Previously from 0.5 http://www.videosift.com/video/Project-Reality-05-Promovideo

Project Reality is a free to download game modification for the Battlefield 2 (BF2) retail pc game. The Reality Mod installs alongside the existing game installation allowing both the original and Project Reality to be played separately without causing conflicts.

The Mod developers' aims are to rework the original game engine developed by Digital Illusions of Sweden (Dice) within legal and feasible constraints to create a realistic combat environment for gamers. This includes adjusting the games various elements including physics, visual effects and game play. Along with changes to how the game handles, the PR team intends to include additional factions, such as the British military and add to or alter existing factions so that they resemble real life combat elements found within their contemporary environments.

The Mods name, 'Project Reality', is self descriptive in its aim to create a realistic combat environment on the home computer. The Project Reality team comprises a group of dedicated individuals, several of whom have backgrounds in armed services, whose sole task is to provide researched material, including statistical information, to the developers who are in turn tasked with coding and creating the mod itself. If you are looking for a fact based first person shooter from the perspective of a combat soldier, we feel Project Reality will provide for your gaming needs.

Inspiration for this modification can be found in interviews BF2 developers have participated in.

"Battlefield is all about fun, action-oriented gameplay. We'll leave the truly realistic experiences to the mod teams who thrive on that type of action." (DICE)

"Battlefield will always be first about fun and secondly about realism. Realism implies complexity."
(Sean Decker)

The Mod is now going through its seventh installment, Project Reality 0.7. In its earliest forms, the Project Reality Mini-Mod series began as a platform to experiment with certain realism changes and analyze their impact on gameplay with the retail BF2 engine. As the changes have progressed into workable features it has become a product with a frequent release schedule which provides the gaming community with ever increasing material and realistic gaming to satisfy their wants.

The goal at the moment is to develop and release Project Reality v1.0, a stable and completed Mod build which will be a markedly increased step up from the Project Reality Mini-Mod beginnings. This will include a complete British faction, including their various soldier classes, weaponry, vehicles and assets.

http://www.realitymod.com/

Uh swampy, jonny, did you read the articles that we linked to? From what it sounds like, students are getting examined by professionals. Again, I qoute to you, this time with key things in bold:


"At King Middle School, birth control prescriptions will be given after a student undergoes a physical exam by a physician or nurse practitioner, said Lisa Belanger, who oversees Portland’s student health centers.

Students treated at the centers must first get written parental permission, but under state law such treatment is confidential, and students decide for themselves whether to tell their parents about the services they receive."


And from an article @SunHerald.com

"School officials said five of the school's 510 students would have qualified for the birth control under the program last year.

O'Brien, whose district includes King Middle School, said the notion that young children can now easily get birth-control pills is flat wrong.

"They don't just have a giant punch bowl full of pills," he said,

The birth control will be given out only after extensive counseling, and no prepubescent children will get it, O'Brien said.

But Coyne said a physically mature, savvy 11-year-old could get the birth control once the permission slip to use the center is signed.

"I think she could navigate the system," he said.

Portland's three middle schools had seven pregnancies in the last five years, said Douglas Gardner, director of Portland's Health and Human Services Department. He said early reports of 17 pregnancies during the last four years were erroneous."


So, not only are the students getting examined by a trained professional (these are not being handed out like vitamins), but to even undergo the exam in the first place or use the medical center itself, the child needs to have parental permission. I'm guessing this would be in the form of a release waiver that is filled out at the beginning of each school year, similar to the normal safety/contact info/release waiver that is then kept on file in student records.

So, Swampy, in your case, you could always choose to not give that permission, and your daughter would not even be allowed to access the health center and instead rely upon the doctors you designate outside of school. And likely, there will be many parents in Maine who will follow that route, not just because of the access to birth control, but because I'm sure some parents can afford better health care for their kids or have children with special medical issues that they need to monitor. For everyone else though, especially kids from low income families, this health center sounds like a very good thing, not just because of the access to birth control, but also immunizations, examinations, and basic treatments... and might be way more than some of these kids would normally get, and in the case of the Portland school district, it sounds like they need this kind of setup.

Again from the article @SunHerald.com

"The King Middle School is among Portland's most diverse schools, with 31 languages spoken there and 28 percent of its students foreign-born. The school, located on the same peninsula as downtown Portland, draws from the islands in Casco Bay, wealthier neighborhoods overlooking the bay, and low-income triple deckers.

Fifty-four percent of the students are part of the federal free lunch program, which is an indicator of poverty.

