July 2005 Archives

Police raided the headquarters of the British Columbia Marijuana Party on Friday at the request of U.S. investigators targeting one of Canada's best-known advocates of legalizing marijuana.

U.S. officials have charged Marc Emery, founder of the Marijuana Party, and two other people with conspiracy to manufacture marijuana, distribute marijuana seeds and money laundering. The charges are in connection with a business that Emery has operated for years over the Internet from offices in Vancouver, on Canada's Pacific Coast.

Emery, who has been nicknamed the "Prince of Pot," was arrested in Halifax, Nova Scotia, where he was on a visit. He is expected to have a hearing in a court in Vancouver next week for extradition proceedings, according to police officials.

Canada | Reuters.co.ca

US astronomers have discovered an object in the outer reaches of the solar system -- a rock bigger than pluto, which they labelled as the 10th planet.

If confirmed, the discovery would be the first of a planet since pluto was identified in 1930.

Astronomers claim 10th planet

SEEING into the future is just a load of crystal balls, scientists claimed yesterday.

A report has found that clairvoyants and psychics rely more on a scam called 'cold reading' rather than looking to their star charts and Tarot cards.

Their tricks of the trade also include even more underhand methods such as searching a client's belongings for clues or scanning the internet for background information on them. The only thing that can be confidently predicted is that eager customers are so willing to be taken in that it makes the job much easier.

Scientists studied the methods used by everyone from spirit guides to gyspy tea-leaf readers and found that cold reading covers a range of psychological techniques to make it appear they know a lot about their client.

dailyrecord - FORTUNE TELLING IS A LOAD OF CRYSTAL BALLS

It's been a bad month for Microsoft's efforts to promote their visions of trustworthiness and authentication in Internet commerce.

Just as the ground began to crumble beneath Microsoft's "Sender ID" email authentication proposal, it was discovered that the Redmond, Wa.-based software giant was considering acquiring Claria, one of the world's most notorious adware and spyware companies.

Let's look first at the email authentication wars. As I've discussed previously, the battle over email authentication has been raging for several years. Among the many proposals being considered by the email industry and Internet standards community is Microsoft's Sender ID and its closely related cousin, the "Sender Permitted From" or SPF standard.

Both SPF and Sender ID use text records entered into a domain's DNS entry that define what IP addresses should be permitted to send email for that domain. These definitions embedded in the sender's DNS records are then queried and parsed by the receiving server to determine whether to accept or reject a particular piece of email.

Microsoft and Claria -- Going Soft on Malware

For several years scientists have been finding fossilized embryos of dinosaurs from 80 million to 100 million years ago. They have now uncovered several 190-million-year-old dinosaur embryos, the oldest ever found.

The discovery is being reported Friday in the journal Science by a team of paleontologists headed by Robert Reisz of the University of Toronto. The fossils were actually excavated in 1978 in South Africa, but it has taken this long to expose the embryos from the surrounding rock and eggshell and then interpret the tiny remains.

They identified the embryos as belonging to a long-necked, plant-eating dinosaur called Massospondylus. As adults, these creatures reached lengths of more than 15 feet and were able to walk on two legs. Yet the new research suggested that their hatchlings began life moving about on all fours, the scientists reported.

Scientists Find Oldest Dinosaur Embryo Ever - New York Times

It's a bison.

A hair sample that some claimed belonged to a sasquatch in the Yukon is actually the fur of the large mammal.

David Coltman, an University of Alberta geneticist who did a DNA test on a hair sample, confirmed that it was 100-per-cent bison.

He said the DNA sample was not fresh.

During the procedure, follicles were separated from about 10 hairs and a standard DNA extraction was conducted. Copies of the genes were created and a DNA sequence was developed, which matched the genetic code of bison.

The hair sample was taken from a bush near Teslin, Yukon, near the B.C. border earlier this month where several people said they had seen and heard a large, hairy creature crash through their backyard. They also claim that there was also an unusally large footprint at the site.

If the DNA had come out as an unknown sequence, perhaps of a sasquatch, Dr. Coltman said he would try to find the most closely related species on the evolutionary tree to match it.

The Globe and Mail: Bison isn't sasquatch

The Canadian Food Inspection Agency is raising a stink about nearly a tonne of Québec cheese that has been sunk under 40 metres of water in a novel, but illegal, aging process.

Last fall, Luc Boivin of the Fromagerie Boivin in La Baie, Québec decided to try a new approach to aging cheddar. He submerged 10 barrels containing more than 900 kilograms of cheese in the Saguenay fiord.

CBC News: Bathing cheese raises stink with food agency

Japanese scientists have unveiled the most human-looking robot yet devised - a "female" android called Repliee Q1.

She has flexible silicone for skin rather than hard plastic, and a number of sensors and motors to allow her to turn and react in a human-like manner.
She can flutter her eyelids and move her hands like a human. She even appears to breathe.

Professor Hiroshi Ishiguro of Osaka University says one day robots could fool us into believing they are human.

BBC NEWS | Science/Nature | Japanese develop 'female' android

A door lock for technology aficionados.

Getting into your home using the RFID Digital Door Lock is a breeze. Just tap your RFID card or keyfob to the reader button to activate, authenticate and unlock your door.

With the PIN pad, you'll never lock yourself out ever again. Calling a locksmith to unlock your door or to change your lockset because you misplaced a key will be a thing of the past. Change your PIN and reprogram your RFID cards should you ever lose your keys or have them stolen. No need to change locks.

This lock is pickproof as it has no keyholes and comes standard with a night deadbolt function which disables all external functions, allowing you to sleep safe and sound. The built-in alarm will deter thieves at the door itself, if the door is forcefully entered. Also includes an imaginary PIN and an external forced lock feature which prevents unauthorized opening through the mail slot or window. Set by default on automatic locking mode, you can change modes to have your door lock manually.

ThinkGeek :: RFID Digital Door Lock

When it comes to the paraphernalia of barbecuing, they're as ubiquitous as charcoal briquettes, propane tanks and burger flippers. But those wire brushes used to clean the grill can be potentially deadly -- and in the most insidious way.

In the last year, doctors at Toronto's Hospital for Sick Children have had to remove broken-off wire bristles from the throats of three patients, and in one case the barb had migrated through the child's neck and could have perforated a major blood vessel.

National Post

Terry Gilliam's Tideland, shot last year in Saskatchewan's Qu'Appelle Valley and Regina, will have its world premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival.

