“Meet Omari. Two days ago he returned from the hospital after being hacked in the face by a machete defending an orphanage of 35 children by himself. Think we could raise the $2,000 needed for the remainder of the cement/barbed wire wall to keep both him and the children safe?”

This captured the hearts of many people, and together the internet community raised $65,000 and counting for Omari and his orphans. Omari was received as a hero, one who took a brutal attack right in the face to protect children. Also, according to the original poster, Omari had previously fended off the attackers, who intended to steal from the orphanage. It is believed that the machete attack was retaliation for when Omari threw a hammer into the face of one of the invaders. From the post:

Being the third time this happened that week, he had already stashed a hammer beside his bed. He grabbed it, and threw it at the first person who entered his room. He hit the person square in the head, and chased the rest out. The following night, the three thugs returned, presumably to avenge their friend. Omari put up a fight but was outnumbered. The last thing he remembers was being struck in the face by the machete.

Even before the full story was told, people began to donate. Overnight (at least, for Europeans) it became clear that social media can make a difference.

The original post is touching, and one can feel the excitement of the guy who initially reached out to the online community when the donations began flooding in. Personally, this is my favourite series of excerpts:

Edit 8: Over $9,000 and I’m in a state of shock. I…… Just…………………Thank you.
Edit 9: Over $11,000. It’s 6am. In 45 minutes I will RUN to the orphanage. [...] This is the best news I have ever had to privilege to tell anyone, and you are all to thank for it. Also, I am too overwhelmed at the moment, but I will do my best to reply to as many comments/messages/questions as I can.
Edit 10: $44,000!!!!!!!!! REDDIT!!!!! I can hardly breathe. I refreshed the page at least twice to make sure it was real. I cannot believe this.

It’s super cool to see that true heroes are recognised, and to see that the combined effort of many people can lead to great things.

Edit: The amount of donations is now at the $80,000 mark. For those who are interested, the construction for the wall has already began (5 days after the original call for help was initialised) but will cost about $10,000, not the $2,000 originally estimated. The charity reasons that the original estimate was just for the raw materials and not including the labour.

Here’s badass Omari with his hammer:

If you’d like to keep up with the developments of Omari and the orphanage, you can do so through this blog.

This time, a gamer has saved a life, not taken it.

This past Sunday twenty-four year old Adam Mapleson rushed to the aid of a female security guard outside a railway station in Essex England, who was being robbed at gunpoint by two mask-wearing thugs, taking a bullet to the chest in the process. Now in stable condition at a local hospital, police are calling the young man a hero.

From the interests listed on his MySpace page (black metal, CS, GTA etc) he certainly does not fit the mainstream MO of a hero. However, there may be many gamers doing saintly things on a daily basis that we don’t know about! Do you have any stories of your own personal gamer “heros”?

If you want to learn more about gaming as a career, maybe this Guide to Online Schools resource may be of service.

A talented individual who is fluent in dinosaur is offering dinosaur-esque services in exchange for a property in Vansterdam Vancouver:

Hahaha! I hope this person found what they were looking for. On a side note, I also hope it was a mansion that was actually distinguishable from a crack house!

A higher level of education is associated with a greater risk of depression in China, for example — the reverse of the relationship in Europe and the United States.

This chimes with the latest results from the World Health Organization’s World Mental Health Survey Initiative, published last week, which found that those with the lowest level of education in China and Japan had only one-fifth the likelihood of developing depression as those with the highest education levels. In other countries, a lower education level was linked to a similar or higher risk of depression than the most educated.

And whereas having authoritarian parents seems to increase the risk of major depression in the West, CONVERGE found that having an overprotective father actually reduces the risk of depression in Chinese women.
– Source: nature.com

This is very interesting to me as this seems to stem from the different cultural viewpoints. For instance, in the West, the more educated you are, the higher chance you have of achieving monetary stability, a secure lifestyle and thus have less to feel depressed about. However in the East, it is commonplace to simply “do as your told, no questions asked”. Therefore by gaining higher education in China, they may start to become critical and question things they normally would have just attributed to being “just the way things are”.