Principal Michael McCarthy said the school had just one pregnancy last year, but students were reporting they were sexually active. The center has dispensed condoms since 2000, but because it could not prescribe birth-control pills, nurses referred the students to Planned Parenthood or Maine Medical Center.

"When they followed up, they found that in many cases, the kids weren't doing that," McCarthy said."

It sounds like an environment that would be tough enough for a young girl to grow and mature in, and having an early teenage pregnancy would likely be an extreme burden and only help to perpetuate the cycle of poverty in the area. Coupled with that is the high immigrant population, which means there are probably a lot of parents in the area that are not equipped to deal with the new 'American' environment (i.e.- probably considerably more sexualized in content than the culture of their homelands) that their children need the support to deal with. In light of these considerations, I think that the Portland school system is taking appropriate measures to ensure that their students get the fairest start on life possible, and don't end up at an early age 'stuck' in the environment they are now living in.

Also, as none of us can say for sure what the exact procedures are there, we can't really argue on sticking points like whether or not they are gathering medical history... although, given my own experiences with student health services on a collegiate level, I would like to think that if this place in Maine is being run by health care professionals of a similar caliber, that they would probably contact your child's primary physician for medical records/history... at least, that is what they do here.

I do like jonny's idea that parents should be subjected to the same sex-ed classes as their children, if only because, in a lot of cases anyway, parents might finally realize just how lacking the sex ed programs are in a good number of school systems, and take it upon themselves to either demand a change in curriculum, or better yet, open up a dialogue on the matter with their children.

Choggie, do you meet your requirements in A? Do you have a PhD?

It should be noted that S.E. Jones is a nuclear physicist- I.E. he does not satisfy A). He researched Cold Fusion in the late 80s,

· S.E. Jones, E.P. Palmer, J.B. Czirr, D.L. Decker, G.L. Jensen, J.M. Thorne, and S.F. Taylor & J. Rafelski, "Observation of Cold Nuclear Fusion in Condensed Matter," Nature 338

I encourage everyone to read the wikipedia entry on cold fusion:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cold_fusion

However, based on your convictions, I encourage to do the following:
0. Gather some preliminary data.
1. Write a grant.
1.5. Hire a graduate student.
2. Publish your findings in a peer-reviewed scientific journal.

Would you agree that if a hypothesis can not be verified through experiment or theory, then it must be rejected? Can you point to a single peer-reviewed paper published in a scientific journal that supports your current opinion or the opinions expressed on this video? Could you send me that reference? Have you completely read the NIST report? Do you believe that NIST is a government agency where all the researchers are controlled by the government? If these researchers are controlled by the government, are they forced to have these opinions or are they hand picked so that they just never disagree with the Big Borther's agenda?

Recently, you voted for a video, where the speaker, one Jeff King, had a background which could not be verified. Yet he presented himself as a research scientist at MIT, and then spoke as though he had expertise in the areas which he freely discussed. How do you reconcile your condition that anyone who "pooh pooh's" this video must satisfy A), with the fact that you voted for that video?

Sincerely,

MH.

I probably will not vote for Hillary, one main reason is that she couldn't stand up to her own husband, i see that as weakness. It matters not if she stood up to him in private, she should have stood to in public. It is wrong to pursue power, but in that case she had a perfect chance to get some pride for strong women. Staying with a cheating man? How does that show strength, "I love him?" once a cheater always a cheater.

Ladies, Gentleman for president, i have no preference, what i would like is a person to run that has been in a war, and has seen true horrors. Not some prissy ass boat captain, or some crack addict pilot. I good old fashioned infantry man or woman (im for integrated military), because they know what wars can be, and how wasteful they are. I want some one who has seen the sh*t, and knows what its like to see their fellow soldier get blown to shreds.

Then i think these useless wars would stop, because why the hell are we fighting in somebody else's desert? Because they attacked us? England gets more terror attacks by the IRA then we could ever fathom, to them it could be a normal thing. I saw after the (i believe it was the parliament building)bombing on a double decker bus a barkeeper he said basically "This is normal, the IRA attacks all the time. We have gotten used to this." I'm not condoning complacency, I'm stating that when you wake up in the morning, your life could be over in an instant.

So in short, any one is better than bush, I vote for no useless war. Who ever gets our boys out of that sh*t hole i will vote for.

Men are wasted trying to fight Vietnam wars, whether in a desert or in a jungle.

Great moment in history it is. Hopefully these candidates will stand up for what they believe, and not become a shadow of what they stood for.

triple decker DUMB

Double decker baloney SANDWICH!!!!

Gets my vote.