Filmmakers at Sundance look to indie video game industry PARK CITY, Utah--Imagine a Sundance Video Game Festival, an event that might showcase new work from some of the world's best independent game makers.

Such an idea is not a stretch to video game makers who view themselves much like the independent filmmaking pioneers of decades ago--innovators whose work led the creation of the annual Sundance Film Festival taking place here.

The young, but fast-growing independent video game industry--which has been offering new genres, including documentary, casual and serious games--was the focus of a panel discussion Saturday for filmmakers interested in exploring the evolving video game medium.

The enthusiastic panelists, comprised of both indie game community members and those watching them, concluded that the movement is not only radically changing the gaming industry; it's changing the way in which people perceive the world.

"We've come to understand that we're at the beginning of a major revolution of learning," said panelist Connie Yowell, who reviews education grants for the MacArthur Foundation. "Games are based on productive conflict. Fundamentally, that's what learning is...We're beginning to understand just how powerful this medium is for learning." CNET

Murdered Turkish-Armenian writer shunned silence Hrant Dink spoke with quiet intensity about Turkey's most controversial issue. He wrote about it openly and bravely.
His murder is another challenge to the forces of modernisation in a country locked in a bitter internal debate about how it should deal with its past. BBC News

Sundance 2007 Invited from the same short film program as its namesake event, this exclusive collection of premiere work in short filmmaking premieres first in Park City, Utah -- and then rolls-out streaming to you. Free from anywhere in the world. Sundance Film Festival

Cancer deaths finally on decline in U.S. About 3,000 fewer people died from cancer in the United States from 2003 to 2004, the American Cancer Society reported on Wednesday.

It said the big decrease shows that not only has the death rate from cancer been reversed -- but it has been reversed so much that fewer people are dying, even though the population of elderly people, who are most susceptible to cancer, is growing.

The American Cancer Society projected there will be 559,650 deaths from cancer in 2007. "The Society also predicts there will be 1,444,920 new cases of cancer in 2007; 766,860 among men and 678,060 among women," it said in a statement.

The society uses a different method to project and calculate deaths now, so the 2007 numbers cannot be compared directly with the 2004 numbers.

"Cancer death rates have been declining for a long time. The declines have now outpaced the growth and aging of the population," Elizabeth Ward, director of surveillance research for the American Cancer Society, said in a telephone interview.

She said a small decline seen in the previous report had grown considerably, showing the trend was real.

Decreases in smoking may be a major factor, Ward said.

"I think tobacco control has had a real impact. There is also the influence of early detection and screening and thirdly the influence of improvements in treatment," Ward said.

The biggest fall in deaths was seen in colorectal cancer, the second-leading cause of U.S. cancer deaths, which will affect 112,000 people in 2007 and kill 52,000. Reuters Canada

Doomsday Clock Advances We stand at the brink of a second nuclear age. Not since the first atomic bombs were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki has the world faced such perilous choices. North Korea’s recent test of a nuclear weapon, Iran’s nuclear ambitions, a renewed U.S. emphasis on the military utility of nuclear weapons, the failure to adequately secure nuclear materials, and the continued presence of some 26,000 nuclear weapons in the United States and Russia are symptomatic of a larger failure to solve the problems posed by the most destructive technology on Earth.

As in past deliberations, we have examined other human-made threats to civilization. We have concluded that the dangers posed by climate change are nearly as dire as those posed by nuclear weapons. The effects may be less dramatic in the short term than the destruction that could be wrought by nuclear explosions, but over the next three to four decades climate change could cause drastic harm to the habitats upon which human societies depend for survival.

This deteriorating state of global affairs leads the Board of Directors of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists--in consultation with a Board of Sponsors that includes 18 Nobel laureates--to move the minute hand of the “Doomsday Clock” from seven to five minutes to midnight. The Bulletin

Where's the outrage? A real antiwar movement would end our Iraq disaster. But the middle class doesn't care enough to protest, so the kids who go to community college will keep dying.

So now we wait for the end. The man who led America into the most disastrous war in its history has run out of tricks, out of troops and out of time. It is no longer a question of whether George W. Bush's presidency will officially die, but when -- and how many more Americans will have to die before it does.

We find ourselves, almost four years into the Iraq war, in a very strange situation. What do you do when it has become obvious that the leader of your country is -- there is no kinder way to put this -- a delusional fool? And that his weird fantasy war is hopelessly and irretrievably lost? Apparently, you just wait.

... there is no significant antiwar movement. And there isn't going to be one unless Bush completely loses it and decides to attack Iran. (Insane as this idea is, Bush might see it as the only way to simultaneously destroy what he regards as a Nazi-like threat and save his shattered presidency.) This isn't Vietnam, where hundreds of thousands of people took to the streets to protest. This is the new, post-draft America, where a subclass of poorly paid professional warriors does the bidding of a power elite. With some notable exceptions, Cindy Sheehan being the most famous, the warriors and their families, those who pay the price, do not protest. And the rest of the country, not facing death or the death of immediate family members, doesn't care enough to.

The sad truth is that America is not one nation. We may not be Iraq, breaking up in hatred and a primeval battle for power, but the fissures are deep. There is one America that fights, and another America that doesn't. The elites talk and the kids who go to community college get blown up. .. Salon

Writings show King as liberal Christian, rejecting literalism ... King was not a conformist Christian. He not only eschewed literalism, he was a strident critic of how the Christian church perpetuated injustices such as slavery and segregation.

"Too often has the church talked about a future good 'over yonder,' totally forgetting the present evil over here," King wrote in 1952 to Coretta Scott, his future wife. SF Gate

The many faces of American Muslims American Islam: The Struggle for the Soul of a Religion," by Paul Barrett, is the ideal book to enlighten a whole host of people who don't realize they need it. That includes everyone who claims that moderate Muslims haven't spoken up against fundamentalist militants or that all Muslim women go around veiled or that the religion is inherently warlike. It also includes everyone whose only response to Islamist terrorism is to talk about the sins of Israel, those who claim that Islam doesn't have a growing problem with violent fanatics or the role of women, and those who insist that it is purely a religion of peace. Salon