Welcome back. We've been expecting you.
We have a bit of a longer episode than usual this week because we just had so many interesting people to talk about, including a liar who looks like Hugh Jackman, and one of the most prolific Astronomers to ever live.
But, first up, the Nerds discuss the rumoured Disney Robin Hood remake. In live action. With photorealistic CGI. This sounds terrifying. This is a terrible idea. This will haunt your nightmares forever.
One of Professor's favourite game studios has had a great year, and Professor wants to talk about their future. Bohemia Interactive has some great projects in the works that are well worth checking out, so we've got a summary for you.
Dev-i-Boy has brought us the ESRB's disappointing attempt to resolve the Lootbox debate. He and Professor agree that this is a poor response. Maybe one day there will be a solution, but not today.
Dev-i has also found the algorithm for creating the perfect steak. It involves dozens of factors and complicated equations. But don't pull this paper out next time you go to a barbecue, or everyone will go home before you start cooking.
As usual, we bring you the games of the week. Professor and his girlfriend are finding out why they shouldn't have kids in Think of the Children. DJ and Professor are still playing Generation Zero. Professor is better at surviving the robot apocalypse than he is at raising kids. Dev-i is playing VR chat again. We wish him luck in his quest to become an anime girl.
Live action Robin Hood movie starring animals
Bohemia Interactive sales reaching 68 million USD
-https://www.bohemia.net/blog/bohemia-interactive-sales-reaching-68-milion-usd-in-2019
ESRB’s new measures to combat loot boxes
- https://www.theverge.com/2020/4/13/21219192/esrb-new-label-loot-boxes-gacha-game
The mathematically perfect steak
-https://www.sciencenews.org/article/math-equations-cooking-perfect-steak-beef-meat-simulation
- https://link.springer.com/article/10.1140%2Fepjp%2Fs13360-020-00311-0
Games Played
Professor
– Think of the Children - https://store.steampowered.com/app/573600/Think_of_the_Children/
Rating: 4.5/5
DJ
– Generation Zero - https://store.steampowered.com/app/704270/Generation_Zero/
Rating: 4.5/5
Dev-i-Boy
– VRChat - https://store.steampowered.com/app/438100/VRChat/
Rating: 4/5
Other topics discussed
Cats movie butthole cut coming soon
- https://www.polygon.com/2020/4/6/21207710/cats-release-the-butthole-cut
ARMA 3 (open-world, realism-based, military tactical shooter video game developed and published by Bohemia Interactive.)
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ARMA_3
DayZ (DayZ is a survival video game developed and published by Bohemia Interactive.)
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DayZ_(video_game)
ARMA 3 APEX : Old man
- https://arma3.com/news/arma-3-apex-old-man-is-now-available
ARMA 3 developers arrested in Greece
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ARMA_3#Espionage_arrests
ARMA 3 banned in Iran
- https://www.polygon.com/gaming/2012/9/19/3357600/arma-3-banned-in-iran
Vigor (Free-to-play online action game by Bohemia Interactive for the Xbox One.)
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vigor_(video_game)
Minecraft Hunger Games
Star Wars Battlefront II (action shooter video game based on the Star Wars film franchise.)
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Star_Wars_Battlefront_II_(2017_video_game)
Heston Blumenthal's perfect steak
- https://www.sbs.com.au/food/recipes/heston-blumenthals-perfect-steak
Perfect steak journal article
- https://arxiv.org/pdf/1908.10787.pdf
Flory-Huggin’s theory (Flory–Huggins solution theory is a lattice model of the thermodynamics of polymer solutions which takes account of the great dissimilarity in molecular sizes in adapting the usual expression for the entropy of mixing.)
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flory%E2%80%93Huggins_solution_theory
Incredible dads save kids compilation
- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4RIhUUt88ZM
Oculus Quest (Oculus Quest is our first all-in-one gaming system for virtual reality.)
