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Is Kaïs Saïed Destroying the Very Idea of Democracy?
Is Kaïs Saïed Destroying the Very...
News | 10/18/2021 Economic / Social Policy - Political Parties / Election Analyses - Participation / Civil Rights - North Africa Is Kaïs Saïed Destroying the Very Idea of Democracy?
An interview with Tunisian law professor Wahid Ferchichi
Sofian Philip Naceur, Wahid Ferchichi,
Wahid Ferchichi Photo: Personal collection
On 25 July 2021, Tunisian President Kaïs Saïed dismissed Prime Minister Hichem Mechichi, froze the activities of parliament, and lifted the immunity of its deputies. In late September, Saïed appointed Najla Bouden Romdhane as Tunisia's new Prime Minister, whose government was officially sworn in shortly after. Saïed's takeover is considered controversial, dangerous, and unconstitutional by many, but also raised hopes across the country that his intervention might end Tunisia's long-lasting political blockade and pave the way for authorities to eventually tackle the serious socioeconomic struggle faced by large strata of society.
Wahid Ferchichi is a professor for public law at Carthage University and co-founder of the Tunisian Association for the Defence of Individual Liberties (ADLI).
In response, the Rosa Luxemburg Foundation's North Africa Office launched a series of interviews with Tunisian activists, civil society, and academics about the recent events and how things could evolve in the upcoming months. In this latest interview, Sofian Philip Naceur spoke to Wahid Ferchichi of the Tunisian Association for the Defence of Individual Liberties about why Kaïs Saïed's de facto suspension of the 2014 Constitution should be considered a threat to Tunisian democracy and collective and individual freedoms, the role of the Tunisian military, and how Tunisia's civil society could act now to prevent an authoritarian rollback.
On 22 September, Kaïs Saïed issued a new decree, prolonging the exceptional measures imposed on 25 July, and setting up provisions regarding how the executive branch of government is supposed to work from now on. The 2014 Constitution is basically no longer applied, except for certain articles. However, Saïed's most recent decree appears to be more detailed than the previous ones. Are we dealing with a provisional interim constitution right now?
I think that since 25 July, the 2014 Constitution is not applied any more. The President has first gathered all powers, before sidelining the parliament and of course the government. One of my first papers on the subject already calls this a provisional organization of powers. Since 25 July, the situation already implied a provisional organization of powers, but there was no legal text. In a slightly ironic way, I would describe this as the transition from civil to martial laws, in the military sense of the term.
What the President did on 22 September was to publish a clear text to organize powers. Moreover, he does not want to call this a "provisional organization of powers", but rather "exceptional measures", as he has always done. But we have to be very careful as Kaïs Saïed likes to give the impression that the 2014 Constitution is still applied, especially Article 80 [Saïed refers to this article to justify his takeover as legal]. Even if I do not share this position, I think he tries to keep a certain constitutional and above all legal legitimacy through the texts–though he keeps calling this his "popular legitimacy".
This makes sense as he always framed himself as a constitutionalist and someone who respects the law.
One might be tempted to call this attitude very hypocritical, legally speaking. Personally, I am completely opposed to what Kaïs Saïed has done since 25 July, which I call a "coup d'état". There is a phrase I like to repeat: "the imminent danger comes neither from the Kasbah [government headquarters] nor from Bardo [parliament], but from Carthage [the presidential palace]". And I insist: this is legal hypocrisy. He could have easily said from the beginning: "I had to grab power because the situation was untenable, it is a revolution led by myself and supported by the people". He could have said that, but he preferred not to discard the Constitution completely, perhaps in view of likely domestic and foreign resistance that questions his legitimacy after the parliament and the Constitution were discarded. I think he was taking this into consideration.
You said that the 22 September decree is very detailed. In reality, it is not as it only contains 23 articles. It is a short but very dense text. And this is maybe where I agree with you, framing Kaïs Saïed's actions as lax if we compare it to the other decrees published since 25 July. The 22 September decree contains something fundamental and very dangerous. It says that if constitutional and legal legitimacy goes against the popular will, and since it is the people that hold the true sovereignty, all procedures must be abandoned in order to keep only the will of the people. Philosophically speaking, I find this very important, but practically speaking, this is very dangerous. Because it opens the way for questioning the very existence of procedures, mechanisms, institutions. Those, however, are inspired by a fundamental idea in law that provides for the supremacy and inalienability of individual rights. But if we discard all the safeguards and all the control mechanisms that guarantee democracy on the pretext that they contradict the people's will, we will not be able to prevent, in a year or two, someone else from doing the same thing.
The second element that could be disturbing in this decree is the fact that it advocates for keeping the preamble and the first two chapters of the Constitution, as well as all the provisions that do not contradict the 22 September decree. In doing so, he takes the precaution of "reassuring" those who would worry about respecting freedoms [guaranteed by Chapter 2 of the 2014 Constitution]. But this is false! Chapter 2 of the Constitution is a declaration of rights, but it does not guarantee the framework in which citizens will be able to enjoy these rights. This is detailed in the rest of the Constitution. The legal mechanisms regarding how to guarantee freedoms are not written down in Chapter 2.
Moreover, everything that refers to local power in the Constitution has been suspended, and is subjected to a selection of what will be kept and what will be dropped. It has been said that everything that fell within the jurisdiction of parliament is now the prerogative of Kaïs Saïed. He has taken over the whole of Article 65 of the Constitution, which deals with the subject matter of the law. He claims to be an "engineer" of legal matters, but this is not true for two reasons: first of all, he says that everything that was part of the law becomes his jurisdiction, and everything that was not part of the law also becomes his jurisdiction. But he will be the only one legislating from now on, so he does not have to say that. He is now both legislator and executor. He prides himself on not touching Chapter 2 of the Constitution, which refers to human rights, while he has given himself the right to touch all human rights!
Additionally, since Saïed has now all the rights from a legal and judicial point of view, why keep repeating that this is not going to affect rights and freedoms? It may not affect rights directly, but it can affect the mechanisms that guarantee the respect for those rights–for example when he interrupted the work of the National Anti-Corruption Commission (INLUCC). In early October, he started to sharpen the tone against the Independent Superior Electoral Institution (ISIE) in a kind of threatening attitude. If ISIE continues to be critical of the President, the same thing that happened with the INLUCC could happen, and ISIE's offices could be closed. This is very dangerous because this is precisely where rights and freedoms can be affected. It is precisely a body like the ISIE which is supposed to be the guardian of political and civil rights, just like the INLUCC.
Is Saïed the real danger? Or is it rather those who will come after him?
Saïed himself is already dangerous! Everything we will experience after him will have already been done by him. What Kaïs Saïed has done since 25 July, and what he will continue to do, is preparing Tunisian society to accept any dictatorship. This is the real danger, and not only what will come after him. Kaïs Saïed is destroying the very idea of democracy. Because people are now asking: "what did we gain from democracy? What have we gained from freedom of expression?" The first danger is him. He will be able to prepare the ground for any kind of dictatorship. Worse still, who says that Kaïs Saïed cannot, after a while, be ousted by the army? There is nothing to stop actors that are stronger than him from doing so. Tunisia's army has always been on the sidelines since Tunisia's independence, but this is no longer the case since 25 July. Even before that date, Kaïs Saïed had increasingly used the army, and that is very dangerous. Because usually, the Tunisian army is objective and stays away from political games. It is rather the Ministry of Interior that has always been dangerous by interfering in political games.
But Saïed is bringing in another [active party] who, until now, was not politicized and, like him, was ignorant regarding politics. The Tunisian army has never been associated with politics before. So it becomes as dangerous as him, because even if the army is in power in a way, it has no political experience. Personally, I am afraid of his actions and what will come next. Interestingly, he always responds to those who say that this was a coup. So one has to ask why a head of state is so defensive? When I communicated publicly that Kaïs Saïed is an imminent danger, the presidency issued a statement the next day, stating that "some say that the imminent danger comes from Carthage". I find this particularly dangerous because it is as if he had taken it personally. And dictators take everything personally. So this is a nice dictatorial project, with a population worn out after ten years of political blockades and economic problems. People are now even ready to accept Abir Moussi [head of the Free Destourian Party and a former member of the party of ex-dictator Zine El Abidine Ben Ali, who was ousted in 2011]. Moussi continues to lead the polls for the parliamentary elections.
Saïed also took over judicial powers to a certain extent. I struggle to understand how he is now–legally and constitutionally speaking–able to control the judiciary? Is there proof that he is already controlling it?
In the 25 July speech, Kaïs Saïed designated himself to become head of the public prosecution. He said this orally. But a public prosecutor, a single prosecutor, has not existed in Tunisia since 2014. The problem arose at the time as to whether the Minister of Justice was the head of the public prosecution. It has always been argued that it would be better to have an independent judiciary, and in that case even the Minister of Justice would not have this jurisdiction. But after orally stating that he would be the head of prosecution on 25 July, Saïed never mentioned this in writing. This is very important. On 26 July, he received the President of the Supreme Judiciary Council (CSM). I think during this meeting, this institution made it orally clear to Kaïs Saïed that it is simply not possible to become the head of the public prosecution.
So I think that Saïed wanted to arrogate judicial powers to himself, but that he was finally called to order in a way. This was not mentioned in writing, neither in the text of 26 July nor in that of 22 September. But you have to be very careful: on 23 July, he dismissed the Attorney General of the military judiciary. And it was only a little later, in early August, that he appointed the new military prosecutor. He knew very well that there was going to be significant resistance from the civil criminal justice system. That happened indeed when the CSM pinned him down on that. But he could have control over the military judiciary. That is why, since 25 July, the majority of trials in progress have been held before military courts. That is why we have not stopped calling for an end to the trial of civilians by the military judiciary.
Even if Saïed gives the impression that he is not the head of the civil prosecution, he is the head of the military prosecution. This is important because, legally speaking, it is the head of state who is the supreme commander of the armed forces, and, therefore, of all military structures, including the military judiciary. Unlike civil courts, the military courts are not autonomous and independent. So I think that through certain niches that he controls in the judiciary, Saïed is resolutely manipulating them. Some of the recent arrests have only a political meaning, not a judicial one. If people are suspected of crimes, they should be brought to justice. People who are currently banned from travelling, people who are under house arrest–why are they not brought to justice? Saïed intervenes resolutely in judicial matters, through the military judicial system.
Let's talk about civil liberties: since 25 July, we have witnessed a lot of incidents that have greatly alarmed civil society. However, we still do not see a systematic crackdown on opponents to the 25 July- measures, do we?
Personally, I would say the opposite. You are talking about "incidents", a term that certainly does not testify to a systematic repression, but the sum and continuity of these incidents remain an indicator. Moreover, it is Saïed's speech that constitutes the greatest danger in my opinion. He is a man whose speech is hateful and violent. When he mentions conspiracies, people who conspire with foreign powers, always without naming them, it incites people to go hunting for "traitors of the nation". A good example of this is the 3 October protests [in support of Saïed], where lists with names had been publicly displayed. I think then that the main danger that Kaïs Saïed represents is his speech, and the trivialization of violence. And it is in here where the repression can be qualified as systematic. By his speech, which is systematically violent and hateful.
The day after 25 July, the solicitor Yadh Ben Achour was the first person to describe the previous day's event as a "coup d'état" in a radio show, providing legal and judicial arguments. Subsequently, the President of the Republic called Ben Achour a "charlatan", a "witch doctor", and an old man in need of psychological medical treatment. When you say that about a human being, and moreover about your former law professor, what are the people supposed to think? That Ben Achour is becoming the enemy of the revolution. By doing so, you are inciting people to banish all differences and that is where the "systematic" danger lies. The threats against journalists show the same thing, namely that the President refuses difference and diversity.
How can civil society push back against possible attempts by the President of reintroducing an autocracy in Tunisia?
I think that Kaïs Saïed succeeded in doing something important since 25 July, namely to divide civil society a bit. My Association for the Defence of Individual Liberties (ADLI) is part of the Collective for the Defence of Individual Liberties, which brings together 44 associations, including the Tunisian Association of Democratic Women (ATFD), the Tunisian Human Rights League (LTDH), and Lawyers Without Borders. On 26 July, the collective suggested to issue a statement to warn against the risk of an authoritarian drift by Kaïs Saïed's coup. Of the collective's 44 members, only seven supported the statement. This is very revealing. During a remote meeting on 30 July, we realized that civil society was split in two, at least in the beginning. One could say that it was even divided into three groups: a minority group, composed of seven associations deliberately calling the events of 25 July a coup d'état, and warning of the threat they represent to democracy. The second group did not want to call the events a coup d'état as such, while advocating restraint and careful monitoring of what would follow. The third group fully supported Kaïs Saïed.
Therefore, we wanted to get together to agree on a course of action, and it is only very recently that a large number of Tunisian associations begins to realize the danger posed by Kaïs Saïed. It took almost two months for associations such as the National Syndicate of Tunisian Journalists (SNJT), the ATFD and the LTDH to become aware of the danger. They realized that Kaïs Saïed does not support participation and dialogue after having thought at first that the President would involve them in the debate. It was then that they realized that Saïed decides alone and does not involve other entities.
To continue its work, civil society needs to establish a strong strategy. Many of its members have lost credibility since 25 July, both with other civil society organizations and at a political level. The truth is that the President does not respect people who consider him a divinity, who only speak well of him. And he does not hide it. He considers those who claim to support him to have the aim of joining his team and coming to power. In order to move forward, civil society needs a radically different working strategy. Saïed has dealt a blow to civil society by associating civil society with the bourgeois milieu, the corrupt, those who work with international institutions and so on. He has succeeded in "selling" this image of civil society to the people–and to "reclaim" the population will be very difficult for civil society. Yes, civil society will play its role, but it has also been weakened. Kaïs Saïed is not only against political parties, he is also against associations and organizations. Whether they are political or associative, all these intermediary bodies are the same for him. And I assure you that if we let him continue with his project, his next target will be civil society.
But how can civil society react right now in order to prevent an autocratic rollback?
I think the first thing to do is to form a front in order to clearly formulate our expectations towards the President. Initial work has already been done by six organizations–the same six that have met the President on 26 July at the presidential palace (SNJT, LTDH, AFTD, the Association of Tunisian Women for Development Research, the Tunisian Forum for Economic and Social Rights, and CSM). These six organizations are all members of the Collective for the Defence of Individual Liberties, except for the CSM. Ideally, these associations should open up to other organizations in order to increase their number, and form a front that can push the demands forward.
In addition to this, civil society must stop criticizing political parties, because if they do not cease their criticism, then who will be able to take over politically? I think that this aspect is fundamental in order to resume work between civil society and political parties. I would recommend starting with a roadmap in which civil society reflects its own opinions and formulates its expectation, beyond criticism. In particular, we hope that legislative elections can be held in six months, paving the way for the end of this transitional period. We also ask that the drafting of the new constitution should not take place behind closed doors in the presidential palace.
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Q: What is the name of this view? I'm want to use JTCalendar in my project. In the documentation is states that the this view isn't provided. Does anyone know the name of this view? I want to use the timeline view along with calendar view. Thank you!

