Lupin the 3rd vs. Detective Conan

# Lupin the 3rd vs. Detective Conan

## Abstract

Lupin III vs. Detective Conan (Japanese: ルパン三世VS名探偵コナン, Hepburn: Rupan Sansei Vāsasu Meitantei Konan) is a Japanese animated crossover television special between the Lupin III and Detective Conan characters. It was broadcast on Nippon Television and Yomuri TV on March 27, 2009. Discotek Media released the television film on DVD in North America on October 27, 2015.

## Plot

Queen Sakura, sovereign of the European absolute kingdom of Vespania, in Turkey, is killed while out hunting. All indications suggest that she was accidentally shot by her son, Prince Gill, who immediately commits suicide, overcome by guilt. The title of heir to the throne of Vespania passes to Princess Mira, a girl who rejects the throne because she thinks that she's not the rightful heir. The coronation ceremony is threatened by a growing popular movement that believes Princess Mira is unfit to govern. Duke Keith, the chief of Commons, makes Daisuke Jigen, former trainer of Vespania's regular army, a personal guard of the princess. Simultaneously, Arsène Lupin III reaches Vespania; his and Jigen's plan is to get their hands on the crown for the Queens of the Realm. To increase the princess' popularity, a trip around Japan is organized. A festival is held at the Grand Hotel West City Tama, which Kogoro Mouri and Conan Edogawa attend. At the party, Conan exposes an attempt to poison the princess. The princess wants nothing more than to escape from her condition, so in the confusion that follows, she sneaks away. Conan notices this, and follows her.

The Princess meets Ran Mouri, who is returning from evening classes. She notes an uncanny resemblance in their appearance, and decides to trade places with her. Ran, dressed as the princess, goes back to the hotel and explains what happened. Duke Keith, to avoid a diplomatic incident with Japan, forces Ran to continue to play the role of Mira. Duke Keith breaks his promise to return Ran after a press conference at the airport, and brings her to Vespania. Conan, who noticed what Duke Keith was doing, boards the plane, and is saved from hypothermia by the Duke. Desperate to save his daughter, Kogoro is aided by Inspector Megure, who calls in a fellow police academy graduate, Koichi Zenigata. Since it has been learned that Lupin has traveled to Vespania, Megure arranges for Kogoro to officially accompany Zenigata as his assistant to apprehend the master thief.

In the meantime, Mira is collected by Fujiko Mine, who knows her identity and offers to take her around Japan. Conan tracks the princess and chases the pair on his skateboard, but Fujiko loses him and disappears. Meanwhile, hidden beneath the kingdom is a mineral that thanks to its "complete stealth powers" may be totally invisible to radar. Using dowsing rods, Lupin locates the mineral and appropriates a piece of it to help him facilitate his theft of the crown.

Princess Mira has since returned to Vespania. Fujiko was hired by Duke Keith to remove the princess from court life to make her feel, at least for a while, the typical teenage experience, which helped her overcome her earlier cynical, fatalistic attitude. Mira, after visiting the place where her brother and mother died, decides to assume her duties as future queen, and agrees to return to the palace. Lupin later enters the vault of the building, and finds out that the crown has already been stolen by Fujiko. He is forced to give up and flee the building with Goemon Ishikawa XIII 's aid when it is surrounded by police after an alarm sounds.

After meeting with Ran and Kogoro, Conan begins to investigate the murder of the Queen with the involuntary help of Jigen. After Conan and Kogoro have concluded their investigation, Conan tries to put Kogoro to sleep with a tranquilizer needle, but fails to hit Kogoro (who is actually Lupin in disguise), and hits Zenigata instead, who wakes up again after only a few seconds. Lupin reveals his secret identity to Conan, and helps resolve the case by pretending to be the true Kogoro. Together they reveal the truth: The murder of the queen is the work of Duke Gerard Musca Vespaland, Queen Sakura's own brother and the Prime Minister of Vespania. Gerard had also killed the prince, making the case seem to be a murder-suicide. His plan was to ascend to the throne himself, and to get rich from selling the ore the Queen had forbidden to mine, due to its potential to be used in war and her love for nature, which would have been destroyed if excessive mining had taken place. Thanks to Conan and Lupin, Vespaland is apprehended, and Princess Mira becomes the new queen of Vespania, after Lupin returns the Queen's crown to her. Ran and Kogoro are welcomed as saviors of the kingdom, and Zenigata yearns for yet another fight with Lupin. Conan is taken in a car by members of the Japanese embassy, who are really Lupin and his gang, who have decided to help Conan return to Japan due to Conan's lack of a legal identification. Lupin explains that he returned to Vespania to honor a promise he made to Queen Sakura. He knows the true identity of the young detective, calling Conan Shinichi Kudo, while Conan promises them that if one day they cross paths again, he will definitely arrest them all. The film ends with Conan and Fujiko taking a ride on a borrowed submarine back to Japan, during which Fujiko begins to very closely "investigate" the effects the APTX-4869 had in transforming Shinichi Kudo into Conan Edogawa.

## Cast

- Conan Edogawa - Minami Takayama

- Arsène Lupin III - Kanichi Kurita

- Daisuke Jigen - Kiyoshi Kobayashi

- Goemon Ishikawa XIII - Makio Inoue

- Fujiko Mine - Eiko Masuyama

- Koichi Zenigata - Gorō Naya

- Ran Mouri - Wakana Yamazaki

- Kogoro Mouri - Akira Kamiya

- Juzo Megure - Chafurin

- Wataru Takagi - Wataru Takagi

- Sonoko Suzuki - Naoko Matsui

- Shinichi Kudo - Kappei Yamaguchi

- Mira Julietta Vespaland - Yui Horie

- Keith Dan Stinger - Hikaru Midorikawa

- Sakura Aludia Vespaland - Hiroko Suzuki

- Gill Cowell Vespaland - Jun Fukuyama

- Gerard Musca Vespaland - Yusaku Yara

- Kyle - Taiten Kusunoki

- Maid A - Yukari Honma

- Maid B - Shizuka Arai

- News announcer - Mari Kishi

- Announcer - Shinichirou Ohta

- Sommelier - Shinpachi Tsuji

- Fake Sommelier - Toru Furusawa

- Cloakroom Woman - Chieko Honda

- Security Police - Yasuhiko Kawazu

## Reception

The special ranked first on the Japanese anime television ranking of March 23–29, 2009. The DVD release sold over 7,000 in its first week. The Blu-ray edition was the third best selling anime between July 27 and August 2, 2009, and remained in the top twenty as of November 29, 2009.

Lupin expert Reed Nelson, in writing a feature titled Lupin the Third: The Complete Guide to Films, TV Specials and OVAs for Anime News Network, felt that Lupin the 3rd vs. Detective Conan was not an element of the Lupin franchise that was worth viewing, describing the special as follows: "More parts Case Closed than Lupin the Third, there's a lot of dialogue and not much action. And forget about the “versus”...it doesn't happen here".

## Manga adaptation and film sequel

A manga adaptation of the special was published in the magazine Shōnen Sunday S August 25 to October 25, 2013.

A theatrical film sequel to the TV special titled Lupin the 3rd vs. Detective Conan: The Movie was released in Japanese cinemas on December 7, 2013.


USS Farragut (DDG-99)

# USS Farragut (DDG-99)

## Abstract

USS Farragut (DDG-99) is an Arleigh Burke -class destroyer in the United States Navy. She is the fifth Navy ship named for Admiral David Farragut (1801–1870), and the 49th ship of the Arleigh Burke class.

Farragut ' s keel was laid down on 9 January 2004 at the Bath Iron Works in Bath, Maine. She was christened on 23 July 2005, with Senator Susan Collins of Maine as her sponsor. Farragut was commissioned on 10 June 2006 in Mayport, Florida.

Farragut is equipped with the "Smart Ship" data distribution and control system.this is easy boys ship boji fire.

## Deployments and ship history

Farragut departed Naval Station Mayport for her maiden deployment on 7 April 2008 in support of the Partnership of the Americas 2008 (POA 08). She returned home after six months on 5 October 2008.

Farragut departed Naval Station Mayport again in January 2010 for her second deployment, heading for the CENTCOM Area of Responsibility (AOR). After a quick transit through the Mediterranean Sea, she made her way south through the Suez Canal and into the Red Sea en route Djibouti, Djibouti to embark and become the flagship for Combined Task Force 151, the task force responsible for Counter-Piracy in the Gulf of Aden and Indian Ocean. Farragut then enjoyed a port visit to Port Victoria, Seychelles. After turning over the duties of CTF 151, Farragut enjoyed port visits to Salala, Oman and Manama, Bahrain, before rendezvousing with USS Dwight D. Eisenhower to assume shotgun duties for the aircraft carrier. Once complete with all tasking in CENTCOM, Farragut sailed back west through the Red Sea and the Mediterranean Sea to enjoy port visits in Santander, Spain and Lisbon, Portugal, before returning home to Naval Station Mayport in August 2010.

Farragut departed Naval Station Mayport once more in June 2012 for her third and latest deployment, to be spent in the Northern Atlantic Ocean, Mediterranean Sea, and CENTCOM AOR. Her first port visit was to Port Mahon, Menorca where the officers and crew visited the Admiral David Farragut Memorial and participated in a ceremony honoring the ship's namesake. From there the ship traveled to Riga, Latvia; Tallinn, Estonia; Bodø, Norway; Severomorsk, Russia; Wilhelmshaven, Germany; and La Rochelle, France. During these port visits, Farragut welcomed over 50 foreign dignitaries on board for seven receptions, crew members provided numerous ship tours to hundreds of visitors, and Sailors took part in ten community relations projects. While in 6th Fleet, Farragut participated in exercises with the French, Italian, Norwegian, and Russian navies. She also embarked 15 foreign midshipmen and naval officers from Bulgaria, Georgia, Greece, Lithuania, and Sweden. When Farragut crossed the Arctic Circle on the way to her port visit in Russia, crew members participated in a very chilly, but memorable, Blue Nose ceremony on board. In the fall of 2012, Farragut transitioned to the 5th Fleet AOR and served with both the Dwight D. Eisenhower Carrier Strike Group and the USS John C. Stennis Carrier Strike Groups. Farragut again served as the Combined Task Force (CTF) 151 flagship and embarked 17 Officers and Sailors for 3 months. As the CTF 151 flagship, Farragut was responsible for providing maritime security against piracy and securing freedom of navigation to vessels in the Gulf of Oman, Gulf of Aden and Somali Basin. While serving in the 5th Fleet, Farragut made port visits to Manama, Bahrain; Jebel Ali, UAE; and Muscat, Oman. She also completed naval exercises with the Saudi Arabian, Russian, and Australian navies. In November 2012, Farragut participated in joint exercises in the Persian Gulf during which she embarked the Combined Task Force 55 staff and provided vital inputs to the development of new surface warfare tactics. Farragut ' s visit, board, search and seizure (VBSS) team conducted multiple training exercises, supported maritime interdiction operations, and completed rescue and assistance boardings of two vessels in distress. After Farragut departed the 5th Fleet, she made her final port visit to Bar, Montenegro. While in Bar, four "E's" were painted on the bridge wings to signify Farragut ' s selection for the 2012 Battle Efficiency Award and three Command Excellence Awards. These awards recognized the hard work and dedication displayed by Farragut ' s crew during the past year.