The famed director's movie was among nine added to the roster in a statement Tuesday by festival organizers. An adaptation of a classic cult novel by Mitch Cullin, the film stars Jodelle Ferland as Jeliza-Rose, a girl who escapes the harsh reality of her life by inventing a fantasy world.

The cast of the U.K.-Canada co-production also includes Janet McTeer, Brendan Fletcher, Jeff Bridges and Jennifer Tilly.

CTV.ca | 'Tideland' among Toronto film fest premieres

The Irish Republican Army said today it was ending its armed campaign and ordered its members to dump their arms and pursue their political goals by "exclusively peaceful means".

Unionist leaders were predictably sceptical, but Tony Blair hailed the long-awaited IRA statement as "a step of unparalleled magnitude in the recent history of Northern Ireland" and looked forward to the day when power-sharing government returns to the province.

"This may be the day when finally, after all the false dawns and dashed hopes, peace replaced war, politics replaces terror on the island of Ireland," the Prime Minister said.

Britain, UK news from The Times and The Sunday Times - Times Online

In our eagerness to focus on the supply side of pseudoscience - the dismal outpourings of flaky humanities graduates in the media and the bogus pseudoscience of people with products to sell - we've neglected an important area of study: the impact on the end market. Take this from reader Richard Neville, last weekend, who was simply trying to get a drink: "I was at the bar buying a round," he begins. "'Grapefruit and soda please.' I said. The barman adopted a pained expression. 'I should point out to you, sir, that this juice is 100% pure organic and, therefore, I don't like to add chemicals - you see, I don't know what's in soda water.' 'Well,' I said, 'I think it's mostly water - which, of course, is a chemical plus a little bicarbonate of soda and added carbon dioxide.' He didn't look happy, while I just looked thirsty and persisted: 'Well,' he warned, 'if you'll take full responsibility ...'"

Guardian Unlimited | Life | Guardian life bad science

Sony has launched the first phase of a new service which will provide Japanese consumers with downloadable video content for the PlayStation Portable - starting with free content, but moving on to paid-for TV episodes.

Called Portable TV, the service is being operated through Sony's ISP company, So-net, and takes advantage of the inclusion of the high quality H.264 video playback functionality in the new PSP firmware which was released today.

Initially, around 100 free downloads will be available, including trailers and independent movies, but the company plans to introduce content ranging from TV episodes to movies and music videos in paid-for format shortly.

News - PSP video downloads in Japan // PlayStation Portable /// Eurogamer

A playable demo for Fahrenheit, Atari's forthcoming paranoramal thriller for PC and consoles, is now available for download.

The 285MB demo gives you the chance to play through the game's opening, and starts off with an in-game introduction by director David Cage.

Fahrenheit is set in a near-future New York City where ordinary citizens are going round killing complete strangers for no discernible reason. One such citizen is our hero Lucas Kane, who wakes up to find he has murdered someone in a men's bathroom - and has no recollection of why.

News - Fahrenheit demo available /// Eurogamer

It was a night of suspense and absolute idiocy as the World Stupidity Awards awarded achievement in ignorance and stupidity in one of the hottest ticket's at Montreal's Just for Laughs Festival Friday night.

While there were surprises, US president George W. Bush and Hotel Heiress Paris Hilton dominated the evening, with Hilton taking the Stupidest Woman of the Year category and Bush winning for Stupidest Statement for his comment: "They never stop thinking of new ways to harm our country or our people, and neither do we. "

Winners:

• Stupidest Man of the Year: Columnist Ann Coulter
  
• Dumbest Moment of the Year: Ashlee Simpson's lip-synching on SNL
  
• Stupidest Statement of the Year: "They never stop thinking of new ways to harm our Country and our people, and neither do we." U.S. President George W. Bush
  
• Stupidest Movie of the Year: Alien vs Predator
  
• Stupidest Woman of the Year: Paris Hilton
  
• Stupidest Trend of the Year: Crystal Meth
  
• Stupidest TV Show of the Year: The Simple Life
  
• Dumbest Government of the Year: The Government of Canada
  
• Stupidity Award for Reckless Endangerment of the Planet: Kim Jong Il, Dictator of North Korea
  
• Media Outlet Which Has Best Furthered Ignorance: Fox News
  

2005 World Stupidity Awards: Winners

Now is a superb time to get that abortion you've been putting off.

Officially, Supreme Court nominee John Roberts' opinion of Roe v. Wade is "opaque," "mysterious," or -- my favorite -- just "unknown." But if I'm no genius, it doesn't take one to suss out how Roberts will vote when the next big abortion case hits his docket.

Three facts indicate that Roberts' confirmation spells the end of Roe v. Wade, the decision guaranteeing American women the right to an abortion.

First: Despite repeated denials, it's clear that Sandra Day O'Connor's shoo-in replacement is an active member of the Federalist Society, the far-right cadre of scary college kids who worship Ayn Rand, dress like Tucker Carlson and care deeply about your sex life. "Many key policymakers in the Bush administration are acknowledged current or former members," reports the Washington Post. "In conservative circles, membership in or association with the society has become a badge of ideological and political reliability." The group takes a hard line against abortion, comparing Roe v. Wade to the infamous 1857 Dred Scott decision defining slaves as property.

SAY SAYONARA TO ABORTION - Yahoo! News

SAY SAYONARA TO ABORTION

The last time a province invoked the "notwithstanding clause," the U.N. came in an kicked their collective ass. Wonder if Alberta's hankerin for a spankerin...

CTV.ca | Same-sex marriage battle not over in Alberta

In an effort to give religious officials and marriage commissioners in Alberta the right to refuse same-sex marriage, the provincial government is considering invoking the notwithstanding clause.

In an interview with the Edmonton Sun, Alberta Justice Minister Ron Stevens said Tuesday his government is prepared to, "do what we feel is necessary in that regard to protect the marriage commissioners and their religious belief.''

"If in fact that does require the notwithstanding clause, it is our intention to use it, but we haven't made the decision on whether that's necessary yet.''

In both statements, the military quoted an Iraqi calling the attackers "enemies of humanity" and vowing to "take the fight to the terrorists," the latter an expression President Bush frequently has used in speeches.

After the media contacted officials Sunday on the similarities, the military reissued the latest release without the quote.

Although not referring to the quote in Sunday's release, it said there was "a draft press release which, due to an administrative error, was mistakenly issued on behalf of the 3rd Infantry Division."