- https://www.oculus.com/quest/?locale=en_US
Ugandan Knuckles (Ugandan Knuckles is the nickname given to a depiction of the character Knuckles from the Sonic franchise created by YouTuber Gregzilla, which is often used as an avatar by players in the multiplayer game VRChat who repeat phrases like "do you know the way" and memes associated with the country Uganda, most notably the film Who Killed Captain Alex? and Zulul.)
- https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/ugandan-knuckles
Simp (Simp, often interpreted as an acronym for Sucker Idolizing Mediocre Pussy or a portmanteau of "sissy" and "pimp," is a slang expression used to ridicule males who are perceived as being overly invested in a woman and acting submissive to that person.)
- https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/simp
Amiga 500 (The Amiga 500, also known as the A500, is the first low-end Commodore Amiga 16/32-bitmultimedia home/personal computer.)
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amiga_500
Conway’s Game Of Life (The Game of Life, also known simply as Life, is a cellular automaton devised by the British mathematicianJohn Horton Conway in 1970.)
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conway%27s_Game_of_Life
Build a working game of Tetris in Conway's Game of Life
The Avengers (British espionage television programme created in 1961.)
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Avengers_(TV_series)
The Avengers (1998 American action spy film adaptation of the British television series of the same name directed by Jeremiah Chechik.)
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Avengers_(1998_film)
Brown note (a infrasonic frequency that would cause humans to lose control of their bowels due to resonance.)
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brown_note
Ted Kaczynski (also known as the Unabomber, is an American domestic terrorist, anarchist, and former mathematics professor.)
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ted_Kaczynski
Ken Kesey (American novelist, essayist, and countercultural figure. He considered himself a link between the Beat Generation of the 1950s and the hippies of the 1960s.)
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ken_Kesey
That’s not COVID (TNC podcast)
- https://thatsnotcanon.com/thatsnotcovidpodcast
Shout Outs
11 April 2020 – John Conway, a renowned mathematician who created one of the first computer games passes away - https://www.cnn.com/2020/04/14/us/john-conway-death-obit-trnd/index.html
John Conway, English mathematician active in the theory of finite groups, knot theory,number theory,combinatorial game theory and coding theory. He also made contributions to many branches of recreational mathematics, most notably the invention of the cellular automaton called the Game of Life. A Google search for "Conway's Game of Life" prompts the search engine to automatically start playing the game. It is now commonly used as an introductory exercise in computing classes. Conway used his love of games to connect with children, spending time at math camps across the country. He passed away from complications from COVID-19 at the age of 82 in New Brunswick, New Jersey.
12 April 2020 – Sir Stirling Moss, F1 driver known as one of the best behind the wheel, passes away - https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/obituaries/stirling-moss-f1-driver-known-as-one-of-the-best-behind-the-wheel-dies-at-90/2020/04/12/91f03b9c-7cd3-11ea-9040-68981f488eed_story.html
Sir Stirling Craufurd Moss, a British Formula One racing driver. An inductee into the International Motorsports Hall of Fame, he won 212 of the 529 races he entered across several categories of competition and has been described as "the greatest driver never to win the World Championship". Mr. Moss was known in his sport as “Mr. Motor Racing.” Long after his retirement, he was also considered a British national treasure — a dashing gentleman racer who was chivalrous and always sportsmanlike to his competitors despite the cut and thrust of motor racing. He was knighted by Prince Charles, standing in for the queen, in 2000. Mr. Moss’s sportsmanship was perhaps most evident in 1958, when he could have won the world championship after taking the Portuguese Grand Prix in Porto in his British-made Vanwall racecar. His archrival, Mike Hawthorn, finished second, giving him a key six points, which would have clinched the world title. But Hawthorn, a fellow Englishman, was threatened with disqualification for pushing his stalled Ferrari back onto the track after a spin. His disqualification would have put Mr. Moss in the driver’s seat for the world title. But Mr. Moss told race officials that Hawthorn had pushed his Ferrari only on an off-the-track area and should not be disqualified. His intervention swayed the officials, who awarded Hawthorn second place, eventually enabling him to win the F1 world championship by a single point over Mr. Moss. He passed away from a long illness at the age of 90 in Mayfair, London.