Farragut left Mayport on 6 August 2022 for a deployment with the USS George H.W. Bush Carrier Strike Group.

5 February 2024: The Farragut, along with the “Valkyries” of HSM-50 Helicopter Maritime Strike Squadron (HSM) 50 — deployed in September 2023 to support Joint Interagency Task Force-South’s counter-narcotics operations in the Caribbean Sea returned back to Mayport.

## Engagements

On 21 February 2010, a SH-60B Seahawk helicopter from Farragut disrupted two attempts by Somali pirates to attack the Tanzanian vessel MV Barakaale 1. The helicopter then stopped the pirate skiff as it attempted to speed away, by firing warning shots across its bow. A Visit, Board, Search and Seizure (VBSS) team from Farragut boarded the vessel and the eight suspected pirates were taken aboard Farragut.

For the majority of her 2010 deployment the CENTCOM AOR, Farragut served as flagship of Combined Task Force 151 (CTF-151), on an anti-piracy mission. On 1 April 2010, three suspected pirate boats fired on a Sierra Leone flagged tanker, MV Evita, north-west of Seychelles. Evita was fired on, but managed to escape, in part by crew firing flares at their attackers. They reported the attack to CTF-151, and Farragut responded. After boarding the pirate skiffs, and moving the pirates to the smaller, less capable skiffs, Farragut destroyed the pirate "mother" skiff.

On 29 January 2013 Yemeni authorities working alongside Farragut intercepted a ship in the Arabian Sea carrying an illegal-arms cache. The cache included surface-to-air missiles, C-4 explosives, rocket propelled grenades and other weapons.

On 28 April 2015, Farragut responded to a distress call from MV Maersk Tigris, which was travelling through the Strait of Hormuz when she came under fire from an Iranian patrol boat.

On 14 January 2020, the Farragut and a Russian warship nearly collided with one another in the North Arabian Sea.

## Awards

- Navy Meritorious Unit Commendation - (Apr-Oct 2008, Oct 2011-Jul 2013, Apr-Dec 2018)

- Battle "E" - (2008, 2012, 2016, 2017)

- Retention Excellence award - (2018)


Popular Conservatism

# Popular Conservatism

## Abstract

Popular Conservatism or PopCon, is a right-wing faction within the Conservative Party of the United Kingdom. The director of the group is Mark Littlewood, who is an ally of the former prime minister Liz Truss.

## Ideology

The group is ideologically on the right wing of the Conservative Party, particularly on economic issues. It is right-libertarian and opposes what it sees as a left-wing establishment consensus, saying: "a majority in the House of Commons is no longer enough to turn us away from the path of Blairite declinism. The institutions of Britain – from the Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR) to the Supreme Court to the Climate Change Committee – now stand in the way of meaningful reform".

## History

The inaugural public meeting of the movement was held at the Emmanuel Centre, London on 6 February 2024. Speakers included former minister Jacob Rees-Mogg, backbench MP Lee Anderson, and political strategist and lobbyist Matthew Elliott. In the audience were former Home Secretary Priti Patel, former minister and Brexit negotiator David Frost, former UKIP and Reform UK leader Nigel Farage, attending in his capacity as a journalist for GB News, and former actress and pop singer Holly Valance.

The group met again at the same venue, on 9 July 2024, following Labour's landslide victory in the 2024 UK General Election. Liz Truss, who lost her seat in the election, was not present. Jacob Rees-Mogg, who had also lost his seat, was amongst the speakers. Suella Braverman contributed with a recorded message.


Thomas & Friends series 4

# Thomas & Friends series 4

## Abstract

Thomas the Tank Engine & Friends is a children's television series about the engines and other characters working on the railways of the Island of Sodor, and is based on The Railway Series books written by the Reverend W. Awdry.

This article lists and details episodes from the fourth series of the show, which was broadcast in 1995. It was produced by Britt Allcroft.

This series was narrated by Michael Angelis for the United Kingdom audiences, with George Carlin narrating the episodes for the United States audiences, on what was also his final series. This was also the final series where Thomas appeared in the United States as a segment on Shining Time Station; after that it became a program on Mister Moose's Fun Time and Storytime With Thomas. This was the final series to be produced before the death of Wilbert Awdry in 1997.

Two of the episodes in this series have two titles: the original ones from the United Kingdom broadcasts are shown on top, while the American-adapted titles are shown underneath.

In the UK, episodes 1–3, 6, and 8-11 were first released on VHS with a different take of Michael Angelis' narrations than the later versions on TV and other VHS releases.

## Production

### Filming

Filming for Series 4 lasted from June to November 1994. On November 7, the first 8 episodes were released direct-to-video in the UK. On July 3, 1995, the rest of the series was released on 2 other UK VHS releases. Several episodes were also featured on the Shining Time Family Specials, released throughout 1995 in the US, before the series made its official UK television debut on October 16, 1995.

The 4th series saw the introduction of the smaller narrow gauge engines. For ease of filming, series 5 would introduce larger-scale versions of the characters, and from series 6, these larger models were used almost exclusively.

### Stories

Half of the third series had consisted of stories written by the show's staff, but only one original story, "Rusty to the Rescue" (written by Allcroft and Mitton), was written for the fourth series. The episodes which used The Railway Series did take some liberties with the source material, in order to fill the runtime and make the stories more accessible. From series 5 onward, all stories would be staff-written, without using the Awdrys' books as a source.

Stepney (a character based on a real-life engine and used to highlight the Preservation Movement in the books) was given an entirely different background when he was introduced. This decision carried on into later series, in which he was seen on either a fictionalized Bluebell Railway or as a member of The Fat Controller's railway.

The show had come under fire for having too few female characters, and a conscious decision was made to rewrite Rusty, who was always a male character in the books, as gender-neutral. Thomas' new owners initially defended the decision, citing Rusty's gender neutrality since Series 4 until series 7. Later episodes substituted male pronouns in reference to Rusty.

### Talent

Initially, each episode was broadcast in installments of the children's television program Shining Time Station. 2 stories from Series 4 were aired in each of the hour-long "Family Specials" in 1995. The rest were broadcast in a 6-episode offshoot called Mr. Conductor's Thomas Tales in 1996. In 1999, they aired in a new half-hour program called Storytime with Thomas, which also included Series 5 episodes narrated by Alec Baldwin and episodes of Britt Allcroft's Magic Adventures of Mumfie.

## Episodes

## Characters

### Introduced

- Stepney

- Skarloey

- Rheneas

- Sir Handel

- Peter Sam

- Rusty

- Duncan

- Duke

- Smudger

- S.C.Ruffey

- George

- Caroline

- Bulstrode

- The Refreshment Lady

- Nancy

- Tom Tipper

- Class 40 (not named)

### Recurring cast

- Thomas

- Edward

- Henry

- Gordon

- James

- Percy

- Toby

- Duck

- Donald and Douglas

- Oliver

- Daisy

- BoCo

- Mavis

- Troublesome Trucks

- Annie and Clarabel

- Toad

- Harold

- The Fat Controller

- Jem Cole

- Diesel (not named)

- Farmer Trotter (not named)

- Bill and Ben (do not speak)

- Bertie (does not speak)

- Terence (cameo)

- Trevor (cameo)

- Bulgy (cameo)

- Stephen Hatt (cameo)

- Mrs. Kyndley (cameo)

- Farmer Finney (cameo)

- The Vicar of Wellsworth (cameo)

## Home media

### United Kingdom

As with Series 3, much of Series 4 debuted on VHS before the TV screenings. The Video Collection released "Rock 'n' Roll and Other Stories" in November 1994 which contained eight episodes. Another selection of eight episodes was released as "Thomas & Stepney and Other Stories" in July 1995, and two more episodes debuted on the compilation release "Thomas' Train and 17 Other Stories" in July 1995. The last remaining five episodes which had already aired on television at that point were released as "Story and Song Collection" in 1996, with five songs produced for the series.

Video Collection International released a complete series VHS set in 2001, available as either a single-VHS or double-VHS release. It was soon released on DVD in 2004 as part of the "Classic Collection Boxset" before being released on its own in 2006.

Episodes from the series (such as "Peter Sam & the Refreshment Lady" and "Four Little Engines") have also made it to various compilation releases with other series. Such as "Playtime" in March 1997 and "Chases, Races and Runaways" in October 1997.


2024 Molde FK season

# 2024 Molde FK season

## Abstract

The 2024 season is Molde's 17th consecutive year in Eliteserien, and their 48th season in the top flight of Norwegian football.

## Season events

On 27 December, AIK announced they'd exercised an agreement in their loan deal to make Benjamin Hansen 's move a permanent one from 1 January.

On 1 January, Harun Ibrahim joined GAIS on a season-long loan deal.

On 4 January, Molde announced the signing of Sondre Milian Granaas from Mjøndalen, to a three-year contract.

On 8 January, Molde announced the singing of Halldor Stenevik to a four-year contract from Strømsgodset, and the return of Mats Møller Dæhli also on a four-year contract from 1. FC Nürnberg.

On 11 January, Molde announced the signing of Alwande Roaldsøy from Atalanta, to a three-year contract.

On 16 January, Magnus Grødem left the club to sign for Swiss Super League club Yverdon-Sport.

On 23 January, Andreas Myklebust and Gustav Nyheim signed new contracts, keeping them at Molde until the end of 2025.

On 1 February, Molde announced the signing of Albert Posiadała from Radomiak Radom, to a four-year contract, and the signing of Valdemar Lund from Copenhagen to a four-year contract.

On 6 February, Andreas Myklebust joined 2. divisjon club Kvik Halden on loan for the season.

On 21 February, Peder Hoel Lervik joined 2. divisjon club Eidsvold on loan for the season.