CNN.com - U.S. military admits error in news releases - Jul 25, 2005

A U.S. court order that kept the border closed to live Canadian cattle imports until mid-July was deeply flawed, say the judges who overturned the injunction.

A three-judge panel of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals overruled the order on July 14, opening the door for live cattle under the age of 30 months to begin moving south again.

In a written copy of their decision released Monday, the judges said the original injunction by Montana Judge Richard Cebull was fundamentally flawed and based on legal error.

CBC News: U.S. court says judge erred in keeping Canadian cattle out

Not that I think the world needs more Catholic priests, but, this is pretty cewl. Only in Canada, eh? Pity.

CBC News: Catholic women unofficially ordained

Nine women are referring to themselves as ordained priests and deacons in the Roman Catholic Church, risking excommunication after a secret religious ceremony on a boat in the St. Lawrence River.

The women -- eight Americans and a Canadian, 65-year-old Michele Birch-Conery, a former nun from Vancouver Island -- were unofficially ordained Monday aboard a tour boat in the Thousand Islands near Gananoque, Ont.

Church members from as far away as Europe and South Africa were involved in the ceremony, packing the Thousand Island III with more than 250 people.

Four of the women became "priests" and five became "deacons," although the Vatican doesn't recognize such ordinations and could kick them out of the church.

It was announced today that all versions of Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas has received an Adults Only rating by the ESRB. As a result, some retailers have pulled copies of the game off the shelves.

The new rating comes as a result of the "Hot Coffee" mod, which opens up a series of mini-games that depict sexually explicit acts. The game modification has been the source of harsh criticism from politicians including Hilary Rodham Clinton, who wishes to tighten up the Electronic Software Rating Board's rating standards.

This decision comes as a blow to Rockstar Games, who has maintained that the code unlocked by the "Hot Coffee" modification was well out of reach of the public's eye and could only be unlocked by unauthorized software which violates the games user license agreement.

Xbox: San Andreas Now For Adults Only

After making a laundry list of titles based off the The Lord of the Rings films, Electronic Arts is granted rights to the original literary material.

Electronic Arts announced today that it has struck a deal with Tolkien Enterprises and The Saul Zaentz Company to develop games based on the original literary version of The Lord of the Rings.

While EA has been making The Lord of the Rings titles, those games were limited to the world depicted by the films. While the world will maintain the same look as the films, new characters, environments and battles inspired by the books will be introduced.

PlayStation 2: EA is Granted Rights to Tolkein's The Lord of the Rings

The next time you visit the website of Microsoft Corp. to download some software, be prepared to let the world's biggest software company have a look inside your computer.

In a determined strike to quell the proliferation of counterfeit software, beginning today, Microsoft will require that all customers coming to its website for upgrades and other downloads submit their computers to an electronic frisking.

If you use one of the estimated hundred million PCs running pirated software, don't expect your upgrade. For Microsoft, the new policy is a stepped-up effort to combat the loss of billions of dollars worth of software sales every year to counterfeiters around the world. But in ramping up efforts to fight piracy, the Redmond, Wash.-based behemoth already finds itself fending off critics over privacy.

"It sets an extremely negative precedent," Pam Dixon, executive director of World Privacy Forum, a non-profit public-interest research centre in San Diego, said of the company's initiative. "Microsoft is saying, 'Before I let you do anything at all, you have to open your computer to us.' I really object to this."

The Globe and Mail: Bill Gates will be frisking you with a simple point and click

The House voted Thursday to make permanent most of the key provisions of the USA Patriot Act, the sweeping law passed in the weeks after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks that expanded law-enforcement powers to investigate suspected terrorists.

Hours after the London subway system was bombed for the second time in two weeks, House members opened a daylong debate on the Patriot Act.

Supporters of the law said the London attacks underscored the importance of the act. Critics had said Congress should more thoroughly review and amend a law that they contended was passed in haste and could allow government abuses of privacy and civil liberties.

Chicago Tribune | Patriot Act provisions get House boost

A planetary scientist at the California Institute of Technology has discovered the first extrasolar planet under three suns in the constellation Cygnus.

Maciej Konacki, a senior postdoctoral scholar in planetary science at Caltech, discovered the unusual hot Jupiter orbiting the main star of the close, triple-star system known as HD 188753, using the 10-meter Keck I telescope atop Mauna Kea in Hawaii.

A hot Jupiter is a giant planet with an orbital period of between 3 and 9 days. "Like many other hot Jupiters from binary or multiple stellar systems, it has a larger mass than a typical hot Jupiter orbiting a single star. Otherwise, this system is unique," Konacki wrote in his report, published today in Nature.

ESPs: California Scientist Discovers First Extrasolar Planet Under Three Suns

"I know for an absolute fact that we have not been involved in anything related to promoting terrorism and yet the government has collected almost 1,200 pages on our activities," Romero said. "Why is the ACLU now the subject of scrutiny from the FBI?"

John Passacantando, Greenpeace's U.S. executive director, said his group is a forceful, but peaceful, critic of the Bush administration's war and environmental policies.

"This administration has a history of using its powers against its peaceful critics. If, in fact, the FBI has been deployed to help in that effort, that would be quite shocking," Passacantando said.

FBI Says It Has Files on Rights Groups

A Chinese general said Beijing might respond with nuclear weapons if the United States attacked China in a conflict over Taiwan, news reports said Friday.

The State Department rejected the warning as "highly irresponsible."

The exchange could add to tensions with Washington at a time of U.S. worries about China's military buildup and the proposed takeover of the oil company Unocal Corp. by a Chinese state-run company.

"If the Americans draw their missiles and position-guided ammunition into the target zone on China's territory, I think we will have to respond with nuclear weapons," Maj. Gen. Zhu Chenghu, a dean at China's National Defense University, told visiting Hong Kong-based reporters. His remarks were reported by The Asian Wall Street Journal and The Financial Times.

Zhu stressed he was expressing a personal view, not official policy, and was confident that China and the United States would not go to war, the reports said. While Zhu is a serving officer, he isn't involved in policymaking.

China threatens nuclear attack on U.S. over Taiwan conflict - billingsgazette.com

This is a ridiculously uncritical interview with the x-ray eye kid, who took credit for "curing" Ronnie Hawkins of pancreatic cancer.

I expected something better from the Toronto Star.

