Interesting Links for 31-07-2013

[andrewducker]

• Declaring the death of the Final Fantasy series
  (tags: games )
• The pace of modern life: UK v Denmark
  (tags: uk life society denmark )
• BBC Trust admits a key programme on Welfare State was biased
  (tags: politics uk welfare bbc )
• Psychotherapy via internet as good as if not better than face-to-face consultations
  (tags: psychology internet therapy )

Comments

[ashfae]

Declaring the death of the Final Fantasy series

NEVER.

I admit I haven't played FFXIII or the sequel yet, but c'mon, XII was pretty good. And the new version of XIV the mporpg is getting good feedback from betaplayers. If XIII-3 (hoo boy) turns out to be crap, so what? This is a series that's churned out seriously creative and surprising games for years. They're allowed a few misses. /been playing it since the first one and will never let go ever.

[aiela]

I didn't like 12 because I didn't like the battle system. The battle system will make or break a FF game for me. I can deal with cut scenes or weird plots but if it doesn't have a good battle system, I'm out.

[ashfae]

Which is fair enough and a complaint I've heard before. It took me a while to get use to it, and it never really grew on me enough for me to love it--required too much constant fiddling--but I didn't mind. But still, given the long history of variety within the FF series, hardly a death knell. Some of the games are one person's cup of tea and others aren't.

I was having a discussion just last weekend about the pros and cons of FFVIII (which I absolutely loathed, and which the other person adored). I doubt there's anyone who loves or even enjoyed every single FF game. But still, not a death knell.

[aiela]

Oh, definitely. I wasn't a huge fan of 7, but that's the one everyone always fawns over. (My favorite is 6, personally.)

Tastes change, technology changes. But I wouldn't consider the franchise dead either.

[drdoug]

The flags thing seems well bogus to me on a quick scan - no way is infant and child mortality in Burkina Faso that high, nor malaria or HIV prevalence in Angola. Which makes me suspect the other implied numbers are made up too.

[andrewducker]

Oh good, I was hoping someone would fact check that for me!

(The data is 8 years old, but even so...)

[erindubitably]

Yeah, I don't get how those flags are supposed to represent those figures. this says about 420,000 people in Angola have HIV/AIDS*, this says 3.5 million people have malaria, and various pages on the internet debate how much 'access to health care' people have but most place the figure around 40%. So how does that work in terms of the colouration of the flags?

*a far smaller percentage than a lot of surrounding countries, making it surprising that they chose Angola.

[steer]

I don't think the EU 15 oil production is that bad either. The best report I can find is that in 2005 it was 20% home produced 80% import for the EU15 nations -- that's the EU 15 flag. The flag looks more like 99%.

The Burkina Faso thing (good spot on the flag) must be orders of magnitude out... the life expectancy at birth by the CIA world factbook is 55 years. 78.3 infants die before age 1 per 1000 births. If only 5% of children made it past 3 as that flag indicates, you'd need evey woman to have 40 children just to sustain the population (averaging 1 surviving male 1 surviving female child to reproductive age).

[lilacvixen]

Not happy about the first one. That sucks :(

[andrewducker]

Other people seem still hopeful (see above). They might make it not rubbish :->

[lilacvixen]

It is a shame it's come to that, but I'll continue to hold out hope until it's officially dead.

[heron61]

I was impressed and horrified with Visualising (horrifying) facts about countries using their flags until I got to the one with infant morality stats. It seemed pretty darn dubious - if at all accurate, 90% of that nations population died before reaching maturity, which seems far from likely. So, armed with google image search, I discovered with was the flag of Burkina Faso (a nation I'd previous never heard of) and that their infant mortality stats are high, but predictably, nowhere near that high. So, I'm guessing that some of the stats in these flags are true, but I strongly suspect that there are other serious errors.

[andrewducker]

It is nice to know things aren't _that_ bad!

(And others also fact-checked - http://andrewducker.livejournal.com/2953060.html?thread=26401124#t26401124 )

[andrewducker]

Oh, and nice to know you're still alive. I hope life is treating you well!

[mair_aw]

you could, of course, save some time on travelling to the northernmost northernness by flying. flybe go from aberdeen to shetland.