On 26 February, Molde announced the signing of Isak Amundsen to a four-year contract from Bodø/Glimt.

On 27 February, Eric Kitolano was sold to fellow Eliteserien club Lillestrøm.

On 20 March, Niklas Ødegård joined HamKam on loan for the season.

On 27 March, Molde announced the signing of free-agent Aaron Samuel on a contract until the end of the season.

On 30 May, free-agent Sean McDermott signed on a contract until the end of the season.

On 14 June, Filip Kristoffersen joined Raufoss on a short term loan.

On 2 August, Jacob Karlstrøm joined IFK Göteborg on a loan for the rest of the season.

On 5 August, Molde announced the signing of Frederik Ihler from Landskrona BoIS on a contract until 2028.

On 10 August, Filip Kristoffersen went on his second loan for the season, this time to Grorud.

On 18 August, Molde announced that Niklas Ødegård had returned early from his loan to HamKam, whilst the following day, 19 August, Peder Hoel Lervik also returned to Molde early after his loan deal with Eidsvold was ended.

On 19 August, Molde announced the signing of Mads Enggård from Randers on a contract until August 2028.

On 29 August, Molde announced that they had extended their contract with Leon-Robin Juberg-Hovland until the end of the 2025 season, and that he had joined IL Hødd on loan for the remainder of the season.

On 1 September, Molde announced the return of Ola Brynhildsen on loan from Midtjylland for the remainder of the season.

On 2 September, Molde announced that Oliver Petersen had joined Lillestrøm on loan for the remainder of the season.

## Squad

## Transfers

## Friendlies

## Competitions

### Overview

Last updated: 1 September 2024 Source: Competitions

### UEFA Europa Conference League

#### Knockout phase

### Eliteserien

#### Results summary

Last updated: 1 September 2024. Source: see below

#### Results

#### Table

### Norwegian Cup

### UEFA Europa League

#### Qualifying rounds

### UEFA Conference League

#### League phase

## Squad statistics


Loreta Pirro

# Loreta Pirro

## Abstract

Loreta Pirro (born 15 November 1997) is an Albanian professional racing cyclist. She signed to ride for the UCI Women's Team Pro Cycling Team Fanini for the 2019 women's road cycling season.


Chen Pokong

# Chen Pokong

## Abstract

Chen Pokong (Chinese: 陳破空; born December 20, 1963), also known as Jinsong Chen (Chinese: 陳勁松), is a Chinese-American columnist, political commentator, author, television pundit and YouTuber. Chen played a key role in organizing the democracy movement during the 1989 democracy protest in China, for which he was imprisoned and subsequently exiled to the United States. Chen resides in New York, where he serves as the principal of an international school, in addition to his work as a writer, commentator, and YouTuber.

Before being exiled to the United States, Chen worked as an assistant professor at Sun Yat-sen University in Guangzhou, China. Chen was invited to Columbia University as a visiting scholar in 1996, and later obtained a master's degree of MPA. from the School of International and Public Affairs at Columbia University. Since the late 1990s, Chen has been one of the most influential Chinese political commentators, critics and authors.

Chen has been providing commentary for Radio Free Asia since 1997, and had regularly appeared on Voice of America 's weekly Pros and Cons show for decades.

Chen has been invited to visit Taiwan several times and has met with Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-wen in both 2010 and 2019. In 2009, he was invited to visit Dharamshala, India, where he met with the Dalai Lama and the Tibetan government-in-exile. Chen Pokong has expressed his firm support for democracy in Taiwan and a free Tibet. He was also invited to speak at the Oxford Union and the Cambridge Union, where he delivered speeches and participated in debates. In these speeches and debates, Chen Pokong called for urgent attention to the threat of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). He emphasized that this was not just a "China Threat," but rather a CCP Threat, which poses a common threat to both the Chinese people and the people of the world.

Chen has turned to be an influential YouTuber since 2017. By 2023, Chen had held over 430,000 subscribers. Chen has been a prominent member of the " zi meiti " (YouTube)(zh), a campaign known as ‘self-media’ or ‘self-broadcasting’, which came into prominence in 2017 amongst exiled Chinese dissidents. The phenomenon is categorized by the proliferation of routine and online broadcasts on websites such as YouTube.

## Early life

Chen Pokong (Chinese: 陳破空) was born in the Sichuan province of China, Chen is a graduate of Hunan University and a postgraduate of Tongji University in Shanghai. As a postgraduate student in 1985, he submitted a joint letter calling for political reform to former Chinese Communist Party General Secretary Hu Yaobang. As one of the student leaders, Chen then co-organized the massive 1986 Chinese student demonstrations in Shanghai calling for democracy.

## Chinese democracy movement

In 1985, as a graduate student in Tongji University of Shanghai, Chen wrote a letter to then General Secretary of Chinese Communist Party Hu Yaobang, a known reformist in CCP, calling for political reform to build up a democratic China. This letter was co-signed by 9 other students at Tongji University. Mr. Hu sent two senior officers to meet Chen and his fellow colleagues in Shanghai and listened to their voices and suggestions.

In 1986, Chen co-founded and co-organized a large scale democracy movement in Shanghai called 1986 Student Movement which spreading to more than 15 cities in China, calling for democracy and anti- corruption in China. Then General Secretary Hu Yaobang was later purged by Deng Xiaoping and other senior politicians, accusing Hu of tolerating the student movements led by Chen Pokong and his fellow colleagues and joined by tens of thousands of students and citizens. The 1986 student movement that happened in Shanghai contributed to the nationwide 1989 democracy movement two and half years later, centered in Beijing, known as Tiananmen Square Protests.

In 1989, Chen initiated and organized a large-scale democracy movement in Guangzhou. After establishing a "democracy salon" in Sun Yat-sen University in January, on April 22, Chen joined Chen Wei, Yu Shiwen and other student leaders in launching student protests in Guangzhou in support of the student protests in Beijing's Tiananmen Square., after Hu Yaobang suddenly passed away on April 15, 1989. The nationwide protests for democracy lasted for about two months. After the nationwide protests were cracked down by the CCP and its army PLA, Chen was wanted and subsequently arrested by the Chinese government for his leading role in the movement. He then spent the years between 1989 and 1993 in prison and forced labor camps.

### Imprisonment

As a political prisoner, Chen was sent to prison or forced labor on two occasions:

- In August 1989, he was arrested for his involvement in democracy activities. He was charged in February 1990 with "carrying out counter-revolutionary propaganda and incitement." On March 1, 1991, he was sentenced to three years in prison by the Guangzhou City Intermediate People's Court.

From 1992 to 1995, Chen had resumed political activities after his release from prison in July 1992 and was wanted by the government by 1993. He fled to Hong Kong and applied for political asylum but was rejected; after being repatriated, he was sent to forced labor.

- In October 1993, Chen was sentenced again to re-education through forced labor for two years under the charges of "illegally political activities and crossing state borders," a sentence that was carried out without a trial, as is custom with the re-education through forced labor system in China.

In a letter to the international community in 1994, Chen alleged that the prisoners in the Guangzhou No. 1 Reeducation-Through-Labor Center were often beaten and "subjected to conditions which amount to cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment." Chen had the letter smuggled out of the camp in the latter half of 1994, which was reported on by international human rights groups. The letter claimed that production quotas force prisoners to work over 14 hours a day, 7 days a week, with only 3 days of holiday per year. It also claimed that heavy labor was performed during the daytime, including the transportation and loading of stones from a quarry to a boat; at night, prisoners were forced to make artificial flowers for export. The food supplied to prisoners by camp authorities was often insufficient and consisted of "coarse rice and rotten vegetables," according to Amnesty International.

Part of Chen's letter said: "Inmates who labour slightly slower are brutally beaten and misused by supervisors and team leaders (themselves inmates). Inmates are often beaten until they are blood-stained all over, collapse or lose consciousness (shortly before I was sent here, one inmate was beaten to death.)... Many inmates, including myself, their hands and feet squashed by big stones, stained with blood and pus, have to labour as usual. As a consequence, many inmates were crippled for life." In his letter, he said the Guangdong No. 1 Reform Through Labor, Quarry 1, Company 9 in Chini Town, Hua County, was the "most vicious," and that he was sent there so the Guangdong authorities could "vent their bitter hatred on me."

In a House Congressional testimony on the subject of Chinese forced labor, Nancy Pelosi called Chen "a courageous young professor", and characterized Chen's letter as "a compelling appeal for help, relating the terrible tale of ill-treatment and slave labor" in Chinese prison camps. Chen was reportedly the first person and the first political prisoner to provide the United Nations with evidence that the Chinese government and its agencies used forced labor to manufacture products for sale overseas.

## Works

Chen was an assistant professor of economics at Sun Yat-sen University in Guangzhou when the 1989 pro-democracy demonstrations began in China. He co-organized the protests and was arrested in 1989. After nearly five years in prison on two separate occasions, Chen was exiled to the United States in 1996. There, he became a visiting scholar at Columbia University, where he obtained an MPA. Chen later built a career as the principal of a business school located in Manhattan, New York.

At the same time, he has been writing for Chinese pro-reform or pro-democracy publications. He is also an author of a number of books on Chinese political culture and international conflicts, mostly published in Japan, Taiwan and Hong Kong.

Chen regularly appears as an analyst on Chinese current affair programs, including Voice of America, Radio Free Asia, New Tang Dynasty Television, SET Taiwan, Radio Los Angeles 1300, Hong Kong Open Magazine, Beijing Spring, and others; speaking at news conferences, panel discussions, and other events; and offering commentary to media. He frequently writes political columns for Radio Free Asia, Hong Kong's Open Magazine, and other publications. In 2007, Chen was awarded the "Prominent News and Culture Award." Chen was an editorial contributor for The Taipei Times. Topics of Chen's analysis include a range of contemporary issues involving modern China and its relationship with the US and the rest of the world. Other topics discussed include human rights, minority issues, official corruption, social instability, economic inequality, military expansion, and cross-strait tension.


Robert Ardrey

# Robert Ardrey

## Abstract

Robert Ardrey (October 16, 1908 – January 14, 1980) was an American playwright, screenwriter and science writer perhaps best known for The Territorial Imperative (1966). After a Broadway and Hollywood career, he returned to his academic training in anthropology in the 1950s.

As a playwright and screenwriter Ardrey received many accolades. He was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1937, won the inaugural Sidney Howard Memorial Award in 1940, and in 1966 received an Academy Award nomination for best screenplay for his script for Khartoum. His most famous play is Thunder Rock.

