Science by Press Release

As a scientist one thing I recognize that promoting ones science is an important part of a research career. Research visibility provides opportunity to make connections, further your research, obtain funding and keep your job at the University.

When publishing your research in an academic journal peer review ensures your data is valid and conclusions are justified. Most research doesn't make waves, but you hope it gains traction and forms part of the ongoing discussion in the literature through other researcher reading your and citing your work.

However academia and research has somewhat moved past the publish or perish mindset, though publications are still important. Universities now track altmetrics, which is a measure of public engagement with the research. Universities want to conduct research that has this impact, research thats groundbreaking, that produces a technology to market. This drives a push towards creating a splash and the media becomes a means of promoting discovery.

This is where self promotion creeps in as its removed from the bounds of peer review and whats publishable. When talking about your work to the press its all about telling them why they should care, how this will fundamentally change our understanding or a tech application that will revolutionize a process. At this point its where researchers often go beyond the data to potentially exaggerating the implication. In the media a relatively humble data can become an earth shattering discovery if its the right subject matter at the right time.

This is quite common in social sciences whereby not particularly rigid datasets are portrayed in the media as demonstrating clear links or causation between factors, when there are many potentially confounding variables.

A fascinating example comes from a few years ago, with the so called discovery of a microbe that incorporated arsenic in place of phosphorus. Even NASA got in on the promotion, despite most in the biochemistry field being highly skeptical. The paper was published in Science, but the data itself did not clearly demonstrate arsenic was incorporated into the DNA. When the paper appeared in print it was eventually accompanied by 8 technical notes pointing out the issues with the study and the authors conclusions.

The study received a lot of attention in the media and the head researcher did not hold back in proclaiming the implications of the study that would fundamentally alter our understanding of life , or that there could be whole shadow biosphere of microbes utilising arsenic.

The problem was biochemist knew this was impossible due to the fact that arsenic esters are too unstable and hydrolise readily compared to phosphate diesters which don't readily hydrolise. Of course the media not being biochemists did not pick up on this.

Later studies on the bacteria strain failed to detect arsenic in DNA and noted the bacteria likely utilised trace phosphate that contaminated the growth medium and arsentate utilised.

You can read more about it on wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GFAJ-1

Today is Brexit Day

The world will be watching today as Britain votes on its future in the EU. This represents a pivotal moment for Britain as a nation and the ongoing existence of the EU. Moreso it represent a frontline in the battle of globalism vs nationalism, which is why the globalists are fighting so strongly against Brexit.

It's hard to argue against the national interest of a Brexit, but Britain's importance to the EU and the importance of the EU for the globalist project means there are many in the establishment who want to see the vote fail. Watching from Australia, its hard to see why Britain would want to tie itself to the fortunes of the EU, especially given the EU's determination to destroy itself. To remain will see Britain carry the burden that Brussels has imposed on itself and ultimately see Britain mired in the same mess that Europe finds itself in.

The rise of nationalistic sentiment has not just been seen in Britain, but also in America with the rise of Trump and in countries across Europe, where right wing parties have seen a sharp rise in their percent of the vote.  A similar battle exists in Australia with those who wish Australia could be closer to the action so it would be easier to impose the globalist agenda here.

So today the people of Britain vote for themselves, but the outcome will reverberate in the West.

Ubisoft drops their tower formula for Watchdogs 2

Watch Dogs 2's creative director has revealed that the game won't be utilizing Ubisoft's trademark tower design. The mechanic had become a trope for open world design ever since it was used in the original Assassins Creed game. By climbing a tower you would unlock content in that area, such as story and side missions. It was somewhat of a contrivance, that whilst an effective formula, it became a cookie cutter for open world design.

It's welcome news then that Ubisoft will be employing something more organic in  Watch Dogs 2, whereby you'll discover content by exploration and build your influence and power by recruiting people to your cause (to the hacker group DeadSec).

I think natural discoverability is a better way to  handle open world content. Populating an area with tasks each time you climbed a tower, ultimately bogged down games. I think Rockstars open world design has always been superior in that they don't rely so much on generic tasks in each area for content. They simply create a world that's fun to be in and lots of missions that serve the story.

As someone who enjoyed the first Watch Dogs, Watch Dogs 2 sounds promising. I quite enjoyed maxmising use of hackable objects in combat, which felt like the most thematic way to play and it looks like Ubisoft will be enhancing this for the sequel.

