially more destructive still than even Fat Man or Little Boy. The bombs dropped on Japan were some of the weakest ever made until research into tactical nuclear weaponry began decades later.
This is important because we were able to see, firsthand, just what these things could do. There exists much visual material and in-depth description of the devastation, the death, the suffering, and the slow, terrible destruction to the body brought about by radiation poisoning and full-body burns. We needed to see these things. When the physicists and engineers tested prototypes in the New Mexico desert, they saw how much shit you could blow up, but they had no idea of what the true human toll would be if one of these things fell on a major city. Hiroshima gave us this lesson, and it is a lesson we absolutely had to have in a world in which nuclear weapons were inevitable.
Imagine if the bombs had not been used. A land invasion of Japan would have probably happened, and if the estimates were anywhere near accurate, the final death toll would have been far greater, for both sides, than what the bombs produced. This is, actually, rather beside the point. Once the United States had a nuclear weapons arsenal, the Soviet Union had to match it. As a result, ten years after the end of World War II, you had the world's two superpowers on their way to practically bristling with city-erasing weapons of doom and well on their way to inventing missile delivery systems to carry these things thousands of miles. Yet, the Cold War lasted close to 50 years without a single one of these things ever being exploded in anger. We like to attribute this to the doctrine of Mutual Assured Destruction. This is true.
But, imagine how differently this might have gone if MAD were based upon a theory, rather than the hard and terrible reality witnessed by Japan? One of the reasons America wasted little time in using its new bomb was that, as previously mentioned, we only had theories about how devastating its effects would be. People, both individuals and groups, are willing to do dangerous things if the dangers exist to them as mere hypotheses. Hiroshima and Nagasaki gave us stark evidence we absolutely had to have. We now knew just what these weapons could do. We now understood how terrible it would be to see our own cities destroyed, our own people incinerated. We were now able to comprehend that, if dozens, hundreds, even thousands, of these things were used at once, the actual end of the world could be a very real possibility.
If we did not have this lesson, is it so hard to imagine that some flashpoint might have seen either the United States or the Soviet Union launching in response to some real or perceived threat? To me, it is not hard at all, nor is it hard to imagine that the other party would respond in kind with everything it had, using hundreds of missiles with destructive power hundreds of times that of the bombs dropped on Japan. It is not hard to imagine that our world would be a nearly-lifeless hell afterwards. The lesson of nuclear warfare would be learned then, if anybody survived to learn it.
For that reason, it is plain to me that America's use of the bomb was necessary for the peace of the world, both in the immediate sense of ending the worst war mankind ever fought, and to giving people to come a very good reason to not ever want to launch any more of them.
Posted by: etoven - 18th December 2011, 6:44 PM - Forum: Ramble City
- No Replies
Ok, this state farm commercial actually made me laugh a little bit.. The guy was like, "Like a good neighbor State Farm is there... With a apology from my wife..". And the magic was like, hell no not touching that one! :)
So I guess the bottom line here is, that a women's pride is much more powerful than dark powerful insurance company magic..
What you're seeing there is the light bouncing off the closest things to the lense and reaching it followed by farther and farther objects from the lense as the light reaches them in time, creating that bizarre wave effect. Actually, more accurately, the wave is a recording of the light from the shortest path between light source, reflecting object, and camera to longest path. In any case, this camera is so fast it can actually see the light slowly fill a scene instead of how we and every other camera sees it (including every other high speed camera) as simply instantly lighting the room.
I'm pretty sure Sonic, Captain Falcon, and The Flash all just retired.
![[Image: alien-space-jockey-4469286qkxau.jpg?v=1]](http://s.excessif.com/mmdia/i/28/6/alien-space-jockey-4469286qkxau.jpg?v=1)
![[Image: biggrin.gif]](http://tcforums.com/ubb/biggrin.gif)