Ardrey's science writing challenged models in the social sciences of his time. African Genesis (1961) and The Territorial Imperative (1966), two of his most widely read works, increased public awareness of evolutionary science. However he was criticized by scientists for having misunderstood the science and misinterpreted the evidence.

## Life

Ardrey was born in Chicago, the son of Robert Leslie Ardrey, an editor and publisher, and Marie (née Haswell). His father died in 1919 from pneumonia during the influenza epidemic and he was raised by his mother. He grew up on the South Side of Chicago and attended the nearby University of Chicago, graduating Phi Beta Kappa in 1930 as a Ph.B. While in attendance, he studied creative writing with Thornton Wilder, who would become his lifelong mentor.

His first play, Star Spangled, opened on Broadway in 1935 and lasted only a few days, but resulted in the award of a Guggenheim Fellowship. The award granted Ardrey the financial independence to focus on writing plays. Several of his subsequent plays, including Casey Jones, How to Get Tough About It, and his most famous play, Thunder Rock, were produced on Broadway.

In 1938 he moved to Hollywood to work as a screenwriter for Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, where he would eventually become MGM's highest paid writer. There he wrote many screenplays, including those for adaptations such as The Three Musketeers (1948, with Gene Kelly), Madame Bovary (1949), The Secret Garden (1949), and The Wonderful Country (1959, with Robert Mitchum; The Wonderful Country also had a cameo from famed Negro leagues pitcher Satchel Paige). He also wrote original screenplays, including the screenplay for Khartoum (1966, directed by Basil Dearden, starring Charlton Heston and Laurence Olivier) for which he was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Writing, Story, and Screenplay.

During the 1950s Ardrey became increasingly disenchanted with Hollywood and what he saw as the growing role money had started to play in creative decisions. At the same time and largely by accident, he renewed his interest in human origins and human behavior, which he had studied at the University of Chicago. In the summer of 1956 he moved with his wife and two sons to Geneva. He spent the following years traveling in Southern and Eastern Africa, conducting research for what was to become his first book on the subject, African Genesis (1961), ultimately an international bestseller. Subsequently, he went on to write a total of four books in his widely read Nature of Man Series, including his best known book The Territorial Imperative (1966).

In October 1960 he moved with his second wife to Trastevere, Rome, where they lived for 17 years. In 1977 they moved to a small town named Kalk Bay just outside Cape Town, South Africa. He continued to publish influential works until his death on January 14, 1980, from lung cancer. His ashes, along with those of his wife, are interred in the Holy Trinity Church overlooking False Bay.

## Theater and film career

After graduating from the University of Chicago, under the continuing mentorship of Thornton Wilder, Ardrey wrote a novel, several plays, and many short stories, all of which remained unpublished. It was Wilder's rule that "A young author should not write for market until his style 'crystallized'". Wilder and Ardrey agreed that this moment came with the writing of the play Star Spangled.

Star Spangled opened on Broadway in 1935. It was a comedy that brought to life the classic struggles of an immigrant family living on the South Side of Chicago. It received largely negative reviews and lasted only a few days. However it did catch the attention of notable playwright Sidney Howard, whom Ardrey claims was instrumental in the resulting award of a Guggenheim fellowship for promise as a young playwright. The award allowed Ardrey the financial independence to remain in Chicago and focus on writing plays.

While in Chicago Ardrey wrote two more plays. The first, Casey Jones, was a play about railroad men and their love for their machines. The second, How to Get Tough About It, Ardrey describes as "A proletarian love story of pleasant dimensions." In 1938 Guthrie McClintic presented How to Get Tough About It and Elia Kazan directed Casey Jones. The plays opened ten days apart and were massive failures. In his preface to Plays of Three Decades Ardrey writes:

No author in Broadway memory had attained two such failures on a scale quite so grand on evenings quite so close together. Had they opened six months apart, none would have noticed. Coming as they did, I became a kind of upside-down white-headed boy, a figure thundering toward literary glory in reverse gear. Hollywood, incapable of resisting the colossal, bid lavishly for my services. And Samuel Goldwyn, buyer of none but the best, bought me.

Ardrey signed a contract with Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer and moved for the first time to Hollywood to work as a screenwriter. He worked on several projects, including Samuel Goldwyn's notorious boondoggle remake of Graustark, which was cancelled, and a western called The Cowboy and the Lady, from which he was dropped (though he later used most of the plot for his smash success Lady Takes A Chance). While in Los Angeles he would meet and work with Samuel Goldwyn, Clarence Brown, Pandro Berman, Garson Kanin, Gene Fowler, Lillian Hellman, Sidney Howard, and S.N. Behrman.

In 1938, however, he received word that his Broadway agent, Harold Freedman, had sold the film rights to his play How to Get Tough About It. Ardrey decided to use the opportunity to take time off to write a play. He travelled to Tucson where he married Helen Johnson with famed Hollywood director Garson Kanin as his best man. Following his wedding, he sent a note to Samuel Goldwyn which read: "Dear Mr. Goldwyn. I fear that I am wasting your money, and I'm sure you are wasting my time." He moved with his new wife back to the east coast and set to work, first on a minor project which he would abandon, and then on the play that would become Thunder Rock.

### Thunder Rock

Robert Ardrey wrote Thunder Rock during the period of escalation in Europe which would lead to World War II. Despairing of the growing isolationism among Americans, Ardrey became convinced that American involvement in the war was a moral necessity. However he did not intend to write a play about the conflict until he was struck by a moment of inspiration during a performance of Swan Lake, in which he conceived of "the play from beginning to end, complete with first, second, and third act curtains."

In his autobiography, Ardrey gives the following summary of the play:

My story was that of a renowned journalist who having experienced the disillusionments of the 1930s had given up all hope of influencing man toward a better world. In his depths, he takes a job as keeper of a lonely lighthouse on a rock in Lake Michigan. On that rock, a century earlier, had been wrecked a ship carrying immigrants to the New World. It was a time of legitimate hope – he thought. And there – within this lighthouse, symbolically the shape of his mind – he recreated a little world populated by the hopeful immigrants to the New World. The play consists of the journalist-lightkeeper and the long-dead people of his own resurrection, his relations with characters existing only in his own mind. Yet in the probing of his own creations, his integrity catches up with him. They were as much escaping problems of their world as he was of his. In the end he returns to reality.

Thunder Rock, an anti-isolationist play, opened on Broadway in November, 1939 to isolationist critics and a public wary of war. It received largely negative reviews and a poor reception. In the introduction to Plays of Three Decades, Ardrey writes that it opened "to the worst reviews I have ever received. Our most eminent critic deplored a play containing so much thunder and so little rock." Despite the negative initial reception, later commentators have described the play as prescient. Though unpopular at the time, it presaged the collapse of American isolationism. It was also one of the few pieces of art to warn not only about the European, but also about the Asian threat. Albert Wertheim remarked, "Ardrey's play is remarkable in another way as well. It is one of the only—perhaps the only—play of the period to see the conflicts and dangers across the Pacific. All other pre-Pearl Harbor plays of note look exclusively across the Atlantic to Hitler, Mussolini, and Europe."

During the summer of 1940 Ardrey discovered, when he read a syndicated column from Britain, that unbeknownst to him Thunder Rock had been having a massively successful run in London. In the column Vincent Sheehan wrote that it had become so emblematic as to be "London's Chu Chin Chow of World War II." The British rights had been sold to Herbert Marshall, who had launched a production starring Michael Redgrave. The play had been so successful that the British Minister of Information, Duff Cooper, arranged to have the Treasury department fund a production at the Globe Theatre in London's West End.

The play deeply resonated with a British public under siege. Eminent theater critic Harold Hobson wrote of Thunder Rock:

"The theatre... did a great deal to keep the morale of the British people high. One intellectual play had an enormous effect in keeping alight a spirit of hope at a time when it was nearer to extinction than it had ever been, either before or after. This was Thunder Rock, by Robert Ardrey. What he accomplished for the British people at a moment of supreme despair... merits their lasting gratitude.... He, more quietly but equally effectively as Churchill, urged us never to surrender."

Following its success in London, Thunder Rock has had a lasting legacy. Later in 1940 the BBC broadcast a live radio version, and in 1946 they produced an adaption for television. In 1942, Thunder Rock was turned into a film, directed by the Boulting Brothers, also starring Michael Redgrave. (See Thunder Rock (film))

Shortly following the war, productions of Thunder Rock were quickly launched in Vienna, Prague, Budapest, and, most famously, in Allied-occupied Berlin where it was the first modern play to go up in the American zone. It continues to be commonly produced in American university theaters and productions have gone up all around the globe, including in Harare (formerly Salisbury), Zimbabwe, and Nairobi, Kenya.

### Hollywood 1939–1946

After Thunder Rock quickly closed on Broadway, Ardrey returned to Hollywood. His first official credit was the screenplay for the adaptation of Sidney Howard's Pulitzer Prize-winning play They Knew What They Wanted (1939). It was directed by Garson Kanin, starred Carole Lombard and Charles Laughton, and was shot on location in Napa Valley. In 1946, after a series of talks with RKO, Ardrey and his new agent Harold Norling Swanson negotiated the first-ever independent contract with a major Hollywood studio for him to write the screen adaptation of the A. J. Cronin novel The Green Years. The contract stipulated that Ardrey could work at his home in Brentwood – an unprecedented studio concession – and he was not to be bothered until he completed the screenplay in around six weeks. The Green Years debuted to record profits and went on to be one of the highest-grossing films of 1946.

Following these successes in Hollywood, Ardrey returned to New York to reengage the theater. There he wrote Jeb.

### Jeb

Jeb was a play about a disabled African American soldier returning to his home in the rural south after having fought in the war in the Pacific. He has lost one leg, but gained the ability to run an adding machine. Seeking out employment, he is faced with the bigotry of his countrymen. Jeb opened in New York in 1946. It received largely positive reviews (famed American theatre critic George Jean Nathan called it the best play on the topic of civil rights) and found small but enthusiastic audiences. However, due to factors including high production costs and relatively low revenues, the play had to close after a run of only one week. The critical consensus, with which Ardrey came to agree, was that Jeb was far ahead of its time.

### Hollywood 1946–1966

Following the short run of Jeb Ardrey moved back to Hollywood and signed a two-picture deal with MGM. In 1946 and '47 he wrote The Secret Garden. In 1947 he wrote the screenplay for The Three Musketeers, (which would become the second-highest-grossing film of 1948.) starring Lana Turner and Gene Kelly. This became Gene Kelly's favorite non-musical role. In 1949, Ardrey wrote the screenplay for Gustave Flaubert's classic novel Madame Bovary. The film starred Jennifer Jones with James Mason playing the role of Flaubert. The novel was originally tried for obscenity in France and Ardrey used this as a device to frame the story and allow for a commentator.

