With all the easter stuff, the recent serverissues and other stuff, maybe you should pich a date in 2 weeks. It`s not that long away and each city could use the time to prepare itself for the game.


Wallsfamily: In the case of DragonFire, the mayor is not online atm (he wrote that somewhere in the forum), so I guess the invitation might not have reached the town. Have you contacted the TA`s about this? If not, it might be to late to put up an official team because of the deadline (esp`s choice as gamemaster). btw. If you should be a tribute and actually win we might still have to execute you because you made DragonFire pay "tribute" to someone else

Ya i wish that it just acted as normal spawning. I like breeding better than natural spawns.  More realistic and can get more animals.  I know Admins posses the ability to change the mob of a spawner so maybe from the shop they can just change the spawner animal once u place it?

One of the mods said ingame it`s not possible to change them. A pity though, we would have had all the pigspawners already (guess we can dig them out now and destroy them).

Nooo, not the mooshrooms, I even jumped off the leafs during the spleef so Neonnick(?) could get his first egg (got him the round after that though ).

I`m afraid Tyja is right - every chicken we replaced disappeard again over night and it seems that at least the townfarms of DragonFire, Flintwood and Yama are empty (except from the spawner-pigs).
Guess the prices on wool are going to explode soon.
Is there any way to make sheepspawners available in the donationshop as a temporary solution?


Well, pray Linda (that the mass is over fast so you can join the party).

Does this new spawn behavior include wild animals (especially sheeps)?
The server restart seemed to have despawned the flock on your towns sheepfarm and the area we actually caught them in the first place doesn`t seem to spawn sheep anymore (the wild sheep we left behind are gone as well). We spread out but no one could find any wild animals around the town anymore, so your main source for wool is pretty much gone.

Welcome aboard, your server can always use good builders.

Presto Vivace  from Yngwie Johann Malmsteen`s Concerto Suite for Electric Guitar and Orchestra in E flat Min
Unlike Metallica`s or Deep Purple`s orchestral attemps were the emphasis lied on the rock elements, this concerto suite actually focusses on integrating only the electrical guitar into an orchestra as a solo instrument.

I`m pretty sure the song is also available on Youtube, but Youtube is banned here so I can`t tell.

The server is down for some emergency maintenance. There has been a problem with one town and the admins are taking care of it right now.

Cage the elephant - A`int no rest for the wicked (also the themesong of the game Borderlands)

gundam

You are not the only one, I remember reading a newspaperreport about a gundamn expo in the city last summer. And the robot kits are sold in every bigger toy- or hobbystore around here. Well, I guess the european modellers have their model railroads and military models and the Asian modellers have their robot modells and anime figures.

OMG, first of all DON`T PANIC. It only happens once every lifetime, so it`s actually not that bad. If it had been a case of "turning 30" or 40 we might have had to put you in quarantine, but 18 is not that dangerous.
Let`s suscribe you some Birthdaycake as medication against "acute turn18nitis" and tomorrow it should be ok again.   _{I hope.}

Happy Birthday.

Hello everyone,
my name is Daniel. I`m 32 years and from Germany, although I`m currently living in Asia.

I`m still getting used to playing this game online (it`s different to my usual onlinegames), so please just tell me if I break any "unwritten customs" (like: plant a new tree if you chop one down).

Oh yes, and don`t be confused if you see me running against doors and walls  repeatedly , it`s probably just the latency spiking over 2000ms again.

On one side there are Kony and his rebels. They are said to be responsible for several warcrimes. The International Criminal Court is investigating against him since 2005 (and also issued an arrest warrant).
In 2010 the American Congress approved the "Lord’s Resistance Disarmament and Northern Uganda Recovery Act of 2009" and due to this Act the US goverment send 100 US soldiers to Uganda (in 2011) as military advisors for the goverment of Uganda.

Now, it`s easy to say that you have to support campains against Kony, but what can a foreign goverment actually do? There is no international support for Kony that could be cut by the western goverments and to arrest him you would have to send troops to that area. Sending troops (or the military advisors) would mean to support the Ugandan goverment against Kony. But does the fact that Kony is defnitely a "Bad guy" automaticaly mean that there must be the "Good guys" on the other side?

On the other side is the goverment of Uganda under President Museveni. He became president after a rebellion against the dictator Obote (who himself "followed" Idi Aminto power) in 1986. He gained lots of international support by promising to form the country into a democracy. The first elections nevertheless weren`t  held until 1996 (10 years later). The constitution of Uganda was originally allowing a president to stay in power for two terms only. But constitutions are very easily changed. In 2011 Museveni won the elections for his 4th term (4 terms additional to the 10 years in power without elections). In 2006 the leader of the Ugandan opposition and the opposition candidate for the presidental elections 2006 was arrested shortly before the elections. During the court hearing against the opposition leader the High court was even besieged by goverment troops, which sparked international protests. Only after several european countries withheld their economical support for the president the release of the opposition leader was ordered (he was arrested again in 2011, another election year).
If all that sounds familiar you might want to look at Tunisia`s former president Ben Ali or Egypt`s Mubarak.

