"As circumstances show, provocations of war on the part of the U.S. and South Korea have well gone beyond the risky level. It's a matter of time when a fuse for war is triggered," the North KCNA news agency reported a commentary in a state newspaper as saying.
North Korea is getting ready for war? As an arms exporter, its military should not be underestimated. The possibility of their claims of nuclear weapons tests actually being truthful should also be taken into consideration.
Now that the UN has agreed that North Korea needs to be slapped on the wrist with their infamous sanctions well-known to be a strong deterrent against bad behaviour by the naughty countries, tension is definitely building up.
China isn't happy, and would be even more upset if the government in Pyongyang collapses. Imagine the flood of people that would come rushing through the border as they try to escape the chaos behind them, only to create more wherever they go. The men in China would be glad though; a surge of desperate Korean female refugees into their country could only result in happiness.
South Korea wouldn't like the flood either, and I'll bet the North Korean refugees would prefer the Southern lands to the PRC. Or at least, that would be my preference if I were in their shoes. But theoretically speaking the eventual unification would be a joyous occasion, just like the fall of the Berlin Wall.
From a player of Morrowind:
"Sometimes, I like to create a Bosmer character identical in face and hairstyle to him. Then, in the dead of night, pick his lock and enter his house, completely naked. I murder him. I take his clothes, and dispose of his corpse. The rest of the game is spent not taking quests, but travelling around Seyda Neen, simply being him. I sleep in his bed. I eat his food. I walk in the same aimless pattern he did. And I talk to his best friend, Arille. Though we maintain an air of friendly chatter, I can see the uneasiness in his eyes. All the villagers. They know. They're watching me. I've passed 100+ game days doing this."
It's a joke, but it's got that feel of actually being true, the possibility. It's disturbing.
Europa Universalis 3 is mainly about war. Because I first tried it with Spain just when Christopher Columbus set sail for the Americas, I had the misconception that the game could be won without fighting.
I was wrong. Only Spain can be played without fighting for more than half the game. Every single other country must be involved in wars to win. Even England is no exception because the other kingdoms next to it, like Scotland and etc, will dislike it because they feel threatened by England's size and power. When relations deteriorate, war happens. And England is supposed to annex everyone on those islands anyway.
France, the other major power during the time period that the game covers, also has to fight. It was not the France of today; the giant patch of land was more of a patchwork of France and its vassals and other small kingdoms like Brittany and etc back then. It has to attack someone and annex its vassals, by hook or by crook.
The other smaller lands are only food unless their foreign relations are managed wisely. For example, I tried playing Austria from 1399. It had no access to sea ports since it didn't border any sea. I was also surrounded by smaller lands like Genoa and Venice, which were food. Well, maybe not since they were also filthy rich, wealthy enough to hire many mercenary armies. But if I had good alliances with other, more powerful states like Bulgaria, I could perhaps annex one or two states from them. Eventually I would bankrupt the merchant republics.
Anyway, I'm beginning to understand that I am not supposed to have perfect stability and reputation all the time. I'm meant to fight and conquer the weaker states to grow, and not just colonise new lands.
The trick to it, I guess. Just like in the Civilization series, the trick was to expand as fast as I can, taking every bit of empty land at the start of the game until I border other kingdoms in every direction.
Reinstalled Oblivion, but despite its similarity to Fallout 3, I felt some sort of... repulsion when I replayed the game. I don't understand why, since I enjoyed Fallout 3 very much. So far I've completed Fallout 3 thrice and Oblivion once, and that one time was before I first tried Fallout 3.
Maybe it has to do with everyone in Oblivion being fugly. At least in Fallout 3 there were some hot babes that actually resembled sexy female humans (eg in Dukov's Place where 2 women live as Dukov's whores in exchange for the safety he provides, and they wore some lacy nightgowns all the time).
Or it may be my dislike for the dark, dank dungeons. Oblivion contains many such areas like sewers, caves and the demonic Planes. "Dungeons" in Fallout 3 consist of semi-destroyed buildings, futuristic underground vaults and damaged subway tunnels, all filled with fully operational electric lights.
Though the atmosphere is similar in the dungeons in both games, Fallout 3 has a much happier feel when I turn on the radio. It just feels better to kill monsters to the crazy antics of Three Dog and his collection of 40s music.
The settings in the two games also give me a different impression. In Oblivion it's set in a fantastic world that is almost completely different from reality. Fallout 3 is set in a world identical to ours except it changed in the 1940s, when the US fought against China in WWIII which culminated in a 2-hour-long global nuclear strike that killed almost all life. Everything I see in this game I can relate to, and everything I find familiar sets me thinking of how it could have survived the nuclear blasts.
For example, I find it quite incredible that 200 years after that fateful day, people are still eating the preserved food from before the war. I mean, yeah theoretically speaking it may be possible for canned food to stay edible for centuries, if not by using today's food technologies, but c'mon how did so much food survive the explosions, earthquakes and nuclear fallout? Those cans must be at least double-layered, with one layer being pure lead and the other made of titanium!
Rivet City was another interesting sight. It was a city made from a beached aircraft carrier. Today, carriers are really mobile towns on water, so it really isn't that far a stretch for people to settle in one permanently. I'm only disappointed that the rusty aircrafts on the runway didn't work. It would have been even more interesting to see how the settlers would use them and where they would get the necessary fuel from.
A feral girl was found by Russian police. She's kinda like Tarzan, except she was raised by cats and dogs in a flat. The flat had no water, heat or sewage system, so it is difficult to imagine how she lived in there for so long. She doesn't speak Human and barks at people. She may meow and purr but it isn't in the report. I am curious how the parents could have done this. This isn't as bad as Fritzl, but the only real difference in this case was the lack of sexual assault.
Glowing monkeys! Enough said.
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