12 April 2020 – Tim Brooke Taylor, best known for his work on The Goodies and I'm Sorry I Haven't A Clue passes away - https://www.etonline.com/tim-brooke-taylor-the-goodies-star-dies-at-79-of-coronavirus-complications-144654
Timothy Julian Brooke-Taylor, English comedian and actor. He was best known as a member of The Goodies, starring in the television series throughout the 1970s and picking up international recognition in Australia and New Zealand. He also appeared as an actor in various sitcoms, and was a panellist on I'm Sorry I Haven't a Clue for almost 50 years. In 2008, Brooke-Taylor was heard in the Doctor Who audio story The Zygon Who Fell To Earth, made by Big Finish Productions. Paul McGann played the Eighth Doctor, and Brooke-Taylor played the part of Mims, a Zygon taking the shape of a human. In 2011, Brooke-Taylor was appointed Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) during Queen Elizabeth II's Birthday Honors, for his services to entertainment. He passed away from complications from COVID-19 at the age of 79 in the United Kingdom.
13 April 2020 – Rick May, who voiced Star Fox 64 and Team Fortress II passed away - https://www.dailymail.co.uk/tvshowbiz/article-8216159/Rick-voiced-Star-Fox-64-Team-Fortress-II-characters-dies-79-coronavirus.html
Rick May, American voice actor and theatrical performer, director, and teacher from Seattle, Washington. He began voice acting in video games in the late 1990s, including roles as Peppy Hare and Andross in Star Fox 64, Peppy Hare might not be one of gaming's most famous characters, but May’s line in 1997's Star Fox 64 where he played Fox McCloud’s mentor is one of the most iconic lines in gaming history - so much so that even Google got in on the beloved meme. Go ahead, Google "Do a barrel roll". His other various campaign characters, include Genghis Khan, in Age of Empires II'; and Soldier in Team Fortress 2. He passed away from complications from COVID-19 at the age of 79 in Seattle,Washington.
14 April 2020 – Pip Baker, one half of the Dr Who writing duo known as Pip and Jane Baker passes away - http://www.doctorwhonews.net/2020/04/pip-baker-died-2020.html
Pip Baker, along with his wife and writing partner Jane, was one of the best-known writers from the mid 80's era of Doctor Who, writing eleven episodes for the series. Together they created the Rani, a female Time Lord scientist who was brought to life so vividly by the late Kate O'Mara, as well a creating the companion Mel. The Bakers scripted or contributed to four serials for the programme in the 1980s: The Mark of the Rani, The Trial of a Time Lord, Parts 9–12 and 14 (also known as Terror of the Vervoids and The Ultimate Foe); and Time and the Rani. They have also written novelisations of these stories, as well as a Make Your Own Adventure With Doctor Who (Find Your Fate With Doctor Who in the United States) gamebook titled Race Against Time. Pip and Jane's audio story The Rani Reaps the Whirlwind featured the return of the Rani and was released in 2000. He passed away from complication from a fall at the age of 91 in the United Kingdom.
Remembrances
5 April 2020 – Honor Blackman - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Honor_Blackman
English actress, widely known for the roles of Cathy Gale in The Avengers, Bond girlPussy Galore in Goldfinger, Julia Daggett in Shalako and Hera in Jason and the Argonauts. She is also known for her role as Laura West in the ITV sitcom The Upper Hand. At 38, she was one of the oldest actresses to play a Bond girl, and was five years older than the star Sean Connery. Albert R. Broccoli said Blackman was cast opposite Sean Connery in the James Bond films based on her success in the British television series The Avengers. He knew that most American audiences would not have seen the programme. Broccoli said, "The Brits would love her because they knew her as Mrs. Gale, the Yanks would like her because she was so good, it was a perfect combination." She died from natural causes at the age of 94 in Lewes, Sussex.