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Thabazimbi – An all-encompassing fun run is to be held at the Thaba Spar on Saturday 25 August. There will be a fun run, fun walk and fun wheels (for strollers and wheelers) and is certainly not to be missed!
The entry fee is set at R10 for the 5km walk/ run and R20 for the 10km walk/run. All proceeds will go to the Suid Afrikaanse Vroue Federasie (SAVF) Thabazimbi-branch.
The festivities starts at 09h00.
Those keen to take part can contact: Hannes Coetzee on 082-576 1332, Moksie Pelser on 083-417 2385, or Magda de Klerk on 014-772 1279.


Tom and I have a HUGE star topper for our tree, but I don't like it. I want to get a new star topper and am hoping that I'll find a reasonably priced one at Wal-Mart.
Here is our tree without a topper, not that you can tell since the top of the tree is not showing in the picture.
Since this was taken, I've trimmed some of the super long branches at the top and added a few presents underneath.
Anyone have a suggestion for a place to get pretty and inexpensive tree toppers?
Next Next post: Look What My Camera Found.


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Yes. A Muay Thai elbow-throwing pacifist.
It's not pretty. Nobody who kick-boxes looks good after a bout. She is drenched from head to toe. Her muscles ache. Her voice is hoarse from grunting and even shouting. Her hair clings to her neck, her face. She stinks. She needs a long shower and a good massage.
Two weeks ago, I wrote this.
These kinds of posts have, apparently, become a hallmark of mine. If my picture wasn't displayed just to the right of what you're now reading, you might think I was some no-nonsense, cigar-chomping, former football coach. "Get out there and quit whining" type stuff. Please know: I don't want anyone to think that I desire to minimize or make light of suffering. That is, in no way, my goal. We have to talk about the things that hurt.
Unwillingness to let go of the victim identity.
The therapist that I see has told me, more than once, that healing only comes when we are willing to get "un-stuck." That, of course, doesn't mean we will never hurt again, and it doesn't guarantee the disappearance of illness, mental or physical, but it does mean that we are continually looking to Jesus. Continually going forward, no matter if it's a crawl.
This way that we travel, this road that we walk? It's a foot-wide ribbon, winding in and out of mountains and valleys.
Fingernails tear off. Keep going.
Sweat mingles with tears. Keep going.
When it's all about us, all about the constant navel-gazing and self-actualization, we aren't going. We're staying. Further, when we decide to ditch the concept of "sin," we end up throwing out endurance, holiness and love, too. When it's all fluffy and gushy and about the feels and getting mad at anyone and everyone because how dare they not be as perfect and attuned as we want them to be at all times, we lose an essential element of the Gospel: Jesus loves you, yes He does, and that means He doesn't want you to stay where you are.
See, we don't know this, because we don't know the Bible. We either don't read it at all or we blithely shrug off words like race, discipline, war and battle. We start and end with "come just as you are," content with a surface-level doctrine that's little more than spiritual-sounding self-help. It's bubblegum. Cotton candy. Fluff.
The world spent the last month tuned into the Winter Olympics. We marveled over feats of strength and daring-do. We gasped when an athlete fell and cheered when they got back up. We clapped. We cheered. We became invested in the stories of these people who set their sights on the prize and never wavered in their focus.
A theological lesson disguised as human drama if there ever was one.
When we think of encouragement, we think of gentleness. Whispered words and tender hugs. Sometimes, it is that. Other times, maybe even a lot of the time, it is Joses – a man known for being so encouraging that he came to be known by the name Barnabas, which means "son of encouragement" – squaring off with the Apostle Paul, letting him know in no uncertain terms that he would not be giving up on John Mark (Acts 15:36-41). It is grit and guts and cutting through all the bull.
Real talk: We don't need more motivational speakers or self-help books. We don't need listicles that tell us the "10 best ways…" to anything. What we need is to get serious. We need to actually struggle, actually engage in the battle, rather than sit and believe that the world owes us something when it very clearly doesn't.
Again, I plead with you, dear reader, to not read into this piece an intent or motivation that isn't here. I am an advocate of therapy and medication and doing what you need to do to work through pain and suffering. But there's the key word – through. You get to make that choice. You are never without agency in how you respond to and handle whatever it is you're dealing with.
Be a pusher. Be a fighter.
Because you can. You can. If you are a follower of Jesus Christ, then His very Spirit lives within you. His empowerment is available to you every single step of the way. Ask Him to help you, to push you, even if you have to do it a million times in a day. And when you fall – we all do – ask Him to assist you in brushing off the dust. He will.
Love this! Very similar to what God has been speaking into my heart lately. We've gotta be in the Word and we can't just stay where we are and accept it as the only reality. There's another reality – a Kingdom one, filled with victory and growth. And as I'm learning, it requires day-by-day struggle against the current of the world and the attacks of the enemy. But the fight is worth it. The mountain-tops are worth sweating, crying, falling, and getting back up again to get there.
Yes, indeed, brother. Yes, indeed.
You had me at kickboxing. Good for you.
I'm not that great at it, but it's so much fun. I'm thinking of taking up some hip-hop dancing next.
For every word of this post… Thank you.
Thank you, Esther. I'm glad we're on this journey together.


