To be honest I expected an indictment to come down for Darren Wilson and I'm very disappointed that it didn't. I made a point of not getting too deeply involved with Ferguson because it became very emotional and I was afraid I'd get too swept up into it. The problem with impassioned cases like this is when you've taken a side, you become ignorant of anything else that contradicts your viewpoint. This happens whether you're Republican or Democrat, man or woman, majority or minority, American or non-American. When I was younger I was very strongly anti-Bush. I still am, but my arguments nowadays I hope have more consideration and thought to them than me just foaming in rage and parroting whatever I heard that's convenient for my opinion.

Not knowing Wilson or Brown personally, I honestly can't say if Wilson is the type of person to shoot a person who isn't attacking him, nor if Brown is the type of person to attack a police officer. Witnesses say Brown wasn't, but witnesses have been proven to be wrong before. I've heard there's forensic evidence proving Wilson's story wrong, but my sources are from people who are definitely pro-Brown and I'm ashamed to say I didn't follow up on it myself. That's actually why I really wanted an indictment: All the evidence would've been laid on the table. The prosecutors and defense could've spun it the way they wanted, but at least it would've been out there in a way that's beyond the noise of everyone else who's angry and upset.

Is there a problem with unarmed black men being shot by police officers? Of course there is and we need to address and stop this from happening. Whether this is an instance of that I have no idea. I wasn't there and I haven't seen all the evidence. What I have seen is how Ferguson treated the protestors, and that I can easily condemn. It was mismanaged, despicable, and overblown. As rowdy as they may have been, there's no excuse to bring in that much artillery and weaponry. In fact, the police shouldn't have that at all, and I'm worried the same tactics will be used as protestors gather again. I was hoping Ferguson would open up a movement to demilitarize police at least if stopping the killing of black males wasn't going to go anywhere, but unfortunately it only allowed a small debate that faded away as the news cycle moved onto the Ukraine, the war in the Gaza Strip, ISIS, Ebola, the elections...

An indictment would've helped both sides because if he did kill Brown unjustly, justice would've been served. And if he didn't, he could cut through the disinformation to prove his innocence. I can see the argument here that you don't want officers second-guessing in the heat of the moment whether their actions could land them in court, but here I think there's enough out there to say we need to take a closer look at it. And really officers need to fucking think about their actions because this has happened too many times.

In the academia the motto is "publish or perish," and I read periodicals to keep on track of current developments in my field. Famous ones include Oxford's The English Historical Review or the Medieval Academy of America's Speculum. The idea is to get it peer-reviewed by other professionals so that there's a sense of quality control.

Recently there's been an explosion of "fake" journals: Predatory publishers send out advertisements so that, for a fee, your article can appear in their journal. However no one will read this unknown periodical, and your money went to waste. Particularly since there's no peer review, so any idiot can publish their findings.

To demonstrate this, here is an article about The International Journal of Advanced Technology. What I love about this is that they didn't even give a glance to the paper. I know no one's doing proofreading, never mind fact-checking, but you'd think someone would at least give a glance.

I went straight from iOS4 to iOS8 on my iPhone, so the changes are immediately noticeable and extensive. I had to spend a day fiddling around until I figured out how everything works. For a company that prides itself on design, I can say Apple fucked up on the mp3 player. This is the current iOS screen:

In iOS4, the playback bar was above the album art, which for me makes all the difference. I think whoever created this forgets it's not a mouse but rather my ginormous fingers controlling everything. By cramming all the controls at the bottom, it's easier for me to accidentally press something else, especially since this is an mp3 player and half the time I'm not really looking at it. Before there was never an issue because it was separated from everything else, so it was harder for me to fuck up.

You probably can't read the German, but those pink buttons on the bottom weren't there either. From left to right, it's the repeat, create a new playlist, and randomize. Those weren't there before either; they were tiny and diagonal to the playback bar instead of right next to the volume bar, which also means I'm tapping that shit unintentionally.