TheStar.com - The teenage miracle worker

Adam seemed able to read the patterns and see the interconnections. By contrast, a doctor I had consulted diagnosed it as a (harmless) ganglionic cyst and gave me a choice between having it surgically removed and waiting to see if it disappeared.

He was helpful but never seemed to consider the body as an organic whole, or question how the lump formed in the first place ? the kind of approach that gets people like me curious about alternative medicine.

When I first showed Adam my wrist, I was asking him about the self-healing techniques he teaches.

How does the mind help heal the body, I wanted to know? What is this life force, this qi energy, that Eastern philosophers speak of? And why, with all of Western medicine's pharmaceuticals, advanced surgical procedures and technological diagnostics, do theories of energy and interconnectedness sound so intuitively worth pursuing?

As the scandal over the leak of CIA agent Valerie Plame's identity has continued to unfold, there is a renewed focus on Karl Rove -- the White House deputy chief of staff whom President Bush calls his political "architect."

Newsweek has reported that Matt Cooper, in an e-mail to his bureau chief at Time magazine, wrote that he had spoken "to Rove on double super-secret background for about two min[ute]s before he went on vacation ..." In that conversation, Rove gave Cooper "big warning" that Time should not "get too far out on Wilson."

Rove was referring, of course, to former Ambassador Joe Wilson's acknowledgment of his trip to Africa, where he discovered that Niger had not, in fact, provided uranium to Iraq that might be part of a weapons of mass destruction (WMD) program.

CNN.com - It doesn't look good for Karl Rove - Jul 15, 2005

According to a report on Gamesindustry.biz, John Romero, co creator of the Doom franchise has confirmed that he has stopped working for game publisher Midway.

Romero, who was the project leader for the next Gauntlet title has said on his website that he "can definitely confirm that I have left Midway -- I've been gone for about 3 weeks."

Romero was hired by the Midway's San Diego branch in October 2003 with Tom Hall, founder of Ion Storm and founded Monkeystone Games in July 2001 with Romero, after Ion Storm's Dallas office closed its doors.

GameSpy: Midway Loses Doom Co-Creator

The end of the 20th century was marked by the flowering of astrology, mysticism, occultism, etc. in many countries of the world. However the USSR (in the last years of its existence) and Russia occupy a special place in this sense. The state of ruin, the crushing of old ideals, and the lack of new ones has led to exhausted, desperate people starting to hope only for a miracle...

No little credit for this belongs to the mass media which has unfortunately not been able to make reasonable profit from one of the great achievements of the post-Soviet period, freedom of speech. The license and irresponsibility of the majority of the mass media has led to anti-scientific nonsense literally filling the pages of newspapers, magazines, radio and television. In recent years a new phenomenon has arisen which did not exist before. Pseudoscience has turned into a powerful, well-organized force. In the last 10 years 120 academies have arisen in Russian, many of which simply discredit this word. Several of them "rubber stamp" professionally unfit doctors of sciences in various scientific disciplines, of course not unselfishly, and at the same time in anti-scientific [disciplines]: astrologers, UFOlogists, and the rest of the public received diplomas. Things are no better in the West. For example, the New York Academy in the US has been turned into a purely commercial enterprise. For a little over $100 it eagerly accepts both scientists and pseudoscientists alike into its ranks.

In Russia even research institutes of an anti-scientific bent have appeared. Here's just two examples: The International Institute of Space Anthropoecology and the International Institute of Theoretical and Applied Physics. The first of these managed even to get government accreditation with the aid of the Ministry of Science. And the second received financial aid from this same ministry for several years and from the Ministry of Defense for the well-known fraud with torsion fields. I want to note that Russia is no exception. For example, in the US a Maharishi University has arisen whose activity bears little resemblance to intellectual activity.

Why is Pseudoscience Dangerous?

Ever thought you could remake a film, using a first person shooter? Possibly remake a scene from classic military flick "A Few Good Men" as if it was actually a scene in Half-Life 2?

R. Glass of Seattle went so far as to spend two months of his life making it using the HL2 engine, in a process made famous by Red vs. Blue -- a process for animation called "machinima".

A Few Good G-Men takes the voices of Jack Nicholson and Tom Cruise, gives them to new characters and resets the scene in a HL2-style courtroom. It's neat. Makes me want to go buy the game now.

A Few Good G-Men

The studio behind the Age of Empires (and Age of Mythology) series is working on a new massively multiplayer title, a job listing on Ensemble Studio's company website has revealed.

The firm is currently advertising for an "experienced server architect to assist in creating a world-class massively multiplayer game," and is demanding "experience with shipping an existing massively multiplayer game."

However, it's not clear whether this indicates that Ensemble is following in the footsteps of Blizzard, which created the immensely popular World of Warcraft online game from its Warcraft real-time strategy franchise, or if an entirely new property is in the works.

News - Age of Empires MMO? // PC /// Eurogamer

So what's more important to you - the roof over your head or the characters you've created in your favourite MMORPG?

For a Mr. Wang of Chongqing, China, it's definitely the latter. He's currently involved in a bitter dispute over ownership of characters and virtual items in Legend of Mir 2 with his soon-to-be ex-wife, Ms. Ye.

According to the Chongqing Business Post, Ye and Wang met online whilst playing the game last September and married four weeks later. Over the following months they jointly opened more than ten LoM2 accounts and attained level 40 to 50 status for all of their characters, before deciding to divorce in June.

News - MMOG romance ends in divorce // PC /// Eurogamer

Atari has announced that its new Flashback 2 plug-and-play console will feature classic Activision titles Pitfall! and River Raid.

The new deal is something of a landmark in the history of the two companies - Activision was originally established back in 1979 by a group of ex-Atari developers who were fed up for not receiving credit for the games they created.

With its unique (at the time, obviously) side-scrolling platform action, Pitfall! was an instant hit when it was released in 1982. River Raid, which saw you flying a jet in a race to hit targets and collect fuel, followed two years later and was also a huge success.

The Flashback 2 features more than 40 retro titles, including arcade classics such as Missile Command, Asteroids and Combat, previously unreleased games and rare homebrew programs designed by fans of Atari's early consoles.

News - Atari and Activision team up /// Eurogamer

It sounds like the back story for a cheesy Keanu Reeves vehicle: The Receda Cube has been stolen from the Perplex City Academy and secreted away from the unnamed planet to Earth.

But, on July 13, people worldwide are expected to begin searching for the mysterious missing cube and the real $200,000 prize its recovery will bring.