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Budget Shooter Theater: The Master List!
You Found a Secret Area!
The Crate Chronicles Return: Let's look at a three-year-old Loot Crate.
The Crate Chronicles
About three years ago, I had won a free year of Loot Crate through reasons I don't really remember these days. For the first couple of months, I started writing about them as part of "The Crate Chronicles," documenting these goofy little things. They stopped in early 2016 because I lost interest. Among other things.
The biggest problem I had – and this is not the fault of Loot Crate – is that these were often for things I had no interest in. The Avengers. Star Wars. The Walking Dead. All those TV shows and movies that are "the in-thing" at the moment. I'm so out of touch when it comes to that stuff that I can't even feign interest. When it had something video game related, however, I was a bit more hyped.
I ended up getting the full year and let it lapse, because the monthly costs for junk I don't really need wasn't worth it, for the reasons mentioned above. By then, I think they expanded to other crate types, including one that was specifically about video games. But again, cost. On the bright side, I didn't get a loot crate with an inflatable crown in it.
(Kanye West's "POWER" starts blaring in the background)
All the Loot Crates eventually got stored away, along with a bunch of other things. But one thing made the rounds on social media lately that made me think "Hey, wait, didn't I get that item in a Loot Crate once?" And sure enough, I did. We're gonna talk about it, as well as the other things in there. Strap in, as I cover May 2016's Loot Crate. Three years (and a month) to the day.
(I should've posted this in May, but I've always had trouble getting the motivation to write it until it gnaws at my brain.)
Hulk SMASH… this thing, whatever it is
The Incredible Hulk Qfig
Oh hey, a figurine based on that big green dude who punches things. Made to advertiseAvengers: Age of Ultron, it's a nice, stylized figurine of The Incredible Hulk doing his patented Hulk Smash on some poor building. The style is a bit more cartoonish than the film it's based on, which is a good choice.
I don't have much else to say about this one. It's a neat figurine, but I have no space in my house for something like this. At least it's not a Funko Pop.
I wonder why hes wrapped around that thing…
Dragon Ball Z Shenron plush keychain
Add Dragon Ball Z to the list of "things I haven't watched." Well, maybe I watched it when I was a teenager on Toonami or something, my memory's foggy on that front. Was that the version that had the "Rock the Dragon" theme song? I forget.
Anyway, it's Shenron, that dragon dude wrapped around a dragon ball. Like in the intro and a handful of episodes. It's nice and squishy. It even has a hook to place on your bag or on an actual keychain. It looks pretty neat, and I'm not even a fan of the series.
Now that I think about it, maybe I should've listened to All Systems Goku. That could've gotten me interested in this silly Dragon Ball stuff. It's certainly better than what I watch these days.
Mom and ToeJam & Earl.
(CONTENT WARNING: This post will go briefly into serious subjects, such as cancer and death.)
My mom was into video games for a really long time. Played the Atari 2600 before I was born, played stuff like Super Mario Bros. 3, Monopoly, and Sonic the Hedgehog 2 when I was young; we were both also hardcore You Don't Know Jack fans, owning practically every edition that came out. She was really into fairly casual games, such as when DirecTV had a channel specifically for playing casual puzzle games. FarmVille 2 was something she was really into in the past few years.
By the time the Nintendo 64 came around in the mid '90s, the complexity of Super Mario 64 alongside the bizarre three-prong controller pushed her away from most console video games until we got a Wii in 2009. She still played Jack and the aforementioned casual games, but nothing particularly complex.
This was a pretty dope cover for a Genesis game like this.
Yet out of the many games she played, there was one game, a 16-bit classic, that she was really into, one that you wouldn't expect considering the other games I mentioned. That game was the wonderfully Jammin' ToeJam and Earl.
An exploration-based game where the titular ToeJam and Earl travel through various areas on planet earth to recover the pieces of their destroyed ship, ultimately to get back to Planet Funkotron. This was developed by Johnson-Voorsanger Productions, a couple of guys who had previously worked at Toys for Bob on the Star Control series of games.
A typical journey through the game.
ToeJam and Earl on the surface is a fairly simple game: Find ship pieces in specific levels without running out of lives from various hazards. Yet there's also a bit of complexity: one could play with a fixed world of 25 stages, or a random set of levels that could be a cakewalk or a punishing challenge. Along the way, our heroes must avoid the aforementioned hazards such as bees, crazy dentists and hula girls while finding the elevator to the next floor. The two also have presents they can open to give items that could help or hinder progress, from defensive weapons like tomatoes and rose bushes to hazards like school books, rain clouds, and present randomizers.
Since the elements of presents and ship pieces could change from game to game, ToeJam and Earl is practically a rogue-like, where not every game plays the same. Pretty damn impressive for 1991.
This battle-worn copy we have came from a Blockbuster Video. They even imprinted the store name on the back of the cartridge. It's a nice memento considering the fading relevance of Blockbuster Video.
Gun Game: My favorite multiplayer game mode.
Mods and Maps
I'm probably gonna show my age with this one. While I don't think I'm one of those "30 year old boomer" types that people meme about these days, I certainly have been playing multiplayer games for a long, long time. I've been playing them for literally decades at this point. I've played most of the notable ones, like Quake, Unreal Tournament, Counter-Strike, Call of Duty 4, you name it, I've probably dabbled in it at some point.
But sometimes I wanted more than Just Deathmatch. Stuff like Capture the Flag or Domination helped, but it just wasn't enough. There was one mode popularized in a game that really caught my interest and was a fun mode that I wished more games did: Unreal Tournament's Assault mode. Seriously, why isn't this in every game???
Kidding aside, the other game mode that I've learned to love over the years is Gun Game. A simple deathmatch variant, the goal is mainly to kill enemies with a specific weapon, leveling up to the next weapon, and repeating this process until a player got a kill with every weapon. It's been around for a while, and any game that features it will certainly pique my interest.
My earliest experience with the gun game concept is Soldier of Fortune. While mostly known for its excess gore and goofy Hollywood story, SOF did have its own version of gun game. The mode was simply called "Arsenal." This was before the "gun game" parlance became commonplace.
Getting a kill in Soldier of Fortune was satisfying. Not because of the gore, but because of a really goofy fanfare that played each and every time. That needs to come back.
Despite the different name, it's similar to the gun game most of us know now: A set of weapons are given to every player, with the goal of getting one kill with each weapon to win. The big differences that there was no fixed pattern of weapons, and when someone got the final kill with their last remaining weapon, they got a "big winner bonus" score and the game started anew with new weapons until the score or time limit was reached. Good for those who end up with a bad layout of weapons and can hope to rebound on the next set.
Though while I remember playing Arsenal in the mid-2000s, when the original Soldier of Fortune was mostly a skeleton crew of hardcore players by that point, the one I remembered more fondly was Counter-Strike: Source's gun game mod.
Man, cs_deagle is a map I've seen constantly used in these kind of modes. Surprised no one's copied it.
In the gun game mod for CS:S, the goal is to take out enemies of the opposing team with one of each weapon, with the famous knife often being the final level. Regardless of whatever side you were on – CTs or Ts – you needed to get a kill with every weapon. So in addition to the weapons that are available to a specific faction in the regular game, Counter-Terrorists still had to get kills with Terrorist-exclusive weapons like the Galil, MAC-10 and AK-47, and Terrorists needed to get kills with the CT's USP, M4A1 and the AUG, just to name a few.
High Rollers: A DOS game of CGA high stakes.
Game Show a Go Go
When it comes to video games based on existing TV shows, game show video games rarely ever get talked about. If they do, they're often relegated to brief blurbs with ridiculous arguments like "why play this when I could watch the show?", missing the whole point.
There's been several dozen versions of Jeopardy! and Wheel of Fortune – most recently for the Switch, Xbox One and PlayStation 4 – with Family Feud not too far behind. There's been a handful of games based on The Price is Right, Deal or No Deal and Who Wants to be a Millionaire?
Speaking of Jeopardy! and Wheel of Fortune, I've actually written about some Jeopardy! games, such as the Game Boy/Game Gear installments, as well as Talking Super Jeopardy! on the NES. Surprisingly, when it comes to Wheel, so far I've covered only a knockoff: Tommy's Wheel of Misfortune. Give those a read if you wanna see more game show-related stuff.
But then there's shows that somehow got 1-2 games, despite not being that well-known. Now You See It, Win Lose or Draw, Fun House… Even 1 vs. 100 got a few games, which as time went on has been remembered more for being an interactive Xbox Live experience more than being an Actual Game Show.
One of these lesser-known game shows that got the video game treatment is High Rollers.
I'm more a fan of Hair Rollers, myself…
High Rollers had a few runs over the years: Fairly popular runs from 1974-76 and 1978-80 with a pre-Jeopardy! Alex Trebek, and a short-lived revival from 1987-88 with Wink Martindale. Created by Merrill Heatter and Bob Quigley, who had done similar gambling-like game shows such as Gambit. Oh, and a little-known show called Hollywood Squares.