But this is the most annoying aspect for me right here. On iOS4 if you tapped any random place on the screen, the lyrics would pop up. If there weren't any, then nothing would happen. Here instead the artist's name, title, and CD disappear and the ability to rate the song pops up. Those dots can turn to stars if you tap them accordingly. Considering I'm already fucking up over accuracy, having this shit pop up every three seconds instead of letting me move onto the next track, lower the volume, or progress further into the song makes me want to pull my hair out. Was this something people were complaining about? In the previous iOSes you could still do it, but there was a step or two in between. Were people saying, "Man, what I really want is for it to be easier to rate these songs and tapping to a star menu was too fucking difficult so please smash as many functions into this tiny space as possible." Because that's the only reason why I can imagine they designed it like this.

Jesus, I kinda forgot about this. Okay, back on track.

Did you know the German dub pulled crazy 4kids shit? They felt blades were a no-no and edited out things like kunai. This particular scene took a new twist:

So he says, but later in the series gave me the impression that everyone and their mother could use the Sharingan so long as they tried. Also, Christ this scanlation group needs a better typesetter/editor.

I really miss these splash pages because they were usually pretty funny or cool to look at. I've noticed that with some long-running series: The page numbers per chapter start decreasing. I remember paintpixel started coloring some of them, and because I had access to the color laser printer in the weather station at Bronx Science, I got so many requests to print them out. Ah, the memories.

People complain about Naruto and flashbacks, which is true, but I think they forget it started really early on. Considering these pages come from chapter 12, it's not like the reader forgot any of this. The anime was also pulling this bullshit by this point: I distinctly remember this episode spent the first ten minutes recapping the previous one.

People fucking forget how great this plan was. It's no Shikamaru level, but it's still pretty fucking excellent. I wasn't expecting this from Naruto, especially at this early stage. What happened to this kid? I guess that's what happens when you have infinite amounts of chakra; you forget about complicated plans and just plow people over with your superior powers.

I use this as an example about the problems of moving from one medium to another. I saw this first in the anime before reading it in the manga, and this move took a good ten, fifteen seconds. At the time I thought, "Why the hell is Zabuza continuing his attack when it's obvious that Kakashi's copying it?" In the manga, this looks almost instantaneous. Because the animators had to accommodate all the seals, they created a drawn-out sequence that looks ridiculous in real time. Naruto as a series suffered a lot in the action scenes because of all the internal thoughts, which created awkward pauses. Compare that to something like Cowboy Bebop that had smooth fights without having to stop everything for a character to contemplate what to do next. It works better on page than in animation.

Also, does this move win the prize for amount of seals? It's not that amazing compared to some of the jutsu later on.

Considering I technically beat it even though I have tons of levels to finish, I should probably talk about Hyrule Warriors a bit. I've mentioned my biggest complaint before about character additions as well as unimportant enemies suddenly being given a prominent role. Second to that, I feel there's not much consideration given to games other than Ocarina of Time, Twilight Princess, or Skyward Sword. Lana has a few moves that give a nod toward Wind Waker, but that's it. Instead of Wizzrobe, Cia, or Volga, you could've had Agahnim, the Skull Kid, Vaati, Nightmare... I heard they're adding more characters with the new DLC, but so far they're from the three games already covered. Hyrule Warriors isn't a nostalgia game like Dissidia, but I still would prefer a greater appreciation for the series as a whole instead of the recent 3D ones (and they even skipped Majora's Mask!).

The plot wasn't amazing but then again Zelda rarely is, although this one shocked me. Ganon got his ass kicked by the new character, Cia. There wasn't even a level to show the ass kicking; it happened in a cut scene. Do you honestly think he could be dominated by some newbie? No. He would fucking destroy her. Her plot wasn't really necessary considering Ganon is the main villain; nothing would've changed if they had just removed her from the storyline, which is probably why I despise her and Lana so much.

Controls are fine, although I've heard they're pretty bad on the Wiimote. My only complaint is it's difficult to select which enemy you want to focus on. Half the time I'm directly facing a guy, press the lock on button, and suddenly I'm targeting someone behind me forty feet away.