Despite these differences, the symptoms and patterns of risk factors remain the same across cultures.

Stressful life events, childhood sexual abuse and authoritarian parents increase the risk with about the same dose-response relationship. Earlier onset of depression makes patients less likely to marry, more likely to suffer anxiety and more likely to be chronically depressed.

But why China? The main reasons given for undertaking the study there is due to the large, ethnically homogeneous sample. Additionally, costs of conducting the experiments there are far lower.

If you wish to learn more about such things, you may be interested in taking online psychology classes.

“We actively discourage gamers from being the kind of mysogynistic jackwagons seen in the Reddit post, and such behavior should not be tolerated. Frankly, we don’t like that kind of player either. So far as this event goes, it is an special event designed specifically for male gamers. Further, it is meant as a getaway designed to help said male contingent become better men both for themselves and for those who love us.”

At first, I didn’t think so much about it because it isn’t uncommon for a LAN to be male-only even without the explicit exclusion of females. I didn’t care that females were excluded for whatever reason. But when I read the comments they clearly highlight an issue which is far larger than a single sex LAN. One user commented with a video of ‘TheAmazingAthiest’ ranting about comments made by some women on TV who were laughing about a woman castrating her husband because he wanted a divorce:

It’s sad that Sharon Osborne was one of the ring leaders in making light of the situation as she has been viewed as an icon and role model for strong females. It is distasteful to laugh at the mutilation of any human being. This guy basically just points out the obvious that her remarks were disgusting, but it does remind us that sexism is still rife and comments like Sharon’s is like fighting fire with fire. Despite being from the same species, can males and females ever be truly equal? This hypersensitive topic is something which I’m confronted with more often than I’d like, mainly due to being part of a minority in normally boisterous FPS games.

Click here to see the original clip of the women talking about the castration.

Before I start, I would like to make it clear that it is impossible for me to withhold bias from this subject since I have experienced not only discrimination but also special treatment because of gender. Females have been seen as second-class citizens throughout human history, so feminist movements have gained momentum throughout the decades. Therefore it is understandable that many females feel very strongly about equal rights when encountering discrimination. I find myself in a constant conflict between my own ambitions and my view of the role of women in society. Sometimes I wonder “what’s the point” since it’s a constant uphill battle to gain impartial recognition for any achievement. [Most likely though, it's the drivel from internet trolls that has vastly contributed to my jaded view].

But it isn’t inaccurate to say that men and women are unequal even in the most liberal societies. It is difficult to often hear “you don’t need to be good at anything except sucking dick”, “it’s bullshit you’ve got what you have had in life, it’s just because you’re a girl” and so on. Many say just not to listen, but that is far easier said than done. After all, repetition is one of the most effective ways to learn. So instead of burrowing into the myriad of studies on the debate of gender inequality, it is better for me to speak about my personal experiences with misogynists since it’s impossible for me to check my bias at the door. Perhaps insight into such experiences can help contribute to understanding the plight that women face in male-dominated areas, such as gaming.

“Tits + Vag FTW”

I’ve been extremely lucky. With the gaming house, sponsorships and a spot on a CGS franchise; I’ve had a cushy career from gaming. While I may not agree with the segregation of gaming tournaments by gender, if the opportunity is presented of course I will take it. That doesn’t mean that it doesn’t hurt when I hear people who I consider my friends tell me that all the sponsorships I have received have been just because of gender, nothing else. Not only is that inaccurate, but one would expect their friends to be happy for their success. Recently a friend of mine said “You only got all that shit because you’re a fucking girl, you know” and seemed genuinely surprised when I tried to tell him how much work I actually had to do to get such things. He spent the next few minutes getting aggressive due to not being born a girl. Why so bitter? The time and effort that I’ve devoted to my passion seems to be irrelevant.