While there are more comprehensive places on the internet that'll cover all the rules, the game basically goes like this: Two players compete to answer questions to roll a pair of dice, and knock numbers off – one each of 1 through 9 – to win prizes while avoid getting a bad roll. Winner of the match plays the Big Numbers – where there's no questions, only dice rolls – for a chance at $10,000 big ones. It's basically the classic board game Shut the Box but with gambling and quiz show elements.
For being called "Box Office," they weren't a big success.
Box Office, a budget publisher of computer games, developed and released this game. They didn't do very many computer games, the only other standout games are A Personal Nightmare, a horror game featuring Elvira; and games based on ALF, The $100,000 Pyramid and, surprisingly, Psycho. Lord knows how making one of Alfred Hitchcock's iconic films into a video game even works, but that's not the weirdest "movie into a video game" I've ever seen.
Wink looks a bit… concerned here.
There are multiple versions of the game, but for the sake of this article I'm covering the DOS version. You'll see why in a moment.
Ghosts I-IV for Quake: A different kind of soundtrack.
Getting Nerdy about Video Game Music / Mods and Maps
If there's one thing I need to improve on in my life, it's to write something in the moment. I've bought plenty of games, played a bevy of mods, grabbed other assorted things for potential blog fodder…
Then I do nothing with it. This has happened more often than not, but only because I get the problem of being an ideas person and rarely act upon them. I've been slowly improving on this front, at least more than I was years ago.
Which brings me to this post about a game mod. I played this on a whim back in 2018, and thought it was pretty neat. While I'm currently wrapped in a few other things right now, I thought I'd write something quick for this month.
A few years back, I wrote an article praising the wonders of Red Book CD audio. CD audio tracks that would play in certain games, from PC classics like Half-Life, to even Sega CD games like Sonic CD. Unfortunately, modern technology is not too kind to the concept, as it often struggles to work properly on modern devices. In some cases, digital re-releases of games like Starsiege: Tribes didn't even come with the CD music, removing part of the ambience.
There have been solutions thanks to source ports and game updates. For instance, playing Half-Life on Steam has all its music files as MP3s, so if the game (or a related mod) calls for that CD track, it'll play it without needing the CD.
Looks just as good as it did in '96.
Which brings me to a classic in Red Book audio: Quake. One of the earliest PC games to use it, popping in the CD would fill your ears with weird ambient music by Trent Reznor and his band Nine Inch Nails. Modern source ports such as Quakespasm actually support playable CD tracks in MP3/OGG formats, which means one can rip the soundtrack from their copy of Quake – or just find it on the internet, I doubt id and Zenimax care these days – and play it easily, proper looping and all.
There's a handful of Quake map packs that come with custom soundtracks tailor-made for the level pack, such as Travail. Others outright replace the Nine Inch Nails soundtrack with different ambient tracks, like EpiQuake or Quake Epsilon. But what if I told you someone replaced Nine Inch Nails music with Nine Inch Nails music?
Ha! Now I won't be burned by hot slag. Take that!
(Oh wait, now I can't get out…)
"Ghosts I-IV for Quake" is an interesting mod. Replacing the original 1996 soundtrack with the entirety of Ghosts I-IV, an album by Nine Inch Nails with nothing but ambient instrumentals seems like a good fit. In a sense, Ghosts I-IV is a spiritual successor to the original Quake soundtrack, even if there's little similarities in style.
The album itself is interesting: Frustrated by their record label, Trent Reznor severs their contract with Interscope Records and decides to go independent – for a while anyway – and released this under a Creative Commons license. This license is how the mod exists without lawyers getting involved, as it's a free mod for a commercial video game.
Shooting switches the power of magic pellets!
There is one other feature of this mod: There's no monsters or weapons. Now there's mostly empty levels with switches, lifts and other assorted things, but nothing to shoot. With god mode turned on. In a sense, this changes the perspective of the game entirely. No longer a straight explosive romp, it's strictly an exploration-based affair.
Games I beat in 2018: Enemy Front.
From the Bargain Bin / Reviews
Welcome to the first Secret Area post of 2019. Here's something that was several months in the making. This was mostly due to procrastination. Naturally, I'm writing about a game I finished last year, two days short of a year after I had beaten it. And it's a callback to a post I made last June. Let's do this.
Last year, I had written a somewhat scathing review of the 2010 Medal of Honor reboot, which took the legacy of a long-standing WWII FPS franchise and basically ruined it by being a Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare copycat. You can check that post out here. At the end of that post, I had hinted towards a game that I had said was just as close to the original Medal of Honor games.
Okay, it's a bit of a stretch, but it is a World War II FPS, and surprisingly a decent one at that.
Enemy Front was a shooter released in 2014 for various platforms, including PC. Released by CI Games, it was a fairly unknown budget shooter in an era where those kind of shooters were slowly disappearing due to the drought of retail games as well as the prevalence of Steam making it a newer (and cheaper!) haven for the cheap schlock of the past.
I had heard of it thanks to a certain YouTube personality. Ahoy – later a maker of wonderful flashy documentaries about Doom, Half-Life, the Amiga, and many others – had done a video chronicling the arsenal of Enemy Front. He had done similar videos before for Call of Duty and other franchises, and would later be revised to an all-purpose format with his Iconic Arms series of videos. I'm still waiting for the new season of Iconic Arms, just to see what games he uses as an example for the weapon he's talking about.
Though, it wasn't just a British YouTube personality talking about a budget polish-developed FPS's weaponry that got me to snag Enemy Front. It was also dirt cheap on a Steam sale. All it takes is something to be under $5 and you've caught my interest almost immediately.
Broadcasting your war diaries doesn't sound like a good idea to me.
Enough preamble. Let's get to the meat and actually talk about Enemy Front proper. You play as American journalist Robert Hawkins as he reports the stories of a resistance front all around Europe. Later joining with resistance fighters, Hawkins must stop the Nazi menace in various locales around Europe, including during the Warsaw Uprising. A fair share of the game takes place around that Polish conflict. It's fitting, considering developer/publisher CI Games is based in Warsaw, Poland.
Human shields are a good way to be threatening. Until they realize you just grabbed some expendable low-ranking goon.
Homefront and its ugly product placement.
Video games and pop culture
Over the years I've written about games, I end up writing about games from a certain genre, and that's first-person shooters. It's my genre of choice, with enjoyable action romps like Doom and Quake to more cinematic experiences like Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare. Though for every Call of Duty, there's a clunker of a single player experience, such as Homefront, which I replayed recently.
I tried to play this earlier this year, but then the US-Korean conflict was fresh in my mind and felt like in bad taste.
Christ, 2018 feels like it's been ten years long.
Homefront is a game developed Kaos Studios, a development team consisting of people who made the popular Desert Combat mod for Battlefield 1942 way back when, were the ones who worked on this infamous game. Backed by THQ's ambitious marketing campaign, the game had the chance to be something really, really interesting. Except it wasn't.
Prior to Homefront, Kaos Studios only made one game: the middling Battlefield clone Frontlines: Fuel of War. After the lukewarm reception that game got, they soon were hard to work on a spiritual successor in Homefront. According to a retrospective over at Polygon, the game was meant to be strictly a multiplayer-only experience – which makes sense, considering the developer's pedigree – but executive meddling caused a shift in marketing to add a traditional single player campaign, causing it to drown out the carefully crafted multiplayer they had made.
It's hard to tell in this screenshot, but Connor here kept running in place, stuck on a rock.
I had to restart the checkpoint to fix it.
I decided to replay this, on PC this time – my previous experience was through the streaming OnLive service around 2012 or so – and it hasn't gotten any better. If anything, it's much worse than I remember.
All Ghillied Up this ain't.
Homefront's single player campaign checks off every single thing Call of Duty did, but somewhat worse: there's a section where you kick open a door and shoot everybody in slow motion like in Modern Warfare 2, a portion of a stage where you're picking off enemies as a sniper as you infiltrate an enemy camp ala "All Ghillied Up" from Call of Duty 4, even a section at the very end has you using a CUAV drone to pick off targets on the Golden Gate Bridge much like a section in Modern Warfare 2.
It feels like someone up top at THQ said to Kaos, "Hey! Remember that thing that Call of Duty did? Do that!" and did so without having a say in the matter. A shame, really.
But that's not what I'm here to write about. I'm here to write about the game's product placement.
This screenshot, from Remedy's Alan Wake, features product placement from Energizer, slightly breaking the immersion.
Product placement in video games is a sticky kind of subject matter. I can't think of any recent game that used it effectively short of sports games, and even there it can get pretty bad at times. Homefront is littered with advertisements for so many brands that taints the atmosphere of the game, taking place in a modest town in the middle of the United States. For being part of "the resistance," you sure see a lot of product placement.
Kaos Studios' lead level designer once talked about using brands in their game, and how they were allegedly rejected by several companies in doing so. Though it sounded like there's only a brand or two in the entire game, there are many, many more brands than what they say here. It also looks pretty ironic considering in this interview they condemn Infinity Ward for making Burger Town, a fictitious brand in Modern Warfare 2.