Overall I was pleased with the game, which surprised me. The music is... different considering Zelda usually tries to go with classical and this is mostly metal or rock, it's fun to whack people in the face, and playing around with the different weapons is fun as shit. I wouldn't recommend this if you're not a Zelda fan because I believe Dynasty Warriors probably is more substantial, but it's a great way to pass the time.

We all know what the shitfest Assassin's Creed - Unity is, but what interested me is Ubisoft's demand that reviewers not publish their reviews until twelve hours after the game was released. Corruption and dishonesty has always been a staple of the video game news industry, but I'm on the fence whether this case is unethical. Let's compare this to Kane & Lynch and GameSpot: An editor was fired because the website posted a bad review, and Eidos threatened to pull advertising. There's no black and white there. GameSpot is not demonstrating journalistic integrity and instead bows to pressure.

I agree that Ubisoft's decision is not consumer-friendly, but they're not telling news organizations to lie. To be honest, Ubisoft isn't obliged to give advanced copies to anyone. The BBC notes Sega didn't for Sonic Boom, and I wasn't upset at them for doing so. It doesn't benefit the company itself in any way because reviewers can warn about potential problems. Would that help customers if they did? Of course. But I view video games like movies: If it's a big-name game, people are going to buy it anyway so there's lots of revenue opening day. If it's shitty, word gets out and numbers drop. That's irregardless if journalists are involved or not.

It's not like I'm comfortable with the agreement that Ubisoft made with news organizations, but both sides were brutally honest here. Ubisoft wanted their pre-order and first day money, and news were allowed to complain all they wanted... so long as it was after the release time. If it really bothered them, they wouldn't've signed the agreement with Ubisoft. In reality I don't give a shit what places like GameSpot have to say considering as I've mentioned above their morality is dubious and reviews in general don't sway me. At the end of the day it's an opinion, and I often have a different opinion than other people. I have a lot of respect for Yahtzee and Zero Punctuation, but he and I disagree on a lot of things. He derided many things I loved, and that didn't stop me from buying it, much like anything I write here won't stop him from loving things. Admittedly here it's dealing with facts and not opinions — a glitch exists regardless of how you feel about it — but at least it's not like the old days where once you buy a cartridge, that's it. And Ubisoft learned their lesson this time around.

You may have heard about the 2009 earthquake in Italy that got several scientists convicted for not properly telling the population that one was imminent. Surprisingly I'm on the fence about this one. See, if that sentence were completely true, I would totally agree that Italy is out of its fucking mind. There's no way a seismologist can predict something like that. But that's not the full story. The town had experienced minor tremors prior to the big one and called in some dudes to ask if something's going to happen. They gave varying replies, but some of them said there's no danger of an earthquake, which then occurred. Yeah, then I'm going to blame them. Just like you can't predict when an earthquake happens, conversely you can't predict when it doesn't. So the town went back to their lives without realizing 300 of them would soon die.

Seismology is a reactionary science. Maybe some day we can give a date and time, but right now all they can do is examine the aftershocks. It's not like volcanology, where if you're looking at it carefully enough you can tell it's gonna blow. What the scientists should've just said is maybe. Whether that's enough to charge them, I don't know. I don't think it's the same category as an engineer saying a building is stable and then it collapses, but I don't think the seismologists acted properly in this situation either.

When Charles VIII of Frances died unexpectedly in 1498 without any heirs, the throne passed to his second-cousin, Duke Louis of Orléans. Nowadays we think of the French kings as some of the most powerful of Europe, but particularly in the early days of the Middle Ages they barely had any real authority at all. Technically they just controlled the Île-de-France, a small area surrounding Paris. Eventually through marrying heiresses or employing escheat were the French kings able to become the towering figures we think of like Louis XIV, the Sun King.