The hunt is at the heart of Perplex City, a new alternate-reality game, or ARG, and the first major effort in the category to launch as a stand-alone project rather than as a marketing tie-in to something like a video game or a movie.

Wired News: Perplex City Faces Reality Check

You've never played a video game quite like Killer 7.

Sure, other adventure games have featured shockingly mature themes, off-the-wall graphic styles, or experimental gameplay. But Killer 7, available for the PlayStation 2 and GameCube, is as far off the beaten path as any console game has dared wander. But its gameplay experiments largely fail, and the inventive style doesn't make up for the lack of substance.

Wired News: Killer 7: Death by Boredom

Pretty keen flash CGI animation of a naval ship transforming into a robot. It's acthually an ad for the Singapore Navy, in an attempt to get recruits.

TRANSMARINERS ONLINE

Heheh. I know the Google Maps Mania guy. And yes, he is a Canadian.

Earth to Google... | Earth to Google... | News.blog | CNET News.com

With workplace survillance on the rise, cubicle inhabitants have been forced to find more wholesome sites to surf than they might otherwise. Even some non-porn sites--namely eBay and ESPN--have long ago been on the nix lists of systems administrators. But one G-rated site is quickly becoming the time-wasting site of choice for many bored workers, if their blogs are any indication: Google maps. What next, a site devoted to knitting?

... taken within the explorable areas that will be featured in the Guild Wars free Summer Update: Sorrow's Furnace. Find one image from Grenth's Footprint, and one from Sorrow's Furnace, in The Gallery.

Guild Wars - Welcome to the Guild Wars Website!

In the summer of 1925, a young teacher named John Scopes was tried and, after a famous trial that lasted several days, found guilty of teaching evolution in violation of the Butler Act on July 21, 1925. You'd think that such antiscientific sentiment would have abated over the years, but you'd be wrong. True, in the eighty years since 1925, we've developed antibiotics, jet travel, molecular biology, cancer chemotherapy, and have gone to space and the moon. We've developed technological marvels undreamt of 80 years ago. Despite all that, however, unfortunately somehow we haven't moved beyond the attempts of religious ideologues to impose their religious beliefs upon science. Indeed, depressingly, the antiscientific attacks on evolution today sound much the same as they did 80 years ago.

Respectful Insolence (a.k.a.

Sex counsellor Sue Johanson's Sunday Night Sex Show is ceasing production, a spokesperson for the W network confirmed Monday.

However the popular therapist, grandmother and former nurse will continue to tape the U.S. equivalent of her long-running show — which began airing on the Oxygen network in 2002.

Johanson's sex counselling show started on Toronto radio in 1984, then moved to WTN in February of 1996. With WTN re-branded as W, the live show continued on Sundays with classic episodes running during the week.

The Globe and Mail: Johanson's sex show cancelled

Here's something that got me thinking. Many of the people hitting my site are looking for help with Habbo Hotel (often, looking for "ultimate Habbo Hotel cheats"). Habbo's this weird, yet kitschy online chatroom where you play a little Lego-esque avatar, and walk them through this big hotel, getting scammed by every little 13 year old in Britain. Often getting hit on by them too.

Why, if you do a search on Google com for "how to change your habbo hotel character into a sith lord", you get my site on the first try. I'm still not sure I'm ranked first on this search, but what can you do? Certainly I'm not the source for "ultimate Habbo Hotel cheats".

So, I figured I'd help out by giving you some tips on said ultimate cheats for Habbo Hotel.

Here's the guide to all the ultimate Habbo cheats there are!

Newsflash ... there are no "ultimate" cheats on Habbo Hotel. Quit searching for them. The most you're gonna find on there are a bunch of scams from losers who (for some unknowable reason) want your furniture (or furni). Since you've got to pay for furniture, it becomes sort of a currency in the game, and it's a status sign if you can amass a lot of it -- especially if you didn't pay for it.

And don't give out your password, loser. Why would anyone ask for your password, except to steal your account? Remember that the people who run the game/chatroom thing are the ones that assigned your password to you -- they can change it at will.

Anyone offering the "ultimate" cheats for Habbo Hotel is scamming you. It will likely be that you need to give them a piece of furniture, or your password, or some money.

I hope this helps out a little. I'm a big fan of innovative virtual reality technologies and fun internet chatrooms. So I like the idea of Habbo Hotel. However, I think that taking advantage of a game (using "god mode" or some other ultimate kind of cheat) is fine at home, but it sucks if you do this online, and other people are hurt by your actions.

In the port city of Yokohama, south of Tokyo, there is a museum devoted entirely to noodle soup. It may be Japan's favourite foodie day out: one and a half million ramen fans visit the museum every year, and even on the wintry morning that I went the queue wound 50 yards down the street - young couples, mainly: cold, hungry and excited.

Inside the Yokohama Ramen Museum and Amusement Park they meet exhibitions on the evolution of soup bowls and instant noodle packets - more fascinating than you'd think, but these are not the main event. That's deep in the basement, where there's an entire street, done up to look like a raucous 1950s Yokohama harbour-front. Every shop houses a different noodle restaurant, each a clone of one of the best noodle shops of Japan. It's a culinary Madame Tussauds.

The Observer | Food monthly | If MSG is so bad for you, why doesn't everyone in Asia have a headache?

It's treason, I say! Send him to Gitmo!

US News Article | Reuters.com

The White House faced fierce questioning on Monday over top political aide Karl Rove's involvement in a CIA leak scandal and Democratic calls mounted for President Bush to sideline the adviser.

One Democratic lawmaker said the intentional disclosure of a covert agent's identity amounted to an "act of treason." Others urged Bush to sideline Rove by suspending his access to classified information and said the aide should "clear the air" by answering questions from Congress.

After publicly defending Rove two years ago, the White House responded to a barrage of pointed questions on Monday by saying that it would not comment at the request of the prosecutors investigating who leaked the identify of the CIA agent, Valerie Plame.

Top White House aide Karl Rove discussed a former US ambassador and his CIA agent wife with a Time magazine reporter, according to a report.

The Newsweek weekly quoted Rove lawyer Robert Luskin as confirming that Rove was the source who gave information to Time reporter Matt Cooper under a pledge of confidentiality, and last week released him to testify about that conversation to a grand jury.

Cooper had been ordered by a US federal judge to testify before the grand jury investigating whether the agent's identity was illegally leaked.