As I played through Homefront's campaign, I started documenting all the brands I saw. Now I don't think I got every single bit of product placement here, there's likely a few I missed because there's shockingly so many of them. I'm ranking them from the least offensive to the most egregious in the entire game. It gets pretty ugly in spots, so strap in.
Homefront starts with a section where protagonist Robert Jacobs – a successful graduate of the "Gordon Freeman School of Character Development" – is shoved onto a bus ostensibly to be retrained as an enemy fighter pilot. That gets stopped short by the supporting allies of the resistance, Connor and Rianna. Though it does give a glimpse of a few Pabst Blue Ribbon banners strewn throughout the city before the bus is flipped over.
Not long after Jacobs escapes, they slip through a certain restaurant chain – more on that later – and walk past a Full Throttle vending machine. An energy drink brand by Monster, it's one of two brands they own that are featured in this game, the other being NOS, which shows up a little later into Chapter 3. Oddly enough, Monster itself is a no-show here.
I'm playing Call of Duty 4 multiplayer. On PC. In 2018.
While playing on Bog, a dark, wide map filled with small gaps of cover and two small buildings ripe for camping, I noticed an enemy player's been using the infamous "noob tube" – an M203 grenade launcher – to get easy kills. I decide to switch over to my sniper rifle build, with an R700 equipped, ready to pick off the offending noob tuber.
I then started sweeping around the map looking for enemies. I spotted enemies on the other side of the map and starting aiming down the scope and taking shots, occasionally moving to avoid being easily killed. I then spotted an enemy with a rifle and his grenade launcher prepped, and I nailed him in one shot. However, he had just shot a grenade before he died. A grenade that landed right on me. I couldn't resist to type "good trade" in the chat.
The aftermath.
It's 2018, and there's people still playing Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare online 11 years later. I had picked up the PC version of COD4 as well as World at War on Steam for $10 each. I had hoped they would hit the $4.99 sweet spot, but Activision doesn't believe in the concept of making their games that cheap.
Surprisingly holds up even graphically.
Honestly, I didn't need to buy these versions again. I already had both of those games on a console – hell, Call of Duty 4 was the first game I ever got for my PlayStation 3 in 2008 – but the PC version had a fair share of advantages that I wanted to check out. Plus I couldn't resist replaying the campaigns to some of the best games in the entire series. (Black Ops would probably be a close third.)
First, I also wanted to look into the mod scene. There was a Star Wars-themed mod for COD4 called Galactic Warfare that was making the rounds around 2009-2011, and it was kind of the reason I wanted to look into the PC version. Sadly, it seems the overall mod scene has died out, leaving me with just vanilla COD4 to play with. With Hardcore settings on, no less.
Hardcore makes it so there's little HUD, and everybody's a glass cannon. At least some of the weaker weapons prevail in this mode…
I Bought Stuff! 11/7/2018: Portland Retro Gaming Expo 2018 (and more!)
Conventions and Events / I Bought Stuff!
Alright, finally got to this. A few weeks late, but I was never known to be prompt on things like these.
So a while back, the Portland Retro Gaming Expo happened. On its twelfth year, it's a convention that has retro arcade games, pinball machines, loads of booths to buy merchandise of various kinds, and panels about retro video games in some fashion.
Regrettably the past few years I've missed out on a handful of panels, but I'm grateful for at least checking out the Nintendo History Museum by the cool peeps at the Video Game History Foundation. I also bumped into my friends Weasel and Cassidy while during my roaming of the show floor, while also spotting a fair share of notable personalities here and there. (Weasel told me I was "right next to The Gaming Historian" at one point and I didn't even notice.)
I'm at that point where I don't really need many video games at this point, considering my burgeoning backlog. Yet against my better judgment, I did buy games for super cheap, trying to fill up my original Xbox collection and snagging a few cheap deals. But I also grabbed a few tech-based things during and after the expo, so let's get to recapping.
$15:
– A component video cable for an original Xbox ($10)
– Xbox: Medal of Honor: European Assault ($5)
Okay, these were after the expo. On Sunday I had put a goal to find some video cables for some of my consoles because I felt they needed an upgrade. I didn't find one of them, so I had eventually went to Video Game Wizards (the closest mom'n'pop game shop to me) and snagged some cables, as well as an Xbox game for good measure.
At this point, now I am able to play all of the early-to-mid 2000s game consoles in component video quality. I have component cables for the PS2 and Xbox, and I have a Wii with Gamecube backwards compatibility, which I also run through component.
I know there's solutions now to get those systems to output in HDMI, but I feel that's a bit excessive. Though, EON had a booth for an HDMI adapter for the Gamecube, which might be cheaper than trying to get the very expensive component cables for the system. If you're going that route, check them out here, perhaps that's a better option for those who have more recent TVs where it's HDMI only with no other video inputs.
As for Medal of Honor: European Assault? Well, we'll get back to that one in a bit.
(UPDATE 11/8/2018: The cables in question refused to show any video on my television regardless of resolution, so I exchanged them for different cables. While those actually showed video in component, the signal occasionally flickers out and doesn't work in 720p. Sadly, I think my TV is slowly dying, which I'm not surprised considering how old it is.)
$10: Xbox: Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 2x
Now to cover stuff I actually got at the expo, starting with probably the most expensive thing I bought.
The Tony Hawk games were a franchise that passed me by. I played the first two, but tapped out not long after. I snagged Pro Skater 3 on disc for PS2 a long while back, and I thought now's the time to start getting into the series proper while they're still easy to get.
A launch title for the original Xbox, this was a spit-shine "HD" version of Pro Skater 2 by Treyarch, before they became 1/3rd of the Call of Duty Cerberus. In addition to prettifying the original game's levels, there's a few levels exclusive to this port as well as the original Pro Skater stuff in there.
In my head, this is probably a better way to start playing the franchise in order than hunting down fairly pricey copies of Pro Skater and Pro Skater 2 for older systems. Though, I wouldn't mind finding any of the Pro Skater games for the Nintendo 64, as those are interesting technical marvels. Well, that and the N64 version of Pro Skater is how I got introduced to the franchise back in the day.
Surprisingly, I enjoyed the chopped up music loops they used because of cartridge space limitations, and Pro Skater 3's soundtrack pretty much makes them outright remixes.
Mods and maps: Half-Payne.
When I wrote about Half-Life: Before, I had realized that writing about such a mediocre Half-Life mod felt disappointing to me. I usually try my best to avoid going for easy punches and writing about bad stuff. Besides, there's other people that cover bad stuff so much better than I ever will.
So I wanted to make good and write about a different Half-Life mod. After all, Half-Life is probably the game that got me interested in mods, after Wolfenstein 3D and Doom. So after playing and writing about Before, I had stumbled upon an existing mod that had recently updated, and decided to give it a whirl once more.
I always get a kick out of crossover mods. Counter-Strike into Half-Life. Mario platforming in Doom. That sort of stuff. I don't remember how I read about this one, but last year I had stumbled upon one of the coolest crossover mods I'd seen. This Half-Life mod takes the concept and character from another iconic game franchise and transplants him into the original game.
This is why I said "grab your Berettas and painkillers" at the end of the Before article. We're about to do some bullet time on Black Mesa.
"I was in a game modification. Funny as hell, it was the most horrible thing I could think of."
Half-Payne is pretty self-explanatory: It's Half-Life but instead of the crowbar-wielding silent protagonist Gordon Freeman, you play as Max Payne, the pill-popping, dual-wielding protagonist from the titular series.
I remember when this sequence was pretty cool.
A shame that every time now it looks out of sync…
Sounds pretty simple on the surface. Max Payne's primary gameplay feature was the "bullet time" mechanic, one of the earliest action games to use that feature. Go into slow motion and shoot enemies with your trusty Berettas. That seems easy to make, right?
Budget Shooter Theater (3)
Conventions and Events (1)
Demo/Promo discs (7)
From the Bargain Bin (11)
Game Show a Go Go (9)
Getting Nerdy about Video Game Music (11)
I Bought Stuff! (19)
Mods and Maps (15)
Non-Video Games Related (4)
The Crate Chronicles (4)
Trinkets (1)
Video games and pop culture (17)
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Cater to the priorities of the funding body and address all funding criteria.
A friend who is outside of your industry can help identify unclear language, a particularly valuable exercise if you're not sure who's on the funding panel.
Build a positive reputation in your field and community and get your name recognized.
Don't just ask for the max grant amount, start with a list of items and work out how much they will cost for your project.
Whether you're working toward commercialization or simply contributing to the landscape of knowledge, get your readers on your side.
If you've submitted applications in the past and been rejected, investigate why you were rejected and adopt that feedback into your new submission.
It is important that you demonstrate your project's life after the grant runs out. Outline other revenue streams.
Balance technical language with business language in order to demonstrate your understanding of both sides of the coin.
Connect with those decision makers to get a better understanding of their expectations. Or connect with someone that is familiar with the funding landscape like BioAtlantech. We'd be happy to help!