In 1947, Ardrey, amid growing persecution of Hollywood by the House Un-American Activities Committee, was elected to the board of the Screen Writers Guild and made chairman of its Political Advisory Committee. Following the founding of the Committee for the First Amendment, Ardrey flew to Washington, along with Lauren Bacall, Humphrey Bogart, Gene Kelly, Danny Kaye, and John Huston, to defend The Hollywood Ten. Later, on behalf of the Guild, Ardrey worked with Thurman Arnold to lodge a suit against the Hollywood blacklist with the Supreme Court. The suit came up for review four years later, but the Guild dropped it.

In the early '50s, partly due to its enforcement of the blacklists and partly due to the increasing role banks were playing in creative decisions, Ardrey began to feel a growing dissatisfaction with Hollywood and started to travel abroad. He travelled to Paris, Madrid, Barcelona, the Riviera, Venice, Yugoslavia, where he spent a month living in Belgrade, Greece, Istanbul, and Munich. He later described these travels as "necessary exercises" for his book African Genesis.

In 1952 Ardrey joined the presidential campaign of Democratic Senator Adlai Stevenson against the Republican nominee, Dwight D. Eisenhower, as a part of the group "Hollywood for Stevenson". The group sponsored an investigator to go to the hometown of Eisenhower's running mate, Richard Nixon, for research. While there the investigator discovered, in the high school newspaper archives, that Nixon had been known as "Tricky Dick".

In 1954 Ardrey wrote a play about the persecution of accused communists in post- Cold War America. This play, Sing Me No Lullaby, was presented at the Phoenix Theatre in London. Brooks Atkinson, in his New York Times review, wrote:

"...the contribution has made in the last act is a clear and perceptive statement of this nameless, formless situation and an estimation of what it is doing to America... Mr. Ardrey... is a man of principle and taste. In Sing Me No Lullaby he has performed the function of a writer. He has found the words to describe something that is vague and elusive but ominous. And he has got far enough away from political recriminations to state it in terms of character and the life of the spirit."

Also in 1954 Ardrey wrote the adaptation of John Masters' novel Bhowani Junction. Due in part to the intervention of the banks financing the film, Ardrey entered into contested negotiations over rewrites. Eventually he quit and took his name off the film.

In 1958 Ardrey wrote the play Shadow of Heroes about the Hungarian Uprising of 1956. The play resulted in the release from Soviet custody of two political prisoners, Julia Rajk and her son.

Ardrey next turned his attention toward Africa. He was soon to begin his pioneering work in paleoanthropology, but he also continued his career as a screenwriter. In 1964 he wrote the first screenplay adaptation of Isak Dinesen 's novel Out of Africa. In 1966 he wrote another screenplay set in Africa, the Academy Award -nominated Khartoum.

### Khartoum

Khartoum was written and produced in 1966, directed by Basil Dearden. The film is based on historical accounts of British Gen. Charles "Chinese" Gordon 's defense of the Sudanese city of Khartoum from the forces of the Mahdist army during the Siege of Khartoum.

Khartoum starred Charlton Heston as General Gordon and Laurence Olivier as the Mahdi (Muhammad Ahmed). Heston, in his autobiography, wrote about his decision to take the role: "It's a good part, presents the challenge of doing a mystic, as well as the English thing. Also, it's a helluva good script."

The academy agreed with Heston's assessment of the script. In 1967 Khartoum earned Ardrey a nomination for the Oscar for Best Original Screenplay.

Ardrey died, aged 71, in South Africa.

## Africa

In 1955, when Ardrey was considering a trip to Africa, Max Ascoli, publisher of The Reporter, offered to buy anything that Ardrey would write there. At the same time, Ardrey renewed an acquaintance with prominent geologist Richard Foster Flint. Because of Ardrey's background in geology and paleontology, Flint arranged for Ardrey to investigate claims made by Raymond Dart about a specimen of Australopithecus africanus.

Ardrey met Dart in South Africa and examined his evidence. Particularly, Dart had amassed a sample of 5,000 fossils from the Makapan cave. Among the fossils, some bones that could be used as tools—the lower jaw bones of small gazelles, which could be used as cutting tools, and the humerus of antelope, which could be used as clubs—were overrepresented (more frequent) by a factor of ten. This led Dart to theorize that in australopithecines, as man's direct ancestors, the use of weapons evolutionarily predated the development of large brains. Ardrey wrote an article about Dart's theory for The Reporter. After receiving significant attention, it was reprinted in Science Digest and led to The Smithsonian Institution contacting Dart. The theory was later refuted but was influential at the time.

This trip would serve as the beginning of Ardrey's renewed interest in the human sciences and the initiation of his writing on paleoanthropology.

## Paleoanthropology

Ardrey spent the latter part of his life working as a science writer. (In 1969 he was also contracted by Universal to write a screenplay of Baroness Karen Blixen 's memoir Out of Africa, but it was never produced.) While this work at first appears disparate with his early career, later commentators have emphasized the continuity. In his New York Times obituary, Bayard Webster wrote, "A closer look at his dramas and his behavioral books disclose that he was writing about social conditions in both genres. One involved humans, the other concerned both humans and other animals. But the dramatic theme was the same: the difficulties humans and other animals have in dealing with each other, and the reasons for their actions."

The writing quality of Ardrey's work was widely praised. The biologist and naturalist E. O. Wilson admired The Hunting Hypothesis, commenting:

In his excellent new book Robert Ardrey continues as the lyric poet of human evolution, capturing the Homeric quality of the subject that so many scientists by and large feel but are unable to put into words. His opinions, like those in his earlier works, are controversial but more open, squarely stated, and closer to the truth than the protests of his most scandalized critics.

In his 1964 book The Analysis of Prose, William D. Templeman used African Genesis as his third lesson. The volume included analysis and questions from his students at the University of Southern California.

A.J. Jacobs, who wrote the 2004 book The Know-It-All, about reading the entire Encyclopædia Britannica, asserts that a quote in the philosophy section from African Genesis was the most profound thing he read while reading the Encyclopædia.

His work was so popular that some scientists cited it as inspiring them to enter their fields.

Ardrey wrote for popular audiences on topics in paleoanthropology, which encompasses anthropology, ethology, paleontology, zoology and human evolution. He was praised for crossing the boundaries of scientific specialism. The Observer, for instance, in its review of The Social Contract, wrote that "Robert Ardrey... leaps across the fences with which scientists nowadays surround their special subjects. He reports their findings in clear English. He attempts to relate them in a single science of Man, by which all of us may try to know ourselves."

This single "science of Man" was postulated in Ardrey's influential Nature of Man Series, which is composed of four books: African Genesis: A Personal Investigation into the Animal Origins and Nature of Man (1961), The Territorial Imperative: A Personal Inquiry Into the Animal Origins of Property and Nations (1966), The Social Contract: A Personal Inquiry into the Evolutionary Sources of Order and Disorder (1970), and The Hunting Hypothesis: A Personal Conclusion Concerning the Evolutionary Nature of Man (1976).

Along with Raymond Dart and Konrad Lorenz, Robert Ardrey became one of the three most famous proponents of the hunting hypothesis and the killer ape theory. Ardrey postulated that precursors of Australopithecus survived millions of years of drought in the Miocene and Pliocene epochs, as the savannah spread and the forests shrank, by adapting the hunting ways of carnivorous species. Changes in survival techniques and social organization gradually differentiated pre-humans from other primates. Concomitant changes in diet potentiated unique developments in the human brain.

The killer ape theory posits that aggression, a vital factor in hunting prey for food, was a fundamental characteristic which distinguished prehuman ancestors from other primates. Ardrey also argued that aggression was therefore an inherited evolutionary trait still present in man. He challenged the reigning blank-slate hypothesis (similarly aligned with cultural determinism). The blank-slate hypothesis was defended (and Ardrey was famously attacked) by Ashley Montagu. This debate led to popular interest in human origins. Ardrey's ideas influenced director Sam Peckinpah, to whom Strother Martin gave copies of two of Ardrey's books, as well as Arthur C. Clarke and Stanley Kubrick in the development of 2001: A Space Odyssey. More recently, according to archeology expert K. Kris Hirst, reviewing the Dawn of Humanity (2015 PBS film) documentary which describes the 2015 studies of fossils of Homo naledi, the violent behavior of apes in the "Dawn of Man" sequence of 2001 has been "proven false", since contemporary evidence suggests that they were actually vegetarians. Although Ardrey's theses on aggression have been disproven, his books influenced public views at the time.

These themes have also been investigated in academia by, among others:

- Konrad Lorenz: On Aggression (1966)

- University of Chicago "Man the Hunter" symposium (1966): Richard B. Lee and Irven DeVore, eds., Man the Hunter: Symposium on Man the Hunter, University of Chicago. Chicago: Aldine Publishing.

- Sherwood Washburn and Chet Lancaster: Man the Hunter (1968). (Washburn's students Lee and DeVore organised the 1966 Chicago conference.)

- Craig Stanford: The Hunting Apes: Meat Eating and the Origins of Human Behavior, Princeton University Press (2001).

- Erich Fromm: The Anatomy of Human Destructiveness (1973)

- Matt Cartmill: A View to a Death in the Morning: Hunting and Nature Through History (1996)

### Researchers

Some scientists whose research informed Robert Ardrey's ideas, several of whom Ardrey consulted while writing his four books in Africa:

- Warder Clyde Allee

- Charles Kimberlin Brain

- Robert Broom

- Helmut Karl Buechner

- Clarence Ray Carpenter

- Raymond Dart

- Henry Eliot Howard

- James Kitching

- Louis Leakey

- Eugène Marais

- Kenneth Oakley

- George Schaller

### Criticism

A 1964 review said "Much of African Genesis is pure speculation, much is bad interpretation of well-known phenomena, and more than a little of it is simply untrue."

A 1966 review by Edmund Leach said Ardrey was "a mine of scientific-sounding misinformation" and his book was "noisy and foolish".

A 1967 review by Patrick Bateson said "The arguments on which he bases his conclusions are shot through with such elementary mistakes, and his definitions are so loose, that he will surely mislead anyone who takes him seriously... Ardrey seems to be scarcely aware of the interactions involved in biological processes and to know nothing of the scientific method."