Louis of Orléans, or now Louis XII, comes in during that consolidating period. And he faced a problem. Charles VIII had married Anne, the duchess of Brittany. Now that she's a widow, the dukedom reverts back to her. Brittany is nothing to sneeze at; it's double the size of the Île-de-France, plus it's always been quasi-autonomous and troublesome, so to put it under direct control of the French royal family would solve a lot of issues. Not wanting to lose this opportunity, Louis planned on marrying Anne, but unfortunately he was already married to another woman named Joan, who was Charles VIII's sister.

Normally in these situations kings use consanguinity, which is basically an anti-incest law. The degree depended on the time period, but during Louis' time the church prohibited within the fourth degree unless you got a papal dispensation first. And the pope allowed this marriage, so Louis couldn't use that route, never mind they actually were legally far apart enough to marry, surprising considering everyone was related to everyone in the European nobility by this point.

Next he tried to say lack of consent. Charles VIII and Joan's father, Louis XI, arranged this marriage, and it eventually came to fruition when the two reached puberty. Age of consent back then was fourteen, but unfortunately Louis nor anyone else could really definitely say whether he was fourteen or a little younger.

So he picked the most humiliating way possible: He couldn't consummate the marriage due to her physical deformities, which is humiliating to say the least. At this point Joan got pissed off, so she produced two witnesses who said Louis bragged after their wedding night he went for three or four rounds, so he countered with he couldn't have sex because she used witchcraft on him, and her riposte was how does he know what sex is like with her if he's under a spell.

Clearly Louis was just making shit up as he went along, and if Pope Alexander VI didn't need his help against the Sforza, there's no way he could've obtained an annulment. But that's always what I wondered about this case: If Alexander was under your thumb anyway — anyone who's played Assassin's Creed knows the French are invading Italy at about this time — there wasn't any need to start grasping at straws for a reason. Just stick with the consanguinity thing and Alexander will provide. It's not like the Borgias were known for their moral probity here. This way it's not obvious that you're lying and you have the added bonus of not insulting your wife, who may I add loyally managed your estates and helped your release after you were an idiot and rebelled against the French crown, only to be captured and imprisoned. Jesus Christ son, have some class.

Have you ever heard of William Van Allen? Probably not. He was the architect behind the Chrysler Building. Prior to that project, he was partners with another architect named H. Craig Severance, but the two had a falling out. Later on, Severance was hired to create the Bank of America Building, now known as the Trump Building. You probably recognize it by sight but don't know it by name. Whilst this was going on, Walter Chrysler hired Van Allen to create his building, and the two started construction concurrently. At the time, it was the big news as to who would create the world's tallest building first. Each week newspapers were stating how many stories were added, and the other side would read it and add more to their building. It got so bad that to fool Severance, Van Allen had that famous spire of the Chrysler Building constructed inside the skyscraper itself and then hoisted up after the Bank of America Building was officially completed. There's no fucking way this would be legal now.

This story had drama, passion, and everything a news organization wants, but my favorite part about it is after all that effort and fighting, it was a moot point because less than a year later the Empire State Building was made. How's that, you little shits. Fuck Chrysler, fuck Bank of America, the Empire State is here to kick all your asses.

(Actually the worst part of this story is Chrysler never paid Van Allen. Part of the reason why Van Allen and Severance stopped collaborating together is Van Allen had no business acumen, and thus only assumed Chrysler would give him his due without actually writing up a contract.)

Wow, I swear I updated more recently than this. My bad. Lemme rant for a little bit though. It's one thing to be lazy and it's another to lie. Tonight when I got home, I checked the tracking for my shipment. Thank fucking god I did because it said it was delivered and specifically said it was given to an individual. So I ran upstairs and asked mom and dad where my package was, and they said they hadn't received anything. I'm about to start calling neighbors to ask if it was sent to the wrong address, but then I thought, "Wait, let me check the front door first." And sure enough, it was sitting there in plain sight on the steps. I know this company has an option "left at door" because I've seen it before. I don't know why the delivery man would do this, but I'd rather he just admit he was too fucking lazy to ring the bell than say he did the responsible thing and actually handed it off. Because now I'm in panic mode, not certain where the hell it is. And seriously son, you came at 20:30. Why the fuck can't you just ring the bell so this box isn't out in the open all night? I'm not even expecting you to stay and wait for someone to come. Just let us know you were there so I can bring it inside.