text:
var accountdown = require('accountdown');
var level = require('level');
var db = level('/tmp/users.db');

var users = accountdown(db, {
    login: { basic: require('../') }
});

var user = process.argv[2];
var pass = process.argv[3];
var bio = process.argv[4];

var opts = {
    login: { basic: { username: user, password: pass } },
    value: { bio: bio }
};
users.create(user, opts, function (err) {
    if (err) console.error(err);
});

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaGithub


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Clothing leather patches may be printed leather patches. While generally inexpensive they have several disadvantages that make them an ideal choice for only a handful of uses. The most basic complaint about a printed label is that they fade.


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text:
Q: An object, two select dropdowns, ng-options and value binding I'm trying to do the following:

*

*When the user select a family, its parent's name is auto-selected in the second dropdown

*When the controller set the object (in case of a model update form for example), the two dropdowns should reflect this object: family and parent should be auto-selected.
See this example on Codepen
angular.module('app', []).controller('mainCtrl', function($scope) {
    $scope.families = [
        { name: "My first family", parent: "Parent #1" },
        { name: "My second family", parent: "Parent #2" },
        { name: "My third family", parent: "Parent #1" }
    ];

    $scope.importNew = function() {
        $scope.model = { name: "My third family", parent: "Parent #1" };
        $scope.message = "Problem: ^ the family name isn't bind, only the parent!";
    }

    $scope.importRef = function() {
        $scope.model = $scope.families[2];
        $scope.message = "It works!";
    }
});

ng-options model binding

    <select ng-options="fam.name group by fam.parent for fam in families"
            ng-model="model">
        <option disabled value="">— Choose —</option>
    </select>
    <select ng-options="fam.parent as fam.parent for fam in families"
            ng-model="model.parent">
        <option disabled value="">— Choose —</option>
    </select>
    <button ng-click="importNew()">Import a family (new family object)</button>
    <button ng-click="importRef()">Import a family (referenced family object)</button>

{{ message }}

        $scope.model :

{{ model | json }}

        $scope.families :

{{ families | json }}

Problem: when setting a new family model, the binding isn't effective.

A: For the auto-select to work, the object must be part of the array from which the select dropdowns are feed.
// Auto-select won't work: this is a new object, even if it is equal to an existing object in the list
$scope.model = { name: "My third family", parent: "Parent #1" }

// Auto-select will work: the object is directly one of the dropdowns' list
$scope.model = $scope.families[2]


text:
Q: What makes a transverse wave maintain its shape? Consider a simple transverse wave propagating along a rope. We understand it's propagation stating that each point is pulled by its neighbors, making it act along with them. This will create a similar motion in the neighboring points. But, why do they follow with exactly the same shape with no distortion (in the absence of damping).
Further, considering again a point only, shouldn't it continue waving even when the wave has passed, as once initiated by the neighboring points it will either have forces acting or having a velocity in the transverse direction which never makes it static?