Watch Dogs 2 will be released on November 15th this year.

Polygon Fails at Playing Doom

Plenty of people have their doubts about whether the folks
over at Polygon even like videogames. This video both affirms those doubts and
leaves you scratching your head at the same time.

Why did Polygon upload a gameplay video featuring someone
who was so hilariously bad at the game? What service does that do the audience
or the game?

It wasn’t just someone getting to grips with the game, it
was someone struggling with the basic FPS mechanics of moving and shooting.
Which makes you wonder who on Polgyon’s staff can’t play FPS? Why were they
assigned to play Doom? and why did they not come to grips with the controls
before recording footage?

Do Polgyon not have quality control?

Maybe this is why Polgon love walking simulators? 

Stella Glow - Impressions

What is it: Stella glow is an SRPG from developer Imageepoch and published by Atlus. It was released in the US and Japan last year and recently made it to Australian shores.


What do I need to know: The premise of the game is that an evil witch is attempting to crystallize the world using a cursed song. The only way to stop it is to find and unite four 'good' witches, to counter the evil witches song. The game takes place in areans reminiscent of Final Fantasy tactics. 

The gameplay is centred around battles in these arenas and interspersed with plentiful story sequences and character development. On the battlefield you need to coordinate the various strengths and weaknesses of your squad to succeed. You'll have characters that can move and strike quickly, ranged characters, witches who can use powerful spells, but are vulnerable to enemy attacks. Other characters can serve as protectors for the group, through the guardian ability which stops enemies from passing through adjacent spaces. These characters typically have plenty of hitpoints and are good in close quarters.

Being able to flank the enemy and get in behind is important, but you must also be careful to not leave your own fighters too exposed. 


What do I think: The game has a pretty typical JRPG setup - kid with amnesia etc... But its setting and the background of the world is actually interesting. The game has a great art style, which is complemented by an excellent soundtrack and voice acting.

There's plenty of dialogue between characters and the the overall tone of the story is quite reminiscent of a Saturday morning cartoon (in a good way).

The battle system is easy to pick up, but has enough strategy to be enjoyable. Between battles you'll spend your time at the capital  where you split your time between support conversations with your squad, doing jobs for money or exploring for items.

After 10 hours I'm really enjoying the game and can recommend it to SRPG fans.

Collateral Damage - Acceptable victims in the name of political ideology

I actually thought of this concept yesterday before the attacks in Brussels in relation to the issues of illegal immigration in the US.  This article on The Blaze addresses the impact of illegal immigration:

Illegal immigration is absolutely not a victimless crime

In a period of 4 years from 2010 over 100 illegal immigrants subject to deportation orders, but released into the community were charged with homicide. One man was deported 5 times, before murdering a woman in San Francisco. It also applies to the attacks on Women in Europe and the compromised security as a result of EU border policies.

Missing is the outrage and condemnation we should expect to find, because its something our leaders have accepted as part of the multicultural, open borders political ideology. Obama made no public statements toward the shooting death of Kathryn Steinle, because it would be inconvenient to the political narrative to address her victimhood at the hands of authorities who have failed in their duty to protect the border and the US citizens.

Its the same in Europe where they are more concerned with maintaining political correctness than actually doing something about the threat of Islamic extremism. Now we come to yet another attack, this time in Brussels, a breeding ground of Islamic extremism. Leaders will make the same hand wringing statements about solidarity, yet do nothing about the security and policies that allowed the attack in the first place.

Since 9/11 the right have warned about the threat of Islamism, yet inspite of this Angela Merkel and co. conspired to import Islam on mass, even with no go zones already well known in Sweden. Those who have already become victims will not find the justice they deserve, for they are acceptable collateral damage in the quest to overthrow national identity across the EU.

There are some countries that have resisted, mostly those in Eastern Europe, like Hungary. Inspite of bullying from the EU, they chose to maintain the safety and security of their country in the face of Merkels orchestrated migrant crisis. Here's a great speech made just days ago:
Orban's historic speech

Who now would criticize Hungary for erecting a fence and controlling its borders? How many ISIS members are in Europe now, ready to strike.

This is why Trump is so far ahead in the primaries in the US: people are sick of being considered acceptable collateral.