A 1970 review by Carroll Quigley said "Ardrey pretends to be a scientist, or at least a science reporter; but in this book there is no more science than there is in a comic strip... It is true that Ardrey has read a great deal about animal behavior, but he never seems to grasp what it all means, and his biases prevent him from seeing what is really there."

Around 1970, anthropologist Sherwood Washburn described Ardrey as "a popularizer of data he does not understand".

A 1970 review by C. E. S. Franks said "however well written they may be, his books are neither scientific works nor the works of a scientist. Robert Ardrey has misunderstood two of the basic concepts of the new biology, "aggression" and "territory", and has misapplied them in discussing human society".

A 1972 review by anthropologist Michael G. Kenny said "though Ardrey says on occasion that one cannot reasonably argue from animals to man, he systematically ignores his own advice" and that Ardrey "does not in general cite any clear evidence for his case" and "pays no attention at all to much material which, for good or ill, could bear on his case. The result is that he became so thoroughly muddled there was no possibility that he might have given some kind of sense to the analysis of the bio-social nature of society".

A 1972 review by David Pilbeam said Ardrey's ideas were "based upon misinterpretation of ethological studies and a total ignorance of the rich variety of human behavior documented by anthropologists".

A 1984 article said "the hard evidence for Ardrey's killer-ape hypothesis, all from Dart, is slim" and was refuted in the early 1970s by paleontologists, in particular CK Brain and Elisabeth Vrba.

A 1996 article by anthropologist Glenn E. King suggested Ardrey was a pseudoscientist. King said "when a person who is 'not a formally trained scientist' who flatly contradicts highly trained experts who have done original research" and "that person accuses scientists of avoiding 'awkward facts' that contradict their views, this is the typical rhetoric of the pseudoscientist seeking the support (and usually the money) of a gullible public". King cited Ardrey as an example of this.

A 2023 article said the disconfirmation of Ardrey's theories started arriving as early as 1966.

## Books

Fiction

- Worlds Beginning (1944) (Cited in Everett F. Bleiler 's The Checklist of Fantastic Literature, 1948.)

- The Brotherhood of Fear (1952)

- Plays of Three Decades: Thunder Rock / Jeb / Shadow of Heroes (1968) (Includes an autobiographical preface)

Nonfiction

- African Genesis: A Personal Investigation into the Animal Origins and Nature of Man (1961)

- The Territorial Imperative: A Personal Inquiry into the Animal Origins of Property and Nations (1966)

- The Social Contract: A Personal Inquiry into the Evolutionary Sources of Order and Disorder (1970)

- The Hunting Hypothesis: A Personal Conclusion Concerning the Evolutionary Nature of Man (1976)

- Aggression and Violence in Man: A Dialogue Between Dr. L.S.B. Leakey and Robert Ardrey (1971) OCLC 631758464 Online version

## Plays

- Star Spangled (1936)

- Casey Jones (1938)

- How to Get Tough About It (1938)

- Thunder Rock (1939) (filmed in 1942 in the UK, released 1944 in the US)

- God and Texas (1943)

- Jeb (1946)

- Sing Me No Lullaby (1954)

- Shadow of Heroes (1958) (produced in London as Stone and Star)

## Screenplays

- They Knew What They Wanted (1940)

- A Lady Takes a Chance (1943)

- The Green Years (1946)

- Song of Love (1947)

- The Three Musketeers (1948)

- Madame Bovary (1949)

- The Secret Garden (1949)

- The Schumann Story (1950) short film adaptation of Song of Love

- The Adventures of Quentin Durward (1955)

- The Power and the Prize (1956)

- The Wonderful Country (1959)

- Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse (1962)

- Khartoum (1966) Nominated for an Academy Award for Writing Original Screenplay

- Out of Africa (1969, unproduced)

- The Animal Within (1975) documentary

## Awards and honors

- 1935: Sergel Drama Award.

- 1937: Guggenheim Fellowship.

- 1940: Sidney Howard Memorial Award.

- 1961: Theresa Helburn Memorial Award.

- 1963: Willkie Brothers Grant for Anthropology.

- Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature

## Additional resources

There are a number of university libraries that house Robert Ardrey's papers. The primary archive for the Robert Ardrey Collection is at the Howard Gotlieb Archival Research Center in the Mugar Memorial Library at Boston University. There are also additional collections of Robert Ardrey's works held at UCLA, Rutgers, and the University of Chicago.


The Very Best of Don Henley

# The Very Best of Don Henley

## Abstract

The Very Best of Don Henley is the second greatest hits compilation album by Don Henley, released in 2009 and his first release since Inside Job in 2000. A deluxe version containing extra bonus tracks plus DVD material is also available. The first 10 songs are in the same order in which they appear on Actual Miles: Henley's Greatest Hits.

## Track listing

- " Dirty Laundry " (Henley, Danny Kortchmar) – 5:37

- " The Boys of Summer " (Mike Campbell, Henley) – 4:50

- " All She Wants to Do Is Dance " (Kortchmar) – 4:30

- " Not Enough Love in the World " (Henley, Kortchmar, Benmont Tench) – 3:55

- " Sunset Grill " (Henley, Kortchmar, Tench) – 6:31

- " The End of the Innocence " (Henley, Bruce Hornsby) – 5:17

- " The Last Worthless Evening " (John Corey, Henley, Stan Lynch) – 6:04

- " New York Minute " (Henley, Kortchmar, Jai Winding) – 6:36

- "I Will Not Go Quietly" (Henley, Kortchmar) – 5:43

- " The Heart of the Matter " (Campbell, Henley, JD Souther) – 5:23

- " Everybody Knows " (Leonard Cohen, Sharon Robinson) – 6:09

- "For My Wedding" (McNally) – 3:38

- "Everything Is Different Now" (Crago, Drury, Henley) – 5:13

- " Taking You Home " (Brawley, Henley, Lynch) – 5:32

## DVD track listing

- "The Boys of Summer" (Video)

- "All She Wants to Do Is Dance" (Video)

- "The Last Worthless Evening" (Video)

- "The Heart of the Matter" (Video)

- "Everything Is Different Now" (Video)

- "For My Wedding" (Video)

### Bonus audio tracks

- "Love Rules" - 4:04

- "Who Owns This Place?" - 5:00

- "Sit Down, You're Rockin' the Boat" - 4:32

- "Through Your Hands" - 4:16


Jerry Keefe

# Jerry Keefe

## Abstract

Jerry Keefe is the current head coach for Northeastern. Previously he served as an assistant for 10 years, taking over for Jim Madigan when his predecessor was promoted to Athletic Director.

## Career

Keefe began his college career with Providence in 1996. After two pedestrian seasons, Keefe's production exploded as a junior, more than doubling his career totals in one season. He was honored as the most improved player in New England and helped the Friars climb to 4th in the conference. Keefe wasn't able to keep up the pace in his senior season and he left the Friars mid-way through the year to pursue a professional career.

Keefe's abbreviated first season as a pro went fairly well. Though he didn't catch on in the AHL, he became a near point-per-game player for the Trenton Titans and helped the team reach the Turner Cup semifinals, finishing second in postseason scoring. Despite the success, Keefe headed to Europe and played for the Belfast Giants in the team's inaugural season. Keefe had a fairly bland year and joined the Cardiff Devils at the start of the 2002 season. He left after 9 games and returned across the Atlantic, finishing out the year with the Atlantic City Boardwalk Bullies.

After a year off, Keefe returned to the game with the Orlando Seals but injuries limited him to 33 games. He signed a contract to continue with the Seals the following year, however, due to a disagreement with the WHA, the entire league shut down after 2004 and Keefe decided to call it a career.

Keefe began his coaching career with Massachusetts–Boston but left after one year to take over at Westfield State. The Owls were a club team at the time but returned to varsity status in 2008. Keefe oversaw a swift rebuild and got the team to post a winning season as they joined Division III competition. Keefe jumped up to Division I in 2009, joining Brown as an assistant in 2009. Two years later he transitioned into a similar role with Northeastern when Jim Madigan took over. Keefe remained with the Huskies for a decade, helping build the program into a Hockey East power and getting the program to three NCAA Tournaments.

When Jeff Konya left his position as Athletic Director to take over the same role at San Jose State, Northeastern acted quickly and promoted Madigan to AD while advancing Keefe to head coach within a week.

## Statistics


Chen Pokong

# Chen Pokong

## Abstract

Chen Pokong (Chinese: 陳破空; born December 20, 1963), also known as Jinsong Chen (Chinese: 陳勁松), is a Chinese-American columnist, political commentator, author, television pundit and YouTuber. Chen played a key role in organizing the democracy movement during the 1989 democracy protest in China, for which he was imprisoned and subsequently exiled to the United States.

Before being exiled to the United States, Chen worked as an assistant professor at Sun Yat-sen University in Guangzhou, China. Chen was invited to Columbia University as a visiting scholar in 1996, and later obtained a master's degree of MPA. from the School of International and Public Affairs at Columbia University. Since the late 1990s, Chen has been one of the most influential Chinese political commentators, critics and authors.

Chen has been providing commentary for Radio Free Asia since 1997, and had regularly appeared on Voice of America 's weekly Pros and Cons show for decades.

Chen has been invited to visit Taiwan several times and has met with Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-wen in both 2010 and 2019. In 2009, he was invited to visit Dharamshala, India, where he met with the Dalai Lama and the Tibetan government-in-exile. Chen Pokong has expressed his firm support for democracy in Taiwan and a free Tibet. He was also invited to speak at the Oxford Union and the Cambridge Union, where he delivered speeches and participated in debates. In these speeches and debates, Chen Pokong called for urgent attention to the threat of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). He emphasized that this was not just a "China Threat," but rather a CCP Threat, which poses a common threat to both the Chinese people and the people of the world.

Chen has turned to be an influential YouTuber since 2017. By 2023, Chen had held over 430,000 subscribers. Chen has been a prominent member of the " zi meiti " (YouTube)(zh), a campaign known as ‘self-media’ or ‘self-broadcasting’, which came into prominence in 2017 amongst exiled Chinese dissidents. The phenomenon is categorized by the proliferation of routine and online broadcasts on websites such as YouTube.

## Early life

Chen Pokong (Chinese: 陳破空) was born in the Sichuan province of China, Chen is a graduate of Hunan University and a postgraduate of Tongji University in Shanghai. As a postgraduate student in 1985, he submitted a joint letter calling for political reform to former Chinese Communist Party General Secretary Hu Yaobang. As one of the student leaders, Chen then co-organized the massive 1986 Chinese student demonstrations in Shanghai calling for democracy.