A: While answers posted so far have correct mathematical descriptions, I will look at what you are requesting for thinking about what a point on the rope experiences and how it can come to rest after the wave passes.
We will look at a Gaussian pulse traveling down a rope, as shown below

Now, according to the wave equation (which can be derived from thinking about the forces acting on each segment of the rope)
$$\frac{\partial^2 y}{\partial t^2}\propto\frac{\partial^2 y}{\partial x^2}$$
what this means qualitatively is that the acceleration $\partial^2 y/\partial t^2$ of a point on the rope is proportional to the curvature $\partial^2 y/\partial x^2$ of the rope at that point.
Another way to think of this is that the acceleration of a point on the rope is proportional to how it's height $y$ differs from the average of the heights of the pieces around it.$^*$ For example, at a point that is currently the wave peak, its neighboring points are below it, so it's acceleration is downwards. Contrast this to a point that is at the very beginning or very end of the wave. It has one neighbor at its same height (essentially not moving) and one neighbor above it. Therefore, this point will feel an upward acceleration. This causes a piece that is at rest to start moving upwards (beginning of the wave) and a piece that is slowing down to be at rest to continue slowing down (end of the wave).
To illustrate this, let's zoom in on part of this rope as the wave moves by, and let's show the acceleration of each point of the rope by an arrow:

As you can see, the acceleration of a point on the rope depends on the curvature at that point. This explains why a point on the rope stops moving after the wave passes. The point is already moving downwards, and as the wave is finishing passing by the point's acceleration is upwards. Hence it slows down even more. This continues until the point on the rope essentially comes to rest. Since the other points around it have the same $y$ position, there is also no acceleration at future time points, so this point will not move again.

$^*$This idea is explained much better with much better visuals on the 3Blue1Brown video about partial differential equations. In that video, Grant talks about the heat equation
$$\frac{\partial T}{\partial t}=\alpha\frac{\partial^2T}{\partial x^2}$$
so that just the time rate of change of $T$ is proportional to the curvature.

A: The wave equation for a rope along the $x$-axis is:
$$  \frac{\partial^2 y}{dt^2}= c^2\frac{\partial^2 y}{dx^2} $$
A general solution moving in 1 direction is any $f(x, t)$ that can be written:
$$ f(x, t) = f(x - ct)$$
which, by definition, keeps it shape while propagating to larger $x$, at speed $c$, as $t$ increases.
In terms of Fourier analysis, the function $f(x)$ can be projected into various wavenumbers, $k$, that oscillate at frequency:
$$ \omega = ck $$
which gives the phase velocity:
$$ v_{\phi} \equiv \frac{\omega} k = c $$
while the "shape" propagates at the group velocity:
$$ v_g \equiv \frac{d\omega}{dk} = c $$
This is dispersionless propagation, which keeps its shape.
So the question is, what cause wave to not keep their shape? One is damping, and another is dispersion. For example, if the finite thickness and stiffness of the rope are considered, the equation becomes:
$$\frac{\partial^2 y}{dt^2}=c^2\left(\frac{\partial^2 y}{dx^2}-\epsilon \frac{\partial^4 y}{dx^4}\right)$$
which is dispersive. Wave speed increases (slowly) with frequency.
So: from the point of view of a single section of rope, is there an intuitive connection between local forces, that the point can know about, and the preservation of the global shape...about which the point on the rope cannot know?
One would think not, but perhaps there is a connection. The preservation of the solution's shape as a traveling wave comes from the symmetry in the differential equation: both time and space enter at the 2nd order, leading to any function of $x-ct$ solving the equation in a shape preserving traveling wave.
For a locally isolated point on the rope, all that it knows is that its vertical acceleration ($d^2y/dt^2$) is not proportional to its displacement ($y$), nor the slope ($dy/dx$), but the second order term: $d^2y/dx^2$.

A: The real explanation for your question comes from some detailed mathematics having to do with Fourier series and solutions to wave equations, but you seem to want some intuition for what is going on, which is a totally reasonable thing to ask.
A wave of any shape can be built up from combinations of sine waves of different wavelengths (which is what the Fourier series is). So even a square wave can be built up from sine waves {demo}. The key thing here is that in a rope, the speed of the wave does not depend on the wavelength, which means that as the wave moves along the string, all the Fourier components move at the same speed and stay in phase.
In a way, you could imagine that after the wave passes and the point on the rope is staying still, all the fourier components of the wave are still there, but they are cancelling each other out.


text:
[![Version](https://img.shields.io/github/release/soffes/RateLimit.svg)](https://github.com/soffes/RateLimit/releases)
[![Build Status](https://travis-ci.org/soffes/RateLimit.svg?branch=master)](https://travis-ci.org/soffes/RateLimit)
![Swift Version](https://img.shields.io/badge/swift-4.0-orange.svg)
[![Carthage compatible](https://img.shields.io/badge/Carthage-compatible-4BC51D.svg?style=flat)](https://github.com/Carthage/Carthage)
[![CocoaPods compatible](https://img.shields.io/cocoapods/v/RateLimit.svg)](https://cocoapods.org/pods/RateLimit)

Simple utility for only executing code every so often.

This will only execute the block passed for a given `name` if the last time it was called is greater than `limit` or it has never been called.

This is really handy for refreshing stuff in `viewDidAppear:` but preventing it from happening a ton if it was just refreshed.

Rate Limit is **fully thread-safe.** Released under the [MIT license](LICENSE).

## Usage

We'll start out with a `TimedLimiter`:

``` swift
// Initialize with a limit of 5, so you can only use this once every 5 seconds.
let refreshTimeline = TimedLimiter(limit: 5)

// Call the work you want to limit by passing a block to the execute method.
refreshTimeline.execute {
    // Do some work that runs a maximum of once per 5 seconds.
}
```

Limiters aren't persisted across application launches.

### Synchronous Limiters

`TimedLimiter` conforms to the `SyncLimiter` protocol. This means that the block you pass to execute will be called synchronously on the queue you called it from if it should fire. `TimedLimiter` uses time to limit.

`CountedLimiter` is also included. This works by taking a limit as a `UInt` for the maximum number of times to run the block.

The `SyncLimiter` protocol has a really neat extension that let's you do things like this:

``` swift
let funFactLimiter = CountedLimiter(limit: 2)
let funFact = funFactLimiter.execute { () -> String in
    // Do real things to get a fun fact from a list
    return "Hi"
}
```

Now `funFact` is a `String?`. It's just an optional of whatever you return from the block. The returned value will be `nil` if the block didn't run.

You can of course make your own `SyncLimiter`s too!

### Asynchronous Limiter

One `AsyncLimiter` is included. You can make your own too. The included async limiter is `DebouncedLimiter`. This is perfect for making network requests as a user types or other tasks that respond to very frequent events.

The interface is slightly different:

``` swift
let searchLimiter = DebouncedLimiter(limit: 1, block: performSearch)

func textDidChange() {
  searchLimiter.execute()
}
```

You would have to setup the limiter in an initializer since it references an instance method, but you get the idea. The block will be called at most once per second in this configuration.

Pretty easy!

Open up the included [Xcode project](RateLimit.xcodeproj) for an [example app](Example) and [tests](Tests).

## Installation

### Carthage

[Carthage](https://github.com/carthage/carthage) is the recommended way to install Rate Limit. Add the following to your Cartfile:

``` ruby
github "soffes/RateLimit"
```

### CocoaPods

Add the following to your `Podfile`:

``` ruby
pod "RateLimit"
```

Then run `pod install`.


The author explores various theoretical aspects of railway vehicle riding performance as an aid to the rationalization of bogie design. It was shown that low ride index values can be retained by minimizing the natural frequency and/or the amplitude of the oscillation. The importance of damping with respect to amplitude ratio is shown and it is pointed out that dampers are actually undesirable at speeds in excess of 1.41 of the resonance speed. It is also pointed out that damping is of relatively little importance with short swing links. In order to determine the ride index of a rail vehicle, the magnitude of excitation amplitudes, the natural frequency and the damping factor of the system must be known.


Some Chiropractic researchers have hypothesized that facet and odontoid architecture variations can cause a reduction in cervical lordosis. To evaluate this hypothesis, Dr. Deed Harrison discusses how the Sagittal plane anatomical variations (angulation) of the Cervical Facets and C2 Odontoid affect the geometrical configuration of the Cervical Lordosis.
Identify the correlation, if any, between the facet angle, articular pillar height, and cervical curve.
Identify the correlation, if any, between the sagittal angle of the dens and any angle of cervical curvature.
Conclude whether the conservative and surgical rehabilitative techniques aimed at the reduction of sagittal cervical deformities need to account for a patient's architecture of the cervical facets or odontoid.
Dr. Deed Harrison discusses one of the important components of altered posture on the thoracic spine and its influence on disk loads. Early disk degeneration can turn into disk disease and/or a cascade of back and overall health problems. The objective of this video is to characterize changes in thoracolumbar disc loads and extensor muscle forces following anterior translation of the thoracic spine in the upright posture.
Understand the relationship between trunk posture, spine geometry, extensor muscle activity, and the loads and stresses acting on the IVD.
Learn how positions through posture of the thoracolumbar spine influence and contribute to disk mechanical loading.