Enough

The Division looks to be following in the footsteps of Destiny

The Division Year One

I played the beta, and decided I'd wait to see how the dust settles before buying the game. With players already hitting the level cap and having the best gear and The Darkzone with a number of short-comings, I'll continue to hold out.


The Division finds itself on the same trajectory as Destiny. It'll be the game that everyone bitches about in the comments in 2016, because it'll take a year to get it right. I reckon I'll be holding out for the Taken King equivalent version of The Division. By then they will have optimised the loot economy, added more content and fixed the darkzone.

Here's some thoughts I had on the DZ in particular in a few tweets:

Whilst the game handles matchmaking better than Destiny - its easy to find a team to do missions, raids etc the lack of true PVP could hurt it. Fortunately an easy fix would be to have a strictly PVP area where the concept of going Rogue is removed.

Anti Trump Protesters shutdown rally in Chicago ; Mizzou protests lead to enrollment down turn

Make America Great Again

I've been watching with interest Donald Trumps campaign for President and the unfolding spectacle.

As Trumps campaign builds near unstoppable momentum we have seen things go from the odd heckler at his rallies to full blown counter protests. Which is quite sinister, given their aim to intimidate and silence opposition. A trump rally in Chicago was called off, due to security fears.

Trump responded:

https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/708619775153475584?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw

 I generally identify with a political party who's economically liberal and socially conservative (which is the Liberal party here in Australia). I've never quite identified with the Republican establishment conservatives, who don't truly represent conservative values.

So to see a candidate who doesn't fit the establishment mold, who's actually putting American national interest at the forefront of his campaign is quite exciting.
As some commentators point out Trump is not owned by the donor class, so he can't be controlled, which is probably why outlets such as Fox has come out against Trump. In Australia the news.com.au page routinely runs anti trump slanted stories. See example below.

The second half of this story is dedicated to condemning violence from Trumps supporters, but no mention of violence from the anti Trump side 

Having read Mark Steyn's After America (well worth a read) I know what the decline of America means for the west. Can you imagine what becomes of the west if America were to embrace the defeatists self loathing of countries like Germany and other countries in the EU. Which is also why I'm watching the #Brexit campaign with great interest over in the UK.


Mizzou faces budget shortfall after caving to protesters

The University finds themselves in damage control, following a plunge in enrollments in the aftermath of the BLM , concerned student, Melissa Click debacle. The shortfall of 1500 students compared to the forecast leaves a 30 million whole in the budget.

Hopefully this sends a warning to Administrators around the country about the culture they facilitate on their Campus. No one wants to go to a University who's controlled by a handful of entitled cry bullies.

Chris Plante, Harvest Moon and the Anita Sarkeesian school of reductionist criticism

Chris Plante is a writer for The Verge and Polygon, so its no surprise he's a complete hack. But even keeping that in mind, this is still dumb on a level that's difficult to comprehend.


The offending piece

The Anita Sarkeesian school of reductionist criticism

Anita Sarkeesian's series relied quite heavily on heavy handed analysis of game mechanics and story scenes. Rather than taking them at face value as the creators intended and as the average person would her criticism would take an incredibly reductive approach to emerge with a criticism of the portrayal as being in some way sexist. Anita spent quite a bit of time deconstructing  simple 8bit and 16bit story sequences suggest that the female character in the scene was objectified and lacked agency such as Bowser kidnapping the Princess or your girlfriend being kidnapped in Double Dragon.

Her method of criticism was well and truly exposed when she took the mechanic of being able to move bodies in Hitman Absolution. She then showed a single portion of a level in the game that has you passing through a strippers dressing room in a club and then implied that the game somehow intended you to assault the women and derive some sort of sexual pleasure from moving around their bodies.  Clearly that's not what the mechanic was there for. It was simply a common stealth mechanic to avoid raising alarm when you have to knock out guards.

Now to Chris and Harvest Moon. If you ever played the series growing up as I did, you would remember fondly the SNES version, inheriting the farm and spending the day tidying your fields, tending your crops and ramping up your farms operation. Then after working hard on the farm you could look forward to festivals on the calendar where you could let your hair down, get to know the towns people and potentially persue one of the women. You could do this by talking to them at the festivals and bringing them gifts. With persistence you would eventually win their hearts.

Enter goony beard man Chris Plante and his tale of being an apparently not particularly bright 12 year old who decided that the Harvest Moon romance mechanics were to be taken quite literally. Cue story of Chris randomly buying a gift with his pocket money for a girl who live in his culdesac who he'd never talked too.