Rove's lawyer acknowledges he was Time reporter's source - Yahoo! News

Tony Blair will on Monday reject Conservative demands for a government inquiry into last week's London bomb attacks, insisting such a move would distract from the task of catching the perpetrators.

As police and security services on Sunday continued searching for the bombers - thought to be Islamist terrorists - Downing Street said the prime minister believed an inquiry now into the outrage which killed at least 49 people would be a "ludicrous diversion."

Instead, in a statement to the Commons on Monday following last week's Group of Eight summit, Mr Blair is expected to focus on the direction the government must take to ensure future terrorism is defeated.

In particular, the prime minister believes there must be far greater co-operation among European Union governments in the fight against terrorism - a view Charles Clarke, the home secretary, is expected to drive home at an emergency meeting of EU interior ministers this week.

FT.com / Terror / London blasts - Blair rejects calls for probe into bombings

As to the question of whether Hot Coffee was actually included with the game but not actually enabled, Rockstar has addressed this directly for the first time, according to US website GameSpot - which reports that a representative of the company told them directly that the Hot Coffee code is not included on the GTA game discs.

That runs contrary to claims by the author of the mod, however - he says that his modification merely unlocks an unfinished mini-game already present in the code.

Which side is telling the truth may not be relevant, however - since as long as there's no way of accessing the mini-game in unmodified copies of the game, it seems unlikely - although not impossible - that Rockstar will be held responsible for it.

News - Rockstar denies sex in San Andreas; ESRB investigating /// Eurogamer

The US Navy has announced plans to release Navy Training Exercise: Strike and Retrieve, a new PC game available for free download from the official Navy website.

It seems they've has been inspired by the success of America's Army, a military training sim launched three years ago to encourage more Yankee youngsters to sign up for protecting the homeland and killing dangerous foreigners - and which today has three and a half million active players and counting.

Now the Navy Recruiting Command is hoping that NTE will prove just as popular and "help build interest and awareness of Navy high-tech jobs."

News - US Navy to launch new game // PC /// Eurogamer

Action video games are renowned for serving up simulated gore and violence, but an intriguing mystery surfaced last week in which politics, business and simulated sex feature prominently as well.

With some code written by Patrick Wildenborg, a 36-year-old Dutch techie, and a few friends, some scenes in the best-selling video game Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas become sexually explicit.

His free code, which can be downloaded over the Internet, acts as a software key, Mr. Wildenborg explained. He said it merely unlocked the sexually graphic images that are hidden inside the game and written by programmers who work for the game's developer, Rockstar Games, which is owned by Take-Two Interactive, a leading game publisher.

In Video Game, a Download Unlocks Hidden Sex Scenes - New York Times

Google has been sued for breach of contract, negligence and unfair business practices over its Adwords ad program. The class action lawsuit filed by Click Defense seeks $5m damages.

The filing seeks discovery on whether Google has taken adequate measures to prevent click fraud, which accounts for between 10 and 20 per cent of all Adwords clicks, according to insider estimates; whether it has misled its Adwords customers, and whether the refunds it has collected from Adwords click fraud victims are justified.

Advertisers pay a fee for every click on a text ad, with the amount depending on the value of the keyword. However the lucrative nature of the system means that 'click syndicates' are deployed to generate clicks on competitors adwords or boost their own.

The suit includes a quote from Google's CFO George Rayes last year, describing click fraud as "the biggest threat to the Internet economy".

Google slapped with click fraud class action | The Register

My parents have a condo in Florida. These kinds of things always make me worry, cause I don't think they've got flood insurance.

Weather: Dennis grows stronger - and moves closer

The news for storm-weary Florida residents got worse Thursday: Not only did Hurricane Dennis grow stronger, its projected path moved closer to the Florida peninsula.
Mandatory evacuations of the lower Florida Keys were ordered as Dennis developed into a Category 4 storm, with sustained winds in excess of 131 mph.
The storm rumbled past Jamaica on Thursday at about 15 mph. Ten-foot waves lashed the island's shores, flooding low-lying areas. Winds as fast as 115 mph tore off roofs and toppled trees.
Dennis will cross central Cuba today, forecasters predicted, then bear down on the western Florida Keys. Thereafter, the storm is expected to travel northwest through the Gulf of Mexico and make landfall Sunday somewhere between Louisiana and the Florida Panhandle.

OK, it's not much of a review, but it's one of the only really neat unsolicited submissions that these MusicSUBMIT geeks sent me so far. The music is really very polished (so is his website), and the first track available ("Against This World") is reminiscent of Propeller Heads or any other band that mixes James Bond themes with a heavy urban Rap/HipHop sound. The second track, "Survive Now," reminds me of something done by Rob Dougan (or "Rob D" -- you may remember him from the Matrix/Nissan Maxima soundtrack). Subsequent tracks follow, and they're mostly unremarkable, but are a mix of jazz, techno, and 70's-style disco. Sounds like he's trying to find his groove.

-Zuckervati

--------------

Description: Norihiko Hibino, also known as the composer for Metal Gear Solid 3, is especially known as the creator of an award winning, James Bondish main theme "Snake Eater". His music is a combination of techno & jazz, with hollywood action movie taste -- dubbed "Metallized Symphonic Jazz". His first major label CD "Akashi" will be released on July 13th in Japan (Bellwood Records) and will be released a few month later in States and Europe.

Biography: Norihiko Hibino

• composer, sax player
• graduate of Osaka University ('96), winner of "best soloist" on 25th Yamano big band jazz festival and 1st Tenpozan big band competition.
• graduate of Berklee college of music ('97), jazz composition major. Studied under George Garzone, Bill Pearce, Greg Hopkins, etc. Also studied film scoring and synthesizer programming.
• as a sax player, numerous appearances of jazz festival, TV & radio shows, including Kansas city international jazz festival, and NHK (public broadcast) session 505.
• as a composer, numerous works for video games and multimedia, including Konami's Metal Gear Solid 2 & 3 (14 million units are sold worldwide), Anubis, Yu-gi-oh (worldwide famous cartoon character). Specialized skills of creating underscore for surround (5.1) environment.
• president of music production company, Gem Impact Inc., creating music for film, TV, video game, and record company.

Information & Sound Sample:
http://www.norihikohibino.comePress.com

I read somewhere recently that Americans are uncomfortable talking about sex. I'm not sure where I saw it, but it doesn't matter -- almost every magazine article about having better sex makes a statement like this. They don't even bother to attribute it to anyone, but assume that we all know it's true, and it merely needs to be restated for context.

