LAZY, WATCH ABOUT 55 MINUTES IN! They explain that once genes are done building a brain, they lose all control of it, and that a gene's "motives" (a metaphor) are not to be confused with our brain's subconcious motives. A gene may "selfishly" program us to enjoy sex and take care of children, and build those basic rules in there for the world they were selected for, but once those genes have built that brain, if the world that brain ends up in is different, it's too late, they can't do jack to inferfere or subvert that brain afterwards. So if that brain ends up adopting children or using protection during sex to avoid pregnancy, so be it, the genes can go jump in a lake. They never adapted for an environment where sex didn't lead to children or for people to live in such huge clusters that massive amounts of lost children were available and indeed housed for adoption. When we have sex, nothing in our brains is programmed by the genes to think of the consequence, they just "count on" that consequence happening. Genes go for "good enough" whenever possible because that's all the power natural selection has. In the past, a sex drive was "good enough".
Oh, that guy on the left CREATED the selfish gene idea. I think he'd know what it meant if you decide to say they're both wrong about the interpretation.
Menace Beach ... Yes, aka Sunday Funday, the horribly hard platformer on a skateboard mentioned in the AVGN's Bible Games video for example. It's... frustrating. The controls are so, so slippery, and you die randomly so many ways... bounced back by spring blocks, hit by enemies or random shots while on a balloon, bumped into a pit, because THAT jump block secretly bounces you down into the pit instead of into the air, etc, etc. It's such an annoying game...
Still, it does some interesting things. You can pick up items, which is vital at some points (for carrying a bomb over to where you have to try to blow up a sumo guy with it, for example). Now blowing up sumo guys with bombs (the only way to kill them) is very hard and frustrating, as you need to toss it and then just hope that he's in its range when it goes off (likely he won't be and you need to go back and try again), but it's somewhat different at least...
Also, you have infinite continues from the beginning of the level, there are only 12 levels, and the first half of the game isn't that hard, apart from some frustration in level two. Level 9 is by far the hardest one; that one took a LOT of frustration to get past, that's for sure. From beginning to end, it's just so, so hard...
Once I finally managed to get past it, though, level 10 wasn't too bad, and 11 only had one tricky part (with a jump too long to jump and with no balloon; I eventually just figured to to the 'floating jump' you do when you repeatedly hit jump in the air (or turn on turbo and hold the jump button... :)), getting as far as possible before dying. This worked and there was a continue point on the next platform... kind of annoying, though, that you seem to have to die to get past that (unless there's something I missed, which quite possible). Oh well... at least the last level wasn't very long. The final boss was kind of tricky, those rocks kill you instantly, but it's short. The final boss is a bit of a pain, but once you figure out how to hit him (use the rocks...), I eventually beat him. It definitely took a lot of tries, though. This is one game that I'd never get anywhere near the end of without infinite continues, that's for sure!
Oh, in classic NES fashion, the ending wasn't particularly rewarding. Oh well, I wasn't exactly expecting much. At least there is an ending scene and not just "END" on the screen and that's it or something. :)
Quote: English getting its millionth word Wednesday?
By John D. Sutter
CNN
(CNN) -- English contains more words than any other language on the planet and will add its millionth word early Wednesday, according to the Global Language Monitor, a Web site that uses a math formula to estimate how often words are created.
The site estimates the millionth word will be added Wednesday at 5:22 a.m. Its live ticker counted 999,985 English words as of early Tuesday evening.
The "Million Word March," however, has made the man who runs this word-counting project somewhat of a pariah in the linguistic community. Some linguists say it's impossible to count the number of words in a language because languages are always changing, and because defining what counts as a word is a fruitless endeavor.
Paul J.J. Payack, president and chief word analyst for the Global Language Monitor, says, however, that the million-word estimation isn't as important as the idea behind his project, which is to show that English has become a complex, global language.
"It's a people's language," he said.
Other languages, like French, Payack said, put big walls around their vocabularies. English brings others in.