Of course Chris blames this awkward incident on Harvest Moon teaching him the wrong lessons. That the games romance mechanics weren't dating sim enough. That real women aren't video game characters.

He then ends up talking about the overlap of pick up artists and the videogame community:

"Whenever I hear about overlap between pick-up artist community and video games, I think of that ring. I see how someone who loves video games reduces relationships to a series of checkboxes."

Yes it just compared Harvest Moon dating mechanics to PUA's. An entirely innocent mechanic that most people who aren't SJW sad sacks can relate to. Funny I never saw it as checkboxes. I saw it as  persuing and being attentive and thoughtful to my Harvest Moon waifu to be.

Chris then closes with an even more pathetic tale now that he's playing the HM clone Stardew , his in game character is a complete beta to match real life who avoids the ladies at the festivals and gives gifts to the shop keepers instead.

Everyone loves the new feminist Ghostbusters

[/sarcasm]

New Ghostbusters Trailer

So a trailer for the new Ghostbusters has hit the net, and confirmed your worst fears for this movie are well founded. The feminist edition cast just completely falls flat. They just aren't convincing. Yes gender has something to do with it. Gender isn't a pallet swap, it doesn't work that way.

A far better idea would have been to have two women and two men, and a complete rethink of the cast. Some potentials for the cast in such a movie would be: Aubrey Plaza , Jewel Staite, Chris Pratt, Nick Frost...

Not much of a casting director myself but, that's just of the top of my head.

Well there's always the originals

Europe watch

This will be a regular feature of news stories on the unfolding madness in Europe.

First up:

NATO's top general says mass migration to Europe is allowing ISIS to spread "like a cancer"

ISIS are infiltrating Europe in the mass of people pouring into the country. #ThanksMerkel


60 minutes crew attacked in migrant neighbourhood of Sweden

Sweden is known for no go zones in areas such as Malmo. There are whole towns there which are essential islamic enclaves.

As a follow up to that, this report from Ezra Levant on muslim areas in Sweden and Germany is worth watching.

Rebel Media report from Eurabia


Europe is facing a “self-induced humanitarian crisis”

The invasion continues into 2016. How do authorities cope when they were already overwhelmed with last years intake. Why hasn't Merkel attacked decisively?

There's are question the average person asks, while watching the leaders flounder.

Fire Emblem Fates - Treehouse Edition

There's been a stir about the localisation of Fire Emblem Fates for a few weeks. It's been know for sometime that some content had been removed, such as the head patting mini game. The localisation team at Treehouse had deemed these would not translate to the American or Western audience. But it doesn't end there. Treehouse has taken a hatchet to the game completely changing dialogue, altering the tone completely.

Take the support conversations with Soleil (who in the Japanese version has an infatuation with cute girls - though it is not in fact romantic). In order the get around possible controversy of sexuality, Treehouse has altered all the male support conversations to buddy support dialogue over romantic, implying her to be homosexual. Not only that but the dialogue has changed from mature, to cringy friendzone buddy chat. See the image below for the full rundown.

Other dialogue has been removed and replaced with ellipses for no apparent reason. Gamers understandably want play the game as the creators intended, but Treehouse has shown little respect to integrity of the experience in this regard.

Gamers have rallied around #fireemblemfates and #torrentialdownpour to voice their objection.


Bravely Second has also fallen victim to this "localisation" process:

http://www.gamezone.com/news/bravely-second-localization-has-seemingly-butchered-the-game-3434305

An alarming trend across college campuses in the US 

See a video of what unfolded



Ben Shapiro was scheduled to give a speech at CSULA for the Young Americans for freedom foundation. To sane people a conservative giving a speech on campus is not a huge deal. But to the modern liberal coddled college student, an opinion they disgaree with is something they aren't equipped to deal with.

Yes these safe space social justice diversity warriors formed a mob to bully and intimidate conservative students and to try and have the event shutdown. At one stage students were trapped in side by the mobs.

 These are people who think they are on the right side of history, who probably think there is some virtue in what they are doing. This is the statement from the YAF after the incident:

The pushback against this regressive leftism has already begun, but we have a lot of ground to take back. Make no mistake though, we are fighting for the values that made the west great against a totalitarian ideology.