A report issued in 1994 by the Professional Services Management Association offers a glimpse into the world of mergers and acquisitions in the architecture/engineering industry, through case histories and interviews with senior executives. While M&As have been surging, the report warns companies to do their homework before pursuing an M&A and to expect the unexpected once the deal is completed. The executives interviewed for the report speak on topics including the importance of cultural chemistry, determining the value of a potential acquisition, communicating the M&A to employees, lessons learned, and the motivation behind the mergers (usually the need to gain a new area of expertise or a foothold in a geographic area). Among the advice offered to would-be buyers: 1. Don't rush into it; 2. Talk to the target company's clients or have a third party do it for you; 3. Get good professional advisors (lawyer, CPA) with experience in M&As; 4. Recruit within the firm being acquired; 5. Make sure the two companies' cultures mesh; 6. Have a realistic idea of how long it will take for the two companies to operate as a unit. The article features five vignettes from the PSMA report that describe details of the courtships between companies and the early stages of the marriages.


text:
Cricket World Cup 2019: Shaheen Afridi keeps Afghanistan to 227/9
Teenage paceman Shaheen Shah Afridi took four wickets as Pakistan limited Afghanistan to 227 for nine in their World Cup match.
| Updated : June 29, 2019 7:21 PM IST
Pakistan beat Afghanistan by 3 wickets
Man of the Match: Imad Wasim
Shaheen Afridi took 4/47 (AFP (Photo)
Teenage paceman Shaheen Shah Afridi took four wickets as Pakistan limited Afghanistan to 227 for nine in their World Cup match in Headingley on Saturday. The lanky left-armer followed up his 3/28 in the win over New Zealand with impressive figures of 4/47 off 10 overs, helping keep the Afghan batsmen in check.
Shaheen struck twice in successive balls, dismissing captain Gulbadin Naib (15) before accounting for Hashmatullah Shahidi with his next ball to leave Afghanistan tottering at 27/2. The score became 57/3 when left-arm spinner Imad Wasim had Rahmat Shah caught off a miscued shot for 35.
Shah and Naib had looked untroubled after Afghanistan won the toss and decided to bat on a flat, brownish pitch but they were derailed by Shaheen's double strike. Asghar Afghan, controversially replaced as captain just two months before the World Cup, took the attack to the Pakistan bowlers with a rapid 35-ball 42, hitting two sixes and three fours.
He added 64 runs for the fourth wicket with Ikram Alikhil (24) as they repaired the damage but leg-spinner Shadab Khan broke the stand when he bowled the former captain in the 26th over. Najibullah Zadran chipped in with 42 off 54 balls but Shaheen returned in his second spell to dismiss Najibullah and Rashid Khan (eight).
Paceman Wahab Riaz (2/29) and spinner Imad (2/48) also chipped in with crucial wickets.
Pakistan are on a roll at the World Cup after a disastrous start which saw them lose three of their first five matches, with one win and a no-result. They have since beaten South Africa and New Zealand and are in contention for a semi-final place with seven points in seven games.
First Published on June 29, 2019 7:21 PM IST
Last updated on June 29, 2019 7:21 PM IST
2019 ICC Cricket World Cup Afghanistan Asghar Afghan ICC Cricket World Cup 2019 ICC World Cup 2019 Pakistan Shaheen Afridi
ICC Cricket World Cup, 2019 Match : Pakistan vs Afghanistan
Nuwan Pradeep ruled out of World Cup with chicken pox
India's middle order not a worry for Virat Kohli
Cricket World Cup 2019: After 'sombre mood', we actually had quite a good party: Martin Guptill
Sri Lanka set to sack coach Hathurusingha after sports minister's order
Ben Stokes nominated for 'New Zealander of the Year' award
Sri Lanka likely to play Test match in Pakistan: report


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text:
Home Java News Alert Raised as East Java's Mount Bromo Smolders
Alert Raised as East Java's Mount Bromo Smolders
Java, News,
Indonesian authorities have advised visitors to steer clear of Mount Bromo in East Java, following an escalation in volcanic activity there.
Akhmad Subhan, an official at the Center for Volcanology and Geological Disaster Mitigation (PVMBG), said on Friday that officials had recorded a higher frequency of volcanic earthquakes at the site, as well as an increase in the volume of the smoke and ash plume coming from the crater.
"Everyone can see easily that more smoke is coming out of Mount Bromo, as high as 100 to 150 meters and heading southwest," he said. Ayu Dewi Utari, the head of the Bromo Tengger Semeru National Park, said the alert for the volcano had been raised from level 1 to level 2 on the government's four-point scale.
"Visitors are not allowed to get to the crater and we suggest they keep a safe distance of at least one kilometer from [the crater]," she said as quoted by Tempo.
Ayu said park officials had put up warning signs in the area and instructed tour guides and rented SUV drivers to not approach the crater. Bromo, rising to an elevation of 2,329 meters, is popular with visitors for its hiking and driving trails as well as scenic beauty.
The increase in volcanic activity there is the latest in a series of volcanic disturbances around Indonesia this year.
A series of eruptions at Mount Rinjani in Lombok last week forced the closure of airports in Bali and Lombok because of the threat posed by volcanic ash to aircraft engines.
The eruption on Mount Raung in East Java in late June and early July also prompted the closure of Bali's Ngurah Rai, the country's second-busiest airport.
Bromo's last major eruption, in January 2011, forced some international airlines to cancel flights to Bali.(JakartaGlobe)
Tags # Java # News
Labels: Java, News


text:
Home / Press Release / Telenor Connexion's CEO travels to India with Swedish Prime Minister and high level business delegation
Telenor Connexion's CEO travels to India with Swedish Prime Minister and high level business delegation
Sweden's Prime Minister, Mr. Stefan Löfven, and a high level Swedish business delegation, including Mats Lundquist, CEO of Telenor Connexion, travels to India to promote increased collaboration.
Sweden's Prime Minister, Mr. Stefan Löfven, and a high level Swedish business delegation, including Mats Lundquist, CEO of Telenor Connexion, are invited as key partners for the Make in India Week opening in Mumbai on February 13.
India, the world's tenth largest economy and an emerging global player is undergoing major transformation. To drive the development, the Government of India has launched Make in India, a flagship program which aims to make India the next global manufacturing hub. The Swedish delegation is invited as key partner to the Make in India Week, a key industry event with high level participation from India and abroad. The event will be held in Mumbai and inaugurated on February 13 by India's Prime Minister, Mr. Modi.
The delegation program includes meetings with key decision makers in the private and public sector, a CEO Roundtable with Indian and Swedish top business leaders, and participation at Swedish Country Seminar.Telenor Connexion, a leading provider of Internet of Things (IoT)solutions, participates alongside customers Volvo and Scania, partner Ericsson, and the Swedish Post and Telecom Authority – PTS.
"The Internet of Things (IoT) will be able to contribute to India's economic and social development and to solve some of India's key challenges in terms of infrastructure. Various government projects are expected to drive the use of IoT technologies in the country over the next five years", says Mats Lundquist, CEO at Telenor Connexion.
According to Business Sweden, the Swedish Trade & Invest Council and organizer of the trip, Sweden's relations with India are very good, as Sweden has a strong brand in India and the potential of enhanced cooperation is considerable.
Telenor sees Asia as an important market and operates locally to support regional customers and to enable Swedish companies to bring their digital solutions to the region.
"The main themes of the Make in India Week will be smart manufacturing, industrial automation and smart cities – areas where Telenor's solutions have an excellent fit with India's needs", Mats Lundquist continues.
Telenor has a strong presence in Asia with over 180 of its 200 million subscribers in the region. India alone counts for 50 million of these. Both Telenor India and Telenor Connexion are wholly-owned subsidiaries of Telenor Group, one of the world's largest telecom operators.
Photo of Stefan Löfven, photographer Kristian Pohl/Regeringskansliet
Photo of Mats Lundquist, photographer Ted Olsson/Telenor Connexion