Today my French teacher was explaining a grammatical point about the verb "to like" and pronouns. This is a little complicated, but stay with me. There're three ways to say "it" in French: le, la, and ça. Usually when you're making a pronoun, you use le and la. He said to us that you can say, "I like her" or "I like him," but you cannot use le and la for "it." You just repeat the phrase: "Do you like miso ramen?" "Yes, I like miso ramen." You can't say, "Yes, I like it."

When someone pointed out there's still ça, he said, "Oh, but we only use that for sex:" "Do you like it, you slut?" "Yeah, I like it." They fucking destroyed an entire construction just because of sex. Now everyone is forced to repeat the entire direct object since sex ruined it. Fucking French people.

Some of the levels in Hyrule Warriors are fucking impossible to beat on your own. There's literally so much shit happening simultaneously that you can't physically be everywhere at once, so you need to play with a friend to divvy up all the tasks. And I feel they really dropped the ball on this one. I've gone to Wong's house twice to help out with the missions she's stuck on and she's ahead of me, so there's a part of my mind that's thinking, "...Jesus Christ, in about a week or two when I catch up, I'm gonna have to do all this shit over again." Why the hell didn't they make a fucking online multiplayer co-op mode? That way we can work on it from our respective accounts and reap the rewards together. What makes it extremely aggravating is they did a half-assed online thing, where random players' icons will appear on your map, and you can help them with a level. Not help them beat it, but beatit yourself and they receive some money or whatever.

I'm trying to figure out whether to blame Nintendo or Toei for this. I haven't played any Dynasty Warriors game, so I can't say whether Toei has the capability to make an online engine or not. And Nintendo's online capabilities were always shit. Perhaps it's a combination of the two.

According to Hyrule Historia, this is the chronology for the Zelda games. I knew some shit was up about eight years ago when I read Twilight Princess took place a hundred years after Ocarina of Time. Until then I thought Zelda was like Final Fantasy: games with similar elements but without any relation to one another. Nintendo devotes a lot of time in this book explaining how each one is connected, but it just doesn't make sense. The series began without any intention of creating this timeline. Yeah, okay, Zelda II was a sequel, but A Link to the Past and Link's Awakening sure weren't. I feel like in the mid-2000s suddenly someone in Nintendo said, "Hey! Why don't we make this all one universe?" I said this at the time on xanga, but let's just compare Twilight and Ocarina then. If that's the case, how the hell did the Temple of Time acquire legs, move away from Hyrule Town, and plop itself in the middle of the Lost Woods? Why is Hyrule Town in the middle of Hyrule Field instead of to the north of it? Why is Zora's Domain northwest of Death Mountain instead of southeast? The fucking tectonic plates don't move that fast in a century!

But you have to ask, what is the point? Is there anything to be gained from saying all Zelda games are in the same universe? Nope. I can't think of how this develops the series. Except for direct sequels, saying Minish Cap comes after Skyward Sword doesn't help in any way. So why make this effort?

Consequently, regardless of what Nintendo claims, I'm just going to recognize these:
Legend of Zelda → Zelda II
Ocarina of Time → Majora's Mask → Wind Waker → Phantom Hourglass → Spirit Tracks
And maybe Minish Cap → Four Swords → Four Swords Adventures

Tales of Xillia had a sequel, Tales of Xillia 2, and in it you can use all of the characters from the first game. If you've played the first game, they also allow you to carry over the costumes for the characters in the second. There were often themes: school uniforms, bathing suits, Santa Claus, clothes from Tales characters in previous games, etc. In this new game, they've introduced three new characters, and unfortunately they don't have all the sets. So the rest of my characters are running around with matching outfits and I have three who look completely different. Why would you do this? I'm willing to pay for DLC just to let my OCD be at ease.