13 April 1938 – Grey Owl - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grey_Owl
Archibald Stansfeld Belaney, commonly known as Grey Owl, was a British-born conservationist, fur trapper, and writer who pretended to be a First Nations person. While he achieved fame as a conservationist during his life, after his death the revelation that he was not Indigenous, along with other autobiographical fabrications, negatively affected his reputation. Belaney rose to prominence as a notable author and lecturer, primarily on environmental issues. In working with the National Parks Branch, Grey Owl became the subject of many films, and was established as the "'caretaker of park animals' at Riding Mountain National Park in Manitoba" in 1931. Together with his numerous articles, books, films and lectures, his views on conservation reached audiences beyond the borders of Canada. His conservation views largely focused on humans' negative impact on nature through their commodification of nature's resources for profits, and a need for humans to develop a respect for the natural world. Recognition of Belaney has included biographies, a historic plaque at his birthplace, and a 1999 biopic about his life by the director Richard Attenborough. He died from pneumonia at the age of 49 in Prince Albert, Saskatchewan.
13 April 1941 – Annie Jump Cannon - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Annie_Jump_Cannon
American astronomer whose cataloging work was instrumental in the development of contemporary stellar classification. With Edward C. Pickering, she is credited with the creation of the Harvard Classification Scheme, which was the first serious attempt to organize and classify stars based on their temperatures and spectral types. She was nearly deaf throughout her career. She was a suffragist and a member of the National Women's Party. Cannon manually classified more stars in a lifetime than anyone else, with a total of around 350,000 stars. She discovered 300 variable stars, five novas, and one spectroscopic binary, creating a bibliography that included about 200,000 references. She discovered her first star in 1898, though she was not able to confirm it until 1905. When she first started cataloging the stars, she was able to classify 1,000 stars in three years, but by 1913, she was able to work on 200 stars an hour. Cannon could classify three stars a minute just by looking at their spectral patterns and, if using a magnifying glass, could classify stars down to the ninth magnitude, around 16 times fainter than the human eye can see. Her work was also highly accurate. In 1925 she became the first woman to receive an honorary doctorate of science from Oxford University. In 1935, she created the Annie J. Cannon Prize for "the woman of any country, whose contributions to the science of astronomy are the most distinguished." She died from congestive heart failure at the age of 77 in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
13 April 1944 - Cécile Chaminade - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C%C3%A9cile_Chaminade
French composer and pianist. In 1913, she was awarded the Légion d'Honneur, a first for a female composer. Ambroise Thomas said, "This is not a woman who composes, but a composer who is a woman." In 1908 she visited the United States, where she was accorded a hearty welcome. Her compositions were tremendous favorites with the American public, and such pieces as the Scarf Dance or the Ballet No. 1 were to be found in the music libraries of many lovers of piano music of the time. She composed a Konzertstück for piano and orchestra, the ballet music to Callirhoé and other orchestral works. Her songs, such as The Silver Ring and Ritournelle, were also great favorites. In London in November 1901, she made gramophone recordings of seven of her compositions for the Gramophone and Typewriter Company; these are among the most sought-after piano recordings by collectors, though they have been reissued on compact disk. Chaminade was relegated to obscurity for the second half of the 20th century, her piano pieces and songs mostly forgotten, with the Flute Concertino in D major, Op. 107, composed for the 1902 Paris Conservatoire Concours, her most popular piece today. Chaminade's music has been described as tuneful, highly accessible and mildly chromatic, and it may be regarded as bearing the typical characteristics of late-Romantic French music. She died at the age of 86 in Monte Carlo.