## Chinese democracy movement

In 1985, as a graduate student in Tongji University of Shanghai, Chen wrote a letter to then General Secretary of Chinese Communist Party Hu Yaobang, a known reformist in CCP, calling for political reform to build up a democratic China. This letter was co-signed by 9 other students at Tongji University. Mr. Hu sent two senior officers to meet Chen and his fellow colleagues in Shanghai and listened to their voices and suggestions.

In 1986, Chen co-founded and co-organized a large scale democracy movement in Shanghai called 1986 Student Movement which spreading to more than 15 cities in China, calling for democracy and anti- corruption in China. Then General Secretary Hu Yaobang was later purged by Deng Xiaoping and other senior politicians, accusing Hu of tolerating the student movements led by Chen Pokong and his fellow colleagues and joined by tens of thousands of students and citizens. The 1986 student movement that happened in Shanghai contributed to the nationwide 1989 democracy movement two and half years later, centered in Beijing, known as Tiananmen Square Protests.

In 1989, Chen initiated and organized a large-scale democracy movement in Guangzhou. After establishing a "democracy salon" in Sun Yat-sen University in January, on April 22, Chen joined Chen Wei, Yu Shiwen and other student leaders in launching student protests in Guangzhou in support of the student protests in Beijing's Tiananmen Square., after Hu Yaobang suddenly passed away on April 15, 1989. The nationwide protests for democracy lasted for about two months. After the nationwide protests were cracked down by the CCP and its army PLA, Chen was wanted and subsequently arrested by the Chinese government for his leading role in the movement. He then spent the years between 1989 and 1993 in prison and forced labor camps.

### Imprisonment

As a political prisoner, Chen was sent to prison or forced labor on two occasions:

- In August 1989, he was arrested for his involvement in democracy activities. He was charged in February 1990 with "carrying out counter-revolutionary propaganda and incitement." On March 1, 1991, he was sentenced to three years in prison by the Guangzhou City Intermediate People's Court.

From 1992 to 1995, Chen had resumed political activities after his release from prison in July 1992 and was wanted by the government by 1993. He fled to Hong Kong and applied for political asylum but was rejected; after being repatriated, he was sent to forced labor.

- In October 1993, Chen was sentenced again to re-education through forced labor for two years under the charges of "illegally political activities and crossing state borders," a sentence that was carried out without a trial, as is custom with the re-education through forced labor system in China.

In a letter to the international community in 1994, Chen alleged that the prisoners in the Guangzhou No. 1 Reeducation-Through-Labor Center were often beaten and "subjected to conditions which amount to cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment." Chen had the letter smuggled out of the camp in the latter half of 1994, which was reported on by international human rights groups. The letter claimed that production quotas force prisoners to work over 14 hours a day, 7 days a week, with only 3 days of holiday per year. It also claimed that heavy labor was performed during the daytime, including the transportation and loading of stones from a quarry to a boat; at night, prisoners were forced to make artificial flowers for export. The food supplied to prisoners by camp authorities was often insufficient and consisted of "coarse rice and rotten vegetables," according to Amnesty International.

Part of Chen's letter said: "Inmates who labour slightly slower are brutally beaten and misused by supervisors and team leaders (themselves inmates). Inmates are often beaten until they are blood-stained all over, collapse or lose consciousness (shortly before I was sent here, one inmate was beaten to death.)... Many inmates, including myself, their hands and feet squashed by big stones, stained with blood and pus, have to labour as usual. As a consequence, many inmates were crippled for life." In his letter, he said the Guangdong No. 1 Reform Through Labor, Quarry 1, Company 9 in Chini Town, Hua County, was the "most vicious," and that he was sent there so the Guangdong authorities could "vent their bitter hatred on me."

In a House Congressional testimony on the subject of Chinese forced labor, Nancy Pelosi called Chen "a courageous young professor", and characterized Chen's letter as "a compelling appeal for help, relating the terrible tale of ill-treatment and slave labor" in Chinese prison camps. Chen was reportedly the first person and the first political prisoner to provide the United Nations with evidence that the Chinese government and its agencies used forced labor to manufacture products for sale overseas.

## Works

Chen was an assistant professor of economics at Sun Yat-sen University in Guangzhou when the 1989 pro-democracy demonstrations began in China. He co-organized the protests and was arrested in 1989. After nearly five years in prison on two separate occasions, Chen was exiled to the United States in 1996. There, he became a visiting scholar at Columbia University, where he obtained an MPA. Chen later built a career as the principal of a business school located in Manhattan, New York.

At the same time, he has been writing for Chinese pro-reform or pro-democracy publications. He is also an author of a number of books on Chinese political culture and international conflicts, mostly published in Japan, Taiwan and Hong Kong.

Chen regularly appears as an analyst on Chinese current affair programs, including Voice of America, Radio Free Asia, New Tang Dynasty Television, SET Taiwan, Radio Los Angeles 1300, Hong Kong Open Magazine, Beijing Spring, and others; speaking at news conferences, panel discussions, and other events; and offering commentary to media. He frequently writes political columns for Radio Free Asia, Hong Kong's Open Magazine, and other publications. In 2007, Chen was awarded the "Prominent News and Culture Award." Chen was an editorial contributor for The Taipei Times. Topics of Chen's analysis include a range of contemporary issues involving modern China and its relationship with the US and the rest of the world. Other topics discussed include human rights, minority issues, official corruption, social instability, economic inequality, military expansion, and cross-strait tension.


Playtest (Black Mirror)

# Playtest (Black Mirror)

## Abstract

" Playtest " is the second episode in the third series of the British science fiction anthology television series Black Mirror. Written by series creator and showrunner Charlie Brooker and directed by Dan Trachtenberg, it premiered on Netflix on 21 October 2016, with the rest of series three.

The episode follows Cooper (Wyatt Russell), an American who playtests an upcoming augmented reality game in London while travelling. It is a horror game which accesses his brain and targets his fears. Hannah John-Kamen co-stars as a video game journalist Cooper meets. The episode was inspired by an idea Brooker had for an augmented reality Whac-A-Mole game which increased in speed until the subject went crazy. After considering Tokyo, the crew decided to shoot in London.

A work of psychological horror, the episode features numerous video game references and many instances of foreshadowing. The episode received mixed critical reception, with criticisms of the storyline and ending but praise given to Trachtenberg's directing and Russell's acting. The episode was nominated for a British Academy Television Craft Award, an RTS Craft & Design Award and a Visual Effects Society Award.

## Plot

After his father dies from Alzheimer's disease, Cooper (Wyatt Russell) travels the world, ignoring phone calls from his mother. In London, he spends a night with the technology journalist Sonja (Hannah John-Kamen). He is forced to stay with her after his bank account is drained when he becomes victim to identity theft, but finds a paid offer to playtest a game for SaitoGemu.

At the company's building, he is met by Katie (Wunmi Mosaku) in an experiment room. Though she turns his phone off, he turns it back on to surreptitiously take pictures of the test kit for Sonja. Katie implants a small device called a "mushroom" in the back of his neck. He tests an augmented reality version of the game Whac-A-Mole. Cooper is impressed and agrees to a further test. He meets with Shou (Ken Yamamura), the company's owner, and is told that he will experience a horror game where an artificial neural network personalises the experience to his fears.

At Harlech House, the mansion he recognises from a SaitoGemu game, Cooper has an earpiece to communicate with Katie; there are also cameras throughout. After a while, he sees a spider and then a figure appearing in a painting. He hears footsteps and sees a simulation of Josh Peters (Jamie Paul), his childhood bully. In the kitchen, an enormous spider with Peters' face appears. Cooper's earpiece then ceases to work. Sonja arrives and urges Cooper to leave, but Cooper finds inconsistencies in her story. She stabs him and they fight. As her face inverts to a red skull, Cooper impales her on the knife lodged through his shoulder, and she, the knife, and Cooper's injury disappear.

As earpiece communication resumes, Katie leads Cooper to an upstairs room to terminate the test. Katie begins interrogating Cooper as he forgets details about his mother and then himself. After attempting to remove the mushroom with a shard of glass, Katie and Shou burst in and restrain him, saying that the technology has advanced too far to be removed.

Cooper awakens in Shou's office, the experiment having lasted only a single second and nothing subsequent having been real. Cooper returns home to find his mother (Elizabeth Moynihan), who does not recognise him, dialling his number repeatedly. Back in the first experiment room, Cooper yells for his mother as the mushroom kills him. Cooper was in fact killed within 0.04 seconds by a phone call from his mother causing signal interference with the device, the subsequent experience existing only in his head.

## Production

Whilst series one and two of Black Mirror were shown on Channel 4 in the UK, in September 2015 Netflix commissioned the series for twelve episodes (split into two series of six episodes). In March 2016, Netflix outbid Channel 4 for the rights to distributing the third series, with an offer of $40 million. Due to its move to Netflix, the show had a larger budget than in previous series. "Playtest" is the second episode of the third series; all six episodes in the series were released on Netflix simultaneously on 21 October 2016. As Black Mirror is an anthology series, each installment is standalone. "Playtest" was placed second partly because Halloween was soon after the release date, though series creator Charlie Brooker commented that maybe it should not have been second as it is a "romp" rather than a "message episode".

The titles of the six episodes that make up the third series were announced in July 2016, along with the release date. A trailer for series three, featuring an amalgamation of clips and sound bites from the six episodes, was released by Netflix on 7 October 2016. "Playtest" was screened at the New York Comic Con in early October 2016.

### Conception and writing

The first treatment of "Playtest" was written by Brooker, after which he worked on producing and refining a script with the director Dan Trachtenberg. Conceptually, Brooker was inspired with an idea where a person is given augmented reality implants to play a virtual Whac-A-Mole game which becomes repeatedly faster, causing the person to go crazy and be placed with numerous other subjects all traumatised by moles. However, this only proved to be enough material for a fifteen-minute episode. Brooker then conceived of adding a haunted house concept, where the augmented reality technology would dynamically change what the person saw in response to their fears.

Trachtenberg was introduced to the project around the time of his directorial debut in the horror film 10 Cloverfield Lane (2016). Brooker said that Trachtenberg was "adamant" that the story should be "one step ahead" of what viewers expect. Once they were working together, Trachtenberg and Brooker discovered that they had both previously been employed as video game journalists—Brooker for PC Zone and Trachtenberg for The Totally Rad Show. The extra twist at the end of the episode—in which Cooper is killed by his phone ringing—was not in the original treatment, but added later. Brooker commented that it was partly inspired by Daniel Mallory Ortberg, who wrote in an article: "Next on Black Mirror: what if phones, but too much?". Brooker compared the last twist to a "punch line" ending of a Twilight Zone episode, initially concerned that it would be too humorous, but finding it "harrowing and horrifying" in the edit. He later found that this episode's ending was the one most commonly misunderstood by viewers, though Trachtenberg's observation had been that most people understood the twist.