"English has the tradition of swallowing new words whole," he said. "Other languages translate."
The Internet, global commerce and global travel have accelerated the trend by putting English in contact with many other linguistic groups. This has made English more rich and more complex -- hence all of the new terms, he said.
Still, Payack says he doesn't include all new words in his count. Words must make sense in at least 60 percent of the world to be official, he said. And they must make sense to different communities of people. A new technology term that's only understood in Silicon Valley wouldn't count as a mainstream word, he said.
His computer models check a total of 5,000 Web sites, dictionaries, scholarly publications and news articles to see how frequently words are used, he said. A word must make 25,000 appearances to be deemed legitimate. Learn about how other languages stack up »
Payack said news events have also fueled the rapid expansion of English, which he said has more words than any other language. Mandarin Chinese comes in second with about 450,000 words, he said.
English terms like "Obamamania," "defriend," "wardrobe malfunction," "zombie banks," "shovel ready" and "recessionista" all have grown out of recent news cycles about the presidential election, economic crash, online networking or a sports event, he said. Other languages might not have developed new terms to deal with such phenomena, he said.
Language experts who spoke with CNN said they disapprove of Payack's count, but they agree that English generally has more words than most, if not all, languages.
"This is stuff that you just can't count," said Jesse Sheidlower, editor at large of the Oxford English Dictionary. "No one can count it, and to pretend that you can is totally disingenuous. It simply can't be done."
The Oxford English Dictionary has about 600,000 entries, Sheidlower said. But that by no means includes all words, he said.
For example, Sheidlower said "great-great-great-great-great grandfather" could be considered a word, but wouldn't be in the dictionary. There's a similar problem with numbers, which may be counted up by their pieces -- "twenty" and "three" -- but not always as a group, as in "two-hundred twenty-three."
Part of what makes determining the number of words in a language so difficult is that there are so many root words and their variants, said Sarah Thomason, president of the Linguistic Society of America and a linguistics professor at the University of Michigan.
In the language of people who are native to Alaska, she said, there are dozens of words for snow, but many of them are linked together and wouldn't be counted individually. Does that mean, she asked, that "slush," "powder" and other snow words in English should be counted as one entry?
Thomason called the million-word count a "sexy idea" that is "all hype and no substance."
Linguists and lexicographers run into further complications when trying to count words that are spelled one way but can have several meanings, said Allan Metcalf, an English professor at MacMurray College in Illinois, and an officer at the American Dialect Society.
"The word bear, b-e-a-r -- is that two words or one, for example? You have a noun that's a wild creature and then you have b-e-a-r, [which means] to bear left or to bear right, and there's many other things," he said. "So you really can't be exact about a millionth word."
Payack said he doesn't consider his to be the definitive count, just an interesting estimation based on set criteria he has helped develop.
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"It's always an estimation," he said. "It's like the height of Mount Everest is an estimation. The height of Mount Everest has changed five times in my lifetime because as we get better tools, the estimates get better."
He said the count is meant to be a celebration of English as a global language. And, while he says other languages are being stamped out by English's expansion, it's a powerful thing that so many people today are able to communicate with such a vast list of words.
4 Night at the Museum: Battle of the Smithsonian (2009) $14.7M $127M
5 Star Trek (2009) $8.4M $223M
6 Terminator Salvation (2009) $8.18M $105M
7 Drag Me to Hell (2009) $7.34M $28.5M
8 Angels & Demons (2009) $6.5M $116M
9 My Life in Ruins (2009) $3.23M $3.23M
10 Dance Flick (2009)
Who would have thought Trek would be King of the Box office? I think they definitely succeeded in reaching their goal of attracting new fans.
All they really need to do in the follow up to Trek , Is have a good character driven story with a coherent plot and get their science right, No Beastie boys!! If they have contemporary music use the Beatles or the stones in line with the 60's theme.
Terminator never reached number one, Its still being pistol whipped by Trek.
I hope that the studio takes account of this, If they make another Terminator Film, Get a good director and drop Bale he cost to much.