Famous Birthdays
13 April 1570 – Guy Fawkes - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guy_Fawkes
Also known as Guido Fawkes while fighting for the Spanish, was a member of a group of provincial English Catholics who planned the failed Gunpowder Plot of 1605. Fawkes converted to Catholicism and left for mainland Europe, where he fought for Catholic Spain in the Eighty Years' War against Protestant Dutch reformers in the Low Countries. He travelled to Spain to seek support for a Catholic rebellion in England without success. He later met Thomas Wintour, with whom he returned to England. Wintour introduced him to Robert Catesby, who planned to assassinate King James I and restore a Catholic monarch to the throne. The plotters leased an undercroft beneath the House of Lords; Fawkes was placed in charge of the gunpowder which they stockpiled there. The authorities were prompted by an anonymous letter to search Westminster Palace during the early hours of 5 November, and they found Fawkes guarding the explosives. He was questioned and tortured over the next few days and confessed to wanting to blow up the House of Lords. He became synonymous with the Gunpowder Plot, the failure of which has been commemorated in the UK as Guy Fawkes Night since 5 November 1605, when his effigy is traditionally burned on a bonfire, commonly accompanied by fireworks. He was born in Stonegate, York.
13 April 1892 - Robert Watson-Watt - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Watson-Watt
Sir Robert Alexander Watson-Watt, Scottish pioneer of radio direction finding and radar technology. Watt began his career in radio physics with a job at the Met Office, where he began looking for accurate ways to track thunderstorms using the radio signals given off by lightning. This led to the 1920s development of a system later known as huff-duff. Huff-duff allowed operators to determine the location of an enemy radio in seconds and it became a major part of the network of systems that helped defeat the U-boat threat. It is estimated that huff-duff was used in about a quarter of all attacks on U-boats. In 1935 Watt was asked to comment on reports of a German death ray based on radio. Watt and his assistant Arnold Frederic Wilkins quickly determined it was not possible, but Wilkins suggested using radio signals to locate aircraft at long distances. This led to a February 1935 demonstration where signals from a BBC short-wave transmitter were bounced off a Handley Page Heyford aircraft. Watt led the development of a practical version of this device, which entered service in 1938 under the code name Chain Home. Watson-Watt justified his choice of a non-optimal frequency for his radar, with his often-quoted “cult of the imperfect,” which he stated as “Give them the third-best to go on with; the second-best comes too late, [and] the best never comes.” He was born in Brechin,Angus.
13 April 1899 - Alfred Mosher Butts - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alfred_Mosher_Butts
American architect, famous for inventing the board gameScrabble in 1938. In the early 1930s after working as an architect but now unemployed, Butts set out to design a board game. He studied existing games and found that games fell into three categories: number games such as dice and bingo; move games such as chess and checkers; and word games such as anagrams. Butts decided to create a game that utilized both chance and skill by combining elements of anagrams and crossword puzzles, a popular pastime of the 1920s. Players would draw seven lettered tiles from a pool and then attempt to form words from their seven letters. A key to the game was Butts' analysis of the English language. Butts studied the front page of The New York Times to calculate how frequently each letter of the alphabet was used. He then used each letter's frequency to determine how many of each letter he would include in the game. He included only four "S" tiles so that the ability to make words plural would not make the game too easy. Butts initially called the game "Lexiko", but later changed the name to "Criss Cross Words", after considering "It", and began to look for a buyer. The game makers he originally contacted rejected the idea, but Butts was tenacious. Eventually, he sold the rights to entrepreneur and game-lover James Brunot, who made a few minor adjustments to the design and renamed the game "Scrabble." To memorialize Butts's importance to the invention of the game, there is a street sign at 35th Avenue and 81st Street in Jackson Heights that is stylized using letters, with their values in Scrabble as a subscript. He was born in Poughkeepsie, New York.