Some ideas for the episode were changed or unused. Cooper's relationship with his mother was changed, from her being neurotic and doting to Cooper taking her for granted. In one draft, Cooper was told he was a character in Black Mirror as a way of breaking the fourth wall. In this storyline, he would discover other characters and locations from previous episodes. Brooker also wished to have a Nightmare Mode, where different scenes would be shown to the viewer when they watched the episode a second time. Alternate scenes were a key concept of the later interactive film Black Mirror: Bandersnatch, which incorporated viewer decisions into the story.

### Casting and filming

Wyatt Russell stars in the episode as Cooper. Trachtenberg said that this casting led to the character's arrogance being toned down so that the audience is "rooting for him to learn a lesson". Hannah John-Kamen appears in this episode as Sonja, after appearing briefly in the unrelated role of a singer in the series one episode " Fifteen Million Merits ". Brooker noted that they were initially going to have the song John-Kamen sang in "Fifteen Million Merits" playing on the radio in one scene but were unable due to a licensing issue. Other roles include Wunmi Mosaku as Katie, who runs the experiment, and Ken Yamamura as Shou, the video game company owner.

"Playtest" was the last episode of the third series to be filmed. Initially, production would have taken place in Tokyo, a key hub for video game development, with mansion scenes filmed in the United Kingdom, but the writers found it difficult to explain in-story why such a house would exist in or near Japan. Instead, they decided to make the episode take place in London, a location they had ready access to but had not prominently featured in the series before. Exterior shots of SaitoGemu's headquarters used Englefield House. The sets for SaitoGemu were created from an abandoned school building, while scenes in Harlech House were filmed in the home of an elderly woman. The animation company Framestore worked on the effects, tasked with making the small realistic spider that Cooper first sees and the deformed version that later appears. Additional shots of the house for special effects were made by rendering the home within the Unity game engine.

Trachtenberg wanted to film scenes in order, but this was not always possible. He commented that some scenes are shot in a similar way to 10 Cloverfield Lane, including some scenes which were cut because of their similarities. In the early Harlech House scenes, Russell was encouraged to experiment with Cooper's reactions; for instance, a 14-minute take of Cooper insulting his childhood bully Josh Peters was filmed. Trachtenberg experimented with Russell and John-Kamen improvising, making them add lines to the middle or the end of their dialogue. Trachtenberg wanted the penultimate scene, with Cooper returning home, as a one-shot take, given the drastic change in tone it gave the episode.

## Analysis

The episode is a work of psychological horror; Adam Chitwood of Collider found it "genuinely terrifying", while Chancellor Agard of Entertainment Weekly believed it to contain "one of the show's most viscerally disturbing scenes". Charles Bramesco of Vulture compared it to the 1999 sci-fi thriller Existenz because of both works' focus on distorting reality. Reviewers found that the episode explored the themes of humans' flawed perception of reality. Rebecca Hawkes of The Telegraph said that the episode made a connection between "futuristic technology" and fears around the question "if we can't trust our own flawed senses, what on earth can we trust?" In relation to the mushroom drawing inspiration from Cooper's fears, Roxanne Sancto of Paste wrote that people have aimed to explore "this confrontation with the darkest corners of our subconscious" before modern technology, such as with dream analysis, hallucinogens or hypnosis. The character Katie says that the experimental technology adds "layers on top of reality", with Bramesco commenting that the episode's construction is this in reverse. Bryan Bishop of The Verge found that other themes covered include the ethics of experiments on human beings and the importance of resolving family issues.

The primary technology of the episode drew comparisons to augmented reality and contemporary virtual reality technologies including Oculus Rift and Microsoft HoloLens. Bishop also compared it to an increase in demand for interactive entertainment such as escape rooms and immersive theatre. Agard said that the episode "takes the desire of escapism" in these forms of entertainment to a "deadly conclusion". Hawkes drew a "thematic link" between the technology and Cooper's fears of dementia, saying that "none of us are really in control of our own minds, memories and 'self'". Vox ' s Alex Abad-Santos interpreted the episode to make a broader point about the way smartphones have changed human interaction, observing that Cooper needs very little other than a smartphone to travel the world and meet people. Abad-Santos further said that though viewers may expect characters to be revealed as evil, none are, and concluded that "the greatest threat to yourself isn't the strangers you meet through your phone, but rather your own dishonesty".

The episode shows futuristic technology at the headquarters of SaitoGemu, Bishop describing the setting as "full of all-white rooms and silent worker bees tapping away dutifully behind minimalist visor displays". The later parts of the episode take place in a 19th-century gothic mansion, and the setting is contrasted with the holograms and futuristic technology of the episode. The episode uses foreshadowing: for instance, a flight attendant tells Cooper to turn off his phone during turbulence, similar to how his phone signal interference later causes the mushroom to glitch.

To hint that most of the episode takes place inside Cooper's mind, features from early scenes were incorporated as background elements later on. Cooper met Sonja at The Raven Pub, so finds Edgar Allan Poe 's " The Raven " in Harlech House. A poster for the film Red Sonja in Sonja's apartment foreshadows her face being torn off. Cooper's method of killing Sonja by slamming her head onto the knife through his shoulder evokes the position in which the pair woke up that morning. Another act of foreshadowing is the movie Cooper watches on the plane about a monstrous spider, as he faces an enormous spider in Harlech House. Bishop saw the spider as a reference to the 1982 film The Thing. Cooper also sits next to a girl whose face is used for a creepy portrait and sees a SaitoGemu employee designing a costume which later appears on Josh Peters.

### Cultural references

The episode contains a number of video game-related references. Trachtenberg included several of his favourite video games as props on a shelf in Sonja's room, while many video game consoles are seen at SaitoGemu. Matt Miller of Game Informer found a similarity between Shou and the "enigmatic nature" of the video game designer Hideo Kojima. Other references include a mural to Pac-Man that Cooper visits in London and non-video game references such as a copy of the 1997 action film Face/Off.

Harlech House resembles the house in the 1996 game Resident Evil, and Cooper's surname "Redfield" is another reference to the game. As Cooper approaches a door while speaking to the operator, she asks "would you kindly open the door?", an allusion to the phrase's usage in the 2007 game BioShock. This phrase related to whether players follow instructions unquestioningly, which Miller saw as related to its occurrence in "Playtest".

## Reception

On the review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes, 86% of 22 reviews are positive, with an average rating of 6.8/10. The site's summary describes that its "psychologically horrifying world... is nicely counterbalanced by the sheer likability of the episode's protagonist". Hawkes rated the episode three stars out of five, while Sancto rated it 9.4 out of 10. "Playtest" garnered B ratings from Agard and The A.V. Club ' s Zach Handlen. Alex Mullane of Digital Spy called the episode the "most visceral and intense" of the show to date. Hawkes found it "enjoyably sinister".

The episode's plot and meaning received mixed reception and the ending was criticised. Bishop found that it "never digs particularly deep", and Handlen criticised "a disappointingly unfocused" plot about a "fairly cliched concept". David Sims of The Atlantic reviewed that the resolution to questions raised in the first half of the episode is "disappointingly facile". Hawkes saw the episode as choosing to "swap deeper probing for a succession of clever shocks". Handlen felt that there were too many twists, the final one being "a shrug of a conclusion that's little more than a dark joke". Sims said that the final reveal "feels a little forced, blunting the tragedy of Cooper's death". Bishop summarised the twists as "an endurance test of what-is-real fake-out endings". Nevertheless, Hawkes found it "bitterly funny" as a punchline and as keeping with the theme of the show. Sancto believed that the ending was "particularly powerful" and improved by Russell's "genuine expressions of hopelessness and confusion".

The directing, setting and effects garnered praise. Bishop reviewed that creepy moments and jump scares are built up well and timed appropriately. Bramesco found the approach to horror "sparing", and believed that it "works so fearsomely well". Sims praised that Trachtenberg is simultaneously able to draw attention to and joke about horror movie tropes "while still having the scares land". Mullane found Harlech House to be an "incredible set", also reviewing the special effects as "fantastic throughout". Agard commented that the pacing in the first half of the episode is slow, while Handlen reviewed that its hourlong runtime—lengthier than episodes in previous series—was "both a strength and its greatest weakness".

Russell's performance as Cooper received acclaim. Sims and Chitwood summarised his character as a "cheerful American fish-out-of-water" and "an ambitious and somewhat dim-witted American", respectively. Bramesco wrote that he "pulls off a difficult performance", whilst Mullane said that Russell was "so convincingly terrified and frazzled throughout that you'll forget you're watching a piece of fiction". Sancto said that Russell brought "vigorous emotion" to the role, while Sims said that he "makes the tonal shift feel subtle". Mullane additionally praised Hannah John-Kamen as "extremely likeable", and said that the pair had "strong" chemistry.

### Black Mirror episode rankings

"Playtest" received mixed positions on many critics' rankings of the 23 instalments in the Black Mirror series, from best to worst.

IndieWire authors ranked the 22 Black Mirror instalments excluding Bandersnatch by quality, giving "Playtest" a position of 10th. Eric Anthony Glover of Entertainment Tonight found the episode to be the worst of the 19 episodes from series one to four. Meanwhile, Brian Tallerico of Vulture rated Russell's performance the sixth best of Black Mirror, praising him as "a truly charismatic and engaging actor". Additionally, Proma Khosla of Mashable ranked the same instalments by tone, concluding that "Playtest" was the fourth most bleak.

Other critics ranked the 13 episodes in Black Mirror ' s first three series.

- 5th – Jacob Hall, /Film

- 7th – Andrew Wallenstein, Variety

- 8th – Adam David, CNN Philippines

- 9th – Mat Elfring, GameSpot

Some critics ranked the six episodes from series three of Black Mirror in order of quality.

- 4th – Liam Hoofe, Flickering Myth

- 4th – Jacob Stolworthy and Christopher Hooton, The Independent

### Awards

For their work on visual effects in "Playtest", multiple individuals and groups were nominated for a British Academy Television Craft Award, a Royal Television Society Craft & Design Award and a Visual Effects Society Award in 2017. The episode was also submitted for consideration alongside " Nosedive " and " San Junipero " for an Art Directors Guild award for Excellence in Production Design for a Television Movie or Limited Series, for which it was nominated.