Now if you ask the US goverment to support Uganda against Kony you might want to look carefully at what you are actually asking them to do. By sending military advisors or even military aid you might end up in a similar situation the western nations (and russia, altough they don`t care) ended up in Tunisia, Libya, Egypt and Syria. All 4 countries (even Libya after Gaddafi started playing nice with the west) received advisors from the west and were even sold weapons (for examples American tanks for Egypt, german patrolboats for Tunisia and tons of american and european guns for all of them).  Now guess who is selling the ugandan goverment all the weapons needed for the fight against Kony. And there are reports of big organizations like Humans Rights Watch ans Amnesty international that both sides in this conflict have used child soldiers. Do you really want your country to send military advisors or sell weapons to a president like Museveni?

Now if you say that you don`t want to support any military actions by the US goverment, but still say you to support the Kony2012 movement - well, you might want to look at what exactly Invisible Children is only asking for, but actively pursuing.

The "Lord's Resistance Army Disarmament and Northern Uganda Recovery Act (Public Law 111-172)" allowed President Obama to send 100 military advisors to Uganda. It also allows him to "provide ... military, and intelligence support ... to apprehend or remove Joseph Kony and his top commanders from the battlefield in the continued absence of a negotiated solution" - for the whole text please refer to the actual bill text in the online library of congress under this link, I shortened it to highlight the part of the sentence that actually allows the president to send troops and the US intelligence services to Uganda.
And it already was used to send military aid to the region (100 advisors is a quite high number for simply providing advise and of course the goverment doesn`t have to state how big the "intelligence support" is. ).

How is this bill connected to Invisible Children? Well, when the president signed this bill into law the supporters of the bill were present in the Oval Office (that`s actually a common practice in the White House). Just take a look at the list of these people in this press statement on the website of the White house Link and see who`s listed right next to the ugandan ambassador. The executive director of Invisible children.

So, before you support any campaigns, make sure to get some background information. And don`t just take the information that is found on google or wikipedia, these informations are rarely objective and often even manipulated. If you see that an organization supports a law, take a look at the law yourself (they are easy to find in the US, just check the library of congress for example - american laws are often even quite easy to understand; compared to them german laws for example are a nightmare even for lawyers).
Think about the question who really gets supported here. And don`t give a damn about any celebrities involved, most celebrities are eager to be part of anything that is succesfull and can boost their profile (some of these celebs condemned the military action in Iraq and now kind of support possible military actions in Uganda, because they don`t really thought about it or simply because their manager told them that it is a good PR-thing).

And DON`T give anything about the fact how many followers on facebook or viewers on youtube a campaign has. That`s no criteria for quality at all. Every time someone proudly told me how many friends on facebook/weibo he or his organization, company or embassy has , I always had to think about one sentence:
"If Facebook had been around in the late 1930`s, guess how many friends Adolf would have had."
Well, lucky me, youtube and facebook are banned here anyway, so since we moved here I don`t have to bother with them anymore.

So, if you really want to support Kony2012, go ahead but be aware that you might also support US military actions in Uganda (actions that benefit a ugandan president who clings to his power like Mubarak did). It`s not a "bad" campaign and the intensions are good, but most people simply aren`t aware about the consequences.



Oh yes, and to masterrbc`s theory of a "US invasion because of the oil". Well, the congress started debating the bill in 2009. Guess what was discovered in Uganda in 2009 (Link to an article in "The economist" about the discovery).
I don`t think that an invasion is likely. But the fact that the US supported the Ugandan president with 100 military advisors (and who knows what else in the intelligence, political and economic sector) might come in handy once US companies want to exploit these new oilfields "You scratch my back and I scratch yours"

I`m afraid I can`t help you with that one. That`s one of these mysteries where the few facts are almost inseperable from the rumors and speculation (like Roswell). Some of the facts listed on many of these sites even come from a fictional novel (A. Matveyeva "Dyatlov pass"), so there is no way to actually know what`s true of all the information unless you go to Russia and take a look at the real records of the investigation.

I even found a site that blamed it on zombies (which reminded me a little of this book). It felt like about 90% of the sites out there are either blaming aliens, the russian goverment or the Nato, the siberian bigfoot and other causes the simply cannot be proven. I was only suprised that nobody blamed it on wodka.

The 10% of the sites that were actualy based on pure facts only dealt with the phenomenon of "paradoxical undressing" (which was a core part of the myth) from a medical perspective. It seems that some cases of hypothermia are linked to this phenomenon. The victims of hypothermia get so confused and disoriented by the effects of the low body temperature that despite the fact that they are freezing they actually take their cloth off. And that`s not even a rare event, it seems to happen in 25-50 percent of the cases. And if you combine this medical phenomenon with the fact that desperate humans in stress situation often follow the example of others - it might only have taken one or two members of the group to undress and the rest might just have followed their example.
For me that was the interesting part of the myth, to see how fragile the human mind can be in such desperate situations and to question myself if I would know how to survive a situation involving hypothermia.