Horsefeathers.

Americans are talking about sex all over the internet. In fact, to judge by the blogs, podcasts, chats and e-mail discussions, we can't shut up about it.

We can read about sex at Salon.com and Nerve, hear about it at Tiny Nibbles and participate in it at Paltalk. The sex site Fleshbot posted a roundup of sexy podcasts just this week.

Wired News: We Don't Talk About Sex? Ha!

Photograph shows the winner of a "World's Ugliest Dog" contest.

Status: True.

Sam, the above-pictured canine, is a 14-year-old pedigreed Chinese crested owned by Susie Lockheed of Santa Barbara, California. In June 2005, Sam won the "World's Ugliest Dog" title at the Sonoma-Marin Fair contest for the third consecutive year.

Urban Legends Reference Pages: Photo Gallery (World's Ugliest Dog)

From part two of GameSpot's CoV coverage: "In this exclusive new trailer for City of Villains, lead designer Jack Emmert explains the new game's crime-focused missions, new mission cinematic sequences, collateral damage, and how to fight off bank guards and pesky superheroes." Click here to see the video in all its evil beauty!

City of Heroes

Ninja Theory (the developer formerly known as Just Add Monsters) has released some spanky new screenshots for PS3 kung fu fighter Heavenly Sword. You can find them here.

They've also updated the Ninja Theory website with some developer diaries and a pic of the team alongside Sony mac daddy Ken Kutaragi, who dropped in for tea and cakes and a look at the game recently.

Oh, and any jobseeking developers take note - Ninja Theory is currently hiring, and they've just moved to new offices in Cambridge so they'll have enough space for all the extra team members. Details of how to apply for a position are on the website.

News - Heavenly new screenshots // PlayStation 3 /// Eurogamer

We have opened for the download of the Cold War Edition. HTTP Download is here and the BitTorrent .torrent file is here and check out this thread for alternative mirrors!

MMORPG: Eve-Online - a massive multiplayer online roleplaying space game

Officials ordered residents and tourists to leave the southern half of the Florida Keys on Thursday as Hurricane Dennis, an unusually powerful July storm, attained major-storm status as it slogged north through warm Caribbean waters.

Packing top winds of 130 mph and classified as a Category 4 hurricane, Dennis could subject the Lower Keys to dangerous winds and a 3- to 6-foot storm surge by this afternoon, the National Hurricane Center in Miami said.

"We recommend you pack up, secure your property as best you can and leave," Monroe County Sheriff's Deputy Becky Herrin said her department advised those in the southernmost Keys.

Hurricane Grows; Keys Get Order to Evacuate

Check out this map for a detailed placement of the bomb blasts in London. As of right now, the blasts this morning have claimed the lives of at least 37 people and injured some 700 others.

http://geepster.com/london.php

The above link found courtesy of GoogleMapsMania.

Google Maps Mania: London bomb blasts on Google Maps

Despite a lack of scientific support, acupuncture is used in the treatment of depression, allergies, asthma, arthritis, smoking, migraines and so on.

It's a quack treatment that seems to be accepted by a fairly large number of otherwise rational people.

The general attitude is that as long as an explanatory model "works" it is irrelevant to criticize it and ask Does acupuncture really work?. The "good" advice is that it works and if you're good you won't be ill.

Anne's Anti-Quackery & Science Blog: Enter the Sham Acupuncture

Two out of every three Canadian adults, and one in every three children, is now overweight or obese, according to new Statistics Canada data.

The sharp and sudden increase in the number of chubby citizens -- to 59 per cent from 48 per cent of adults -- came about because, this time, the national agency directly measured the height and weight of those surveyed, instead of depending on the respondents to tell the truth.

The Globe and Mail: Canadians are bigger than ever, survey finds

Blogging can affect a blogger's work life in countless ways. Some people have been fired for things they've said in their blogs, while others worry that their bosses may be monitoring their blogging activities when they're on break. To address these and other questions about blogging and the workplace, the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) has added a labor law section to its Legal Guide for Bloggers.

EFF: Legal Guide for Bloggers

Here's a bunch of cewl Canadian mysteries. Bet you never thought we were such a mysterious bunch, eh?

What happened to Tom Thomson?
Did the wrong man hang for Thomas D'Arcy McGee's murder?
Who killed Sir Harry Oakes?
Is the Sasquatch real?
Does Ogopogo exist?
Did a UFO visit Shag Harbour, N.S.?
What happened to Ambrose Small?
Did Russians kidnap an Inuit family?
What ever happened to Ron Bax?
Who was the Mad Trapper of Rat River?
Is the Bambino's first homerun ball in Lake Ontario?
Who ordered the destruction of the Avro Arrow?
Is there buried treasure at Oak Island, N.S.?
Butter tarts - a true Canadian invention?

CBC News Indepth: Canadian mysteries

When Deep Throat's true identity was revealed on May 31, 2005, a decades-old mystery was laid to rest. CBC News Online looks at a few Canadian mysteries that have yet to be solved.

Interestingly, the part that describes US troops killing an Iraqi Television News Director is buried in the body of this article. It's weird that 3 journalists killed by the US military within the span of 7 days doesn't make headlines in this Texas newspaper, despite Reporters Without Borders calling for an inquiry.

Archives: Story

A suicide car bomber killed an influential Shiite member of parliament and his son as they drove to the capital Tuesday, an attack likely to stoke ethnic tensions on the first anniversary of the transfer of sovereignty to the Iraqis.

The attack that killed Dhari Ali al-Fayadh, his son and two bodyguards was one of several around the country carried out by suicide bombers. Other attacks killed one U.S. soldier in Balad, 50 miles north of Baghdad, and one in Tikrit. Two soldiers were wounded. At least 1,743 members of the U.S. military have died since the war began in 2003, according to an Associated Press count.

The attacks came as more than 1,000 U.S. troops and Iraqi forces launched ''Operation Sword'' in a bid to crush insurgents and foreign fighters in western Iraq -- the third major offensive in the area in recent weeks.

US occupation troops killed an Iraqi television director, Tuesday, June 29, 2005, when he drove near a US convoy, colleagues and a hospital official said. The US military said it had no reports of the incident. Ahmad Wail Bakri, a programme director for Al-Sharqiya television, was reportedly trying to pass a traffic accident in the Sayyidiyya district on Tuesday when troops opened fire at his car. The French watchdog organization Reporters Without Borders called for an inquiry. Bakri was the third Iraqi journalist killed in similar incidents in the past week.