Events of Interest
13 April 1953 – Project MKUltra begins - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_MKUltra
Project MKUltra (or MK-Ultra), also called the CIA mind control program, is the code name given to a program of experiments on human subjects that were designed and undertaken by the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency, some of which were illegal. Experiments on humans were intended to identify and develop drugs and procedures to be used in interrogations in order to weaken the individual and force confessions through mind control. The project's intentionally obscure CIA cryptonym is made up of the digraph MK, meaning that the project was sponsored by the agency's Technical Services Staff, followed by the word Ultra which had previously been used to designate the most secret classification of World War II intelligence. Other related cryptonyms include Project MKNAOMI and Project MKDELTA. The project was organized through the Office of Scientific Intelligence of the CIA and coordinated with the United States Army Biological Warfare Laboratories. Code names for drug-related experiments were Project Bluebird and Project Artichoke. The program engaged in many illegal activities, including the use of U.S. and Canadian citizens as its unwitting test subjects, which led to controversy regarding its legitimacy. MKUltra used numerous methods to manipulate its subjects' mental states and brain functions. Techniques included the covert administration of high doses ofpsychoactive drugs (especially LSD) and other chemicals, electroshocks, hypnosis,sensory deprivation, isolation, verbal and sexual abuse, as well as other forms of torture. In December 2018, declassified documents included a letter to an unidentified doctor discussing work on six dogs made to run, turn and stop via remote control and brain implants.
13 April 1970 - Apollo 13 oxygen tank explodes - https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/apollo-13-oxygen-tank-explodes
On April 13, 1970, disaster strikes 200,000 miles from Earth when oxygen tank No. 2 blows up on Apollo 13, the third manned lunar landing mission. Astronauts James A. Lovell, John L. Swigert, and Fred W. Haise had left Earth two days before for the Fra Mauro highlands of the moon but were forced to turn their attention to simply making it home alive. Mission commander Lovell reported to mission control on Earth: “Houston, we’ve had a problem here,” and it was discovered that the normal supply of oxygen, electricity, light, and water had been disrupted. The landing mission was aborted, and the astronauts and controllers on Earth scrambled to come up with emergency procedures. The crippled spacecraft continued to the moon, circled it, and began a long, cold journey back to Earth. The astronauts and mission control were faced with enormous logistical problems in stabilizing the spacecraft and its air supply and providing enough energy to the damaged fuel cells to allow successful reentry into Earth’s atmosphere. Navigation was another problem, and Apollo 13‘s course was repeatedly corrected with dramatic and untested maneuvers. On April 17, with the world anxiously watching, tragedy turned to triumph as the Apollo 13 astronauts touched down safely in the Pacific Ocean.
13 April 2017 - The US drops the largest ever non-nuclear weapon on Nangarhar Province,Afghanistan.
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GBU-43/B_MOAB
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2017_Nangarhar_airstrike
The GBU-43/B Massive Ordnance Air Blast (commonly known as "Mother of All Bombs") is a large-yield bomb, developed for the United States military by Albert L. Weimorts, Jr. of the Air Force Research Laboratory. At the time of development, it was said to be the most powerful non-nuclear weapon in the American arsenal. The basic principle resembles that of the BLU-82 Daisy Cutter, which was used to clear heavily wooded areas in the Vietnam War. Pentagon officials suggested MOAB might be used as an anti-personnel weapon, as part of the "shock and awe" strategy integral to the 2003 invasion of Iraq. The MOAB is not a penetrator weapon and is primarily intended for soft to medium surface targets covering extended areas and targets in a contained environment such as a deep canyon or within a cave system. The MOAB was first dropped in combat in the 13 April 2017 airstrike against an Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant – Khorasan Province (ISIS) tunnel complex in Achin District, Afghanistan. Casualty figures were initially reported as 36 but increased over the following days as reconnaissance units investigated the site. On 18 April 2017, one senior Afghan security official said the bomb killed 96 Islamic State militants, among them 13 major commanders. Stars and Stripes reported that General Dawlat Waziri, spokesman for Afghanistan's Defense Ministry said that since the strike, the offensive operation in the area was resumed. An Afghan officer also said that trees 100 metres from the impact point had remained standing.
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