Uhh, myths. Grab you earplugs I think i`m just about to start one of my too long and too tiresome monologues.
The problem for me about all these myths are all those "additions" that are added over time.
Look at Atlantis, todays picture of Atlantis in the media is often one about a city with superior technologies. But the original stories about Atlantis from Plato only mention a city that was rich and modern for an ancient city but there is nothing about any overly advanced technologies. So the myth became bigger and bigger (especially thanks to the magic of Hollywood).

Of course it also works in the other direction - old myths being deconstructed by modern theories. Let`s take a look at Marco Polo. One of the key theories of the critics that say "he never was in China" claim as a proof that he didn`t mention the crossing of the Great Wall of China. If he had crossed such a significant building he would have certainly mentioned it. But he didn`t mention it - so he couldn`t have been in China. Well, that`s a nice theory, the catch is that these modern day critics forget an important detail. We all know the picture of the big wall that spans across mountain ridges and we think that is the Wall that surrounded China, that is the Wall Marco Polo would have had crossed  and certainly mentioned if he had been there. But this big Wall on the mountain ridge, well that`s only a part of the northern walls. The great wall was actually a whole network of walls, build in different centuries, different regions and various sizes. Now Marco travelled along the Silk road in the south and the wall there was only about 3 meters high at the edge of a huge desert (you don`t need a high wall if you have a desert in front of it). A 3 meter high wall certainly wouldn`t be worth mentioning for an Italian who had not only seen some higher Citywalls in europa but also the ancient walls of Persia and maybe even some of the indian Moghulforts. But in our modern times we only think about the pictures the media shows us and those are of course the more impresive parts of the walls that make us believe that there is only one huge wall surrounding the whole country. Therefore the theory about Marco Polo not being to China bacause he didn`t mention the wall sounds somewhat logical to us.
And to cover another modern western myth: Despite being impressive to look at (especially here in the northern regions like the nearby Badaling)  from the ground and certainly one of the wonders of the world - you can`t see the wall from space

Or let`s look the story about the Nazis and the UFO mentioned by Tyber earlier. Well, if we hear the term UFO most of us will think about flying saucers and aliens. But the term UFO itself was first used in the early 50`s by the US airforce. So back in the 40`s towards the end of the war nobody would have even dreamt of aliens being involved with the nazis. Like Tyber said the term means "Unidentified flying object" and if you had told some allied officiers about an unidentified flying object, aliens would have certainly been the last thing they thought about, they would have thought that you mean just another new fancy idea the german engineers have come up with -especially at the end of the war when the allies discovered all these plans and projects were discovered that luckily never were finished or only existed on paper.  In case of the german UFO`s these prototypes might be especially interesting: Sack AS-6 (german, prototype proved to be to ineffective so the project was s****ped in 1945)
Lippisch P13a (the prototype was captured by the americans and had it`s first succesfull testflight in the USA)
Another protoype that somehow ends up to be shown as a german UFO were the early prototypes of the canadian (later also american)Avrocar even if it was developed after the war.
So for me personally the myth is clear: Yes, they had a unsuccesfull flying saucer (the Sack plane above), but NO they didn`t have alien spacecrafts They didn`t even need aliens to have crazy ideas about new warmachines. I mean look at the plans the allies found at the end of the war:
Panzer VII Maus (Mouse) 2 working prototypes for a 188 ton tank (the largest tank ever buil, as reference: the american Sherman had 30 tons, the Tiger II about 70 tons). And even as the prototypes showed that the tank was too heavy and slow too be usefull, they simply didn`t stop. Instead they planned  the next bigger step (until the project was cancelled in 1943 because even building one would have used too much off the scarce german ressources): the 1000 ton Landkreuzer P1000 Ratte (landcruiser Rat) and the 1500 ton P1500 Monster (suppossed to carry one of the big railroad artillery cannons). They just loved the idea that these wonderweapons would win the war by means of "shock and awe". And well if you look at the V1, V2 or the jetfighters at the end of the war, some of these ideas really worked (they luckily came too late and due to the lack of resources in too low numbers to change the course of the war).
So, for me there are no aliens in these myth - but unknown flying and driving machines? Of course, it`s part of our german spirit to believe that an advanced enough machine can solve almost any problem (some americans seem to have the same spirit with big guns).


So, if it comes to historical myth that actually interest me I love to check the "old" sources first before seeing all these modern theories. Knowing more of the background just makes it more fun to watch mystery shows because it might be easier to seperate the original myth form the modern "sensational upgraded"myth.


Some of the other "non mythical" videos seem to be part of bigger Discovery documentaries, I remeber seeing some of the scences here on DiscoveryChannelAsia. So to be honest, I just spent more time to look at other videos on that site than at looking for the actual myth videos. It`s a very interresting link, thanks for posting it Jayjay.

Besides all that - I only really believe in Myths that were "confirmed by the Mythbusters" (who also have a some short videos on that site).