IslamOnline.net - World in Picture

Standing before a crowd of uniformed soldiers, President Bush addressed the nation on June 27 to reaffirm America's commitment to the global war on terrorism. But throughout the speech Bush continually stated his opinions and conclusions as though they were facts, and he offered little specific evidence to support his assertions.

Here we provide some additional context, both facts that support Bush's case that "we have made significant progress" in Iraq, as well as some of the negative evidence he omitted.

Bush's Iraq Speech: Long On Assertion, Short On Facts

Iraq's U.N. ambassador Friday accused U.S. Marines of killing his 21-year-old cousin "in cold blood" during a June 25 raid in a village in the Sunni Muslim-dominated province of Anbar.

Samir S.M. Sumaidaie called on the United States to investigate the death of Mohammed Sumaidaie in "a credible and fair way to ensure that justice is done." He said the killing represents a "betrayal" of Iraqi and U.S. efforts to rebuild Iraq on a foundation of "freedom, democracy and respect for human rights and the rule of law."

Iraqi Seeks Probe of Killing

We know them by many names such as Mystery-House, Mystery-Hill, Alien-Vortex or Magic-Shack, but collectively they are known as mystery spots because of the mysterious events which often occur near them. Lucky for us, owners of these curious sites love to show them off. Visitors are often welcome to come in and see the strange phenomenon...for a small fee. Mystery Spots began springing up during the depression and continue to draw crowds and delight visitors to this day.

Most mystery spots share the same basic presentation. You are shown into a special room where some strange phenomenon will occur. A guide explains that what you are about to see lies well-beyond the scope of science. The explanations may differ, but soon you will notice some very strange things happening. Balls roll uphill. Water flows briskly up the spout. Ordinary objects defy gravity and cling to the wall without support. People stand at impossible angles.

Mystery Spots - Explained

A fast food chain in northern Japan began offering a whale burger on Thursday, even as anti-whaling nations urged Japan to cut back on its catch at an international conference on whaling.

Restaurant chain Lucky Pierrot is serving a deep fried minke whale meat burger with lettuce and mayonnaise for $3.50 at its 10 restaurants in Hakodate on Japan's northern island of Hokkaido, once a whaling hub in the nation.

Japan is facing increasing international criticism for its research whaling program in which the whales are killed in order to study them and their meat is then sold. Critics say it is commercial hunting in disguise.

CANOE -- CNEWS - Science: Whale burger goes on sale

Cool discussion on Tom Cruise's weird statements. There's a lot of useful links on this site.

Anne's Anti-Quackery & Science Blog: How can someone who believes in E-meters get off calling ANYTHING pseudoscience?

Cruise follows the Scientology movement which is against psychiatric medicine and now Tom Cruise admits to alien belief , saying it would be "arrogant" to think that extraterrestrial beings did not exist.

First he said "Psychiatry is a pseudo science" and recommended vitamins, not anti-depressants, for Brooke Shields ...

I can't stop looking at them. They're really freaky...

Michael Paulus :: Skeletal Systems

Animation was the format of choice for children's television in the 1960s, a decade in which children's programming became almost entirely animated. Growing up in that period, I tended to take for granted the distortions and strange bodies of these entities.

These Icons are usually grotesquely distorted from the human form from which they derive. Being that they are so commonplace and accepted as existing I thought I would dissect them like science does to all living objects - trying to come to an understanding as to their origins and true physiological make up. Possibly to better understand them and see them in a new light for what they are in the most basic of terms.

I decided to take a select few of these popular characters and render their skeletal systems as I imagine they might resemble if one truly had eye sockets half the size of its head, or fingerless-hands, or feet comprising 60% of its body mass.

The Hello Kitty examples at the beginning of the set give an idea of what each of the pieces look like. The rest of the examples are approximations using photoshop of the rest in the series.

Driven in part by fears of terrorism, government secrecy in the United States has reached a historic high by several measures. Federal departments now classify documents at the rate of 125 a minute as they create new categories of semisecrets bearing vague labels like "sensitive security information."

A record 15.6 million documents were classified last year, nearly double the number in 2001, according to the federal Information Security Oversight Office. Meanwhile, the declassification process, which made millions of historical documents available annually in the 1990s, has slowed to a relative crawl, from a high of 204 million pages in 1997 to just 28 million pages last year.

The increasing secrecy - and its rising cost to taxpayers, estimated by the office at $7.2 billion last year - is drawing protests from a growing array of politicians and activists, including Republican members of Congress, leaders of the independent commission that studied the Sept. 11 attacks and even the top federal official who oversees classification.

Official secrecy reaches historic high in the U.S. - Americas - International Herald Tribune

Most American media have focused on the allegations from the Downing Street memo that the Bush administration was going to "fix" the intelligence in order to justify the war against Iraq. Now the reporter who broke the original story says they have missed a more substantial allegation to arise from the same set of leaked documents.

Michael Smith, defense writer for the Sunday Times of London wrote this past Sunday that "The American general who commanded allied air forces during the Iraq war appears to have admitted in a briefing to American and British officers that coalition aircraft waged a secret air war against Iraq from the middle of 2002, nine months before the invasion began." (This bombing capaign is referred to in the Downing Street memo.)

Secret air campaign against Iraq? | csmonitor.com

Culcept is a title that�s easy to miss in the sea of high-profile games. The Monopoly-esque board game is easy to learn but contains plenty of depth for those willing to master it.

Culcept is a book created by the Goddess, Culdra. An evil cepter � individual with the power to summon from the book � is set to conquer Culdcept and rule the universe. Yes it�s an excuse to make a board game, but it�s a grand story nonetheless.

The basic rules are simple � the player who reaches the set amount of magic points first, wins. At the start a player draws a card a rolls the die. The cards are made up of creatures and magic spells to be added to a players� deck. The board consists of squares that represent different elements � fire, water, forest, and desert. Creature cards can be placed on any element title, but if the creature matches that element it is boosted with HP. When a creature is placed on a tile the player owns that area. Every time you land on that area you can boost up the creature with magic points, transform the land to a different element, or switch the creature with another placed elsewhere on the board. When your opponent lands on it, they can battle the creature to try to take ownership, or pay a toll fee.

Culdcept Review for PlayStation 2 - Gaming Age