Almost every time I accomplish something I’m proud of, people immediately write it off that the only reason I was able to achieve anything is because of my gender. Mentioning looks is also often correlated with sexist comments. With the recent announcement of the 2011 Alienware Challenge, people remembered last years and these are some things that were said:

“The eventual winner was terrible [...]”

“[...] community voting should not have been as influential in the outcome because obviously a bunch of nerds are going to pick a marginally cute girl over you [...]”

“She won because she has tits who cares [...]“

…And so on. Never mind that I actually came 3rd in the community voting and it was because I won the majority of the Alienware vote that I won overall. Never mind that I travelled the furthest, spanning two continents. Never mind that I spent painstaking hours editing all the videos for the challenges, trying to portray the trip and atmosphere as much as possible. Never mind that I barely have tits! Forget all of that – it is automatically negated by my gender. Something which I should feel proud of suddenly became bittersweet. I started to question myself: if people really thought I was so terrible, then maybe I am.

I could sit and write all night about all the crap I get, but I think you pretty much get the picture.

You don’t need to tell me to just ignore those folk, if I couldn’t do that I would have bowed out of the gaming scene long ago. I think the bigger issue is that this is being said in the first place. I don’t believe that forums should be censored, but the amount of people that freely and continually say things like this (and worse) shows that gender prejudices are still very much alive. Perhaps such comments only reinforce misogynistic attitudes. As online and offline worlds are no longer dichotomous, one has to wonder if these people behave the same way offline.

Many guys I’ve spoken to believe that sexism is non-existent in most liberal societies. “Come on, it’s not like we’re in the Arab world” is a pretty common response when the topic is approached. Most also just pass it off as a joke. Sometimes it is, sometimes there’s a sharp grain of truth behind it. Either way, this is the kind of community one needs to prepare herself for. Not all girls look like actresses and supermodels, and most guys on gaming forums do not want to accept this. I guess to the majority, girls are only present on the internet as decorations at the self-service station.

People who want to develop non-misogynistic games could look into getting an online bachelor degree in video game design.

Funny!! Maybe the Egyptians had it right and cats are to be worshipped! Kind of reminds me of that Futurama episode where kitties were the ones who enslaved humanity but then got a bit lazy and pampered… hehe.

Introducing the contestants

You can follow their weekly challenges and adventures on the Alienware Challenge website. This week they’ve got to make a tourism video about London! That’s pretty cool since there are soooooo many places that one could use in the video. At the end of the week, you’ll be able to vote for your favourite submission.

For those who may be interested in backpacking around Europe or are following this years Alienware challenge, here are some travel tips from last year:

1. Be wise with your money
This point had to be made on video.

2. Be with your friends
As the only female in this contest, I did not travel alone anywhere. These days it’s not safe and I really didn’t feel like being taken advantage of. So I have not really spent a single moment alone in the past 7 weeks as I have been surrounded by my friends.

The only time I was with someone kind of random, I got touched when I fell asleep in the car That was weird.

Not only is it a lot more fun to have someone to share your experiences (and expenses) with, but i’m very humbled by how nice they all were about the weekly challenges. Every single week I have had help from my friends to complete the challenges; wheather they were filming, calling up MMA gyms, helping me with ideas and just generally being supportive.

I felt sorry for the other guys, especially during the sports challenge week as 2 of them didn’t have anyone to film them really doing the sport! So while they had to get creative to show the challenge in other ways, i’m sure their submissions would have been much cooler had they had someone to film them

The best times from my trip (and there were so many, I can’t pick one) were all shared with someone and these people were the ones to help make my trip that much more amazing, special and incredible.

3. Double check EVERYTHING
Normally i’m pretty thorough with checking all the bookings but I think this lesson has been learned by both Ben and I. Earlier in the challenge (maybe around week 2) remember Ben was homeless? I’m sure it could have been avoided by double checking the train station his train was leaving from.

For me I learned this when leaving the Netherlands for Istanbul. Remember the first blog from there? Well it all started when I said to Ed at the airport “Please don’t be mad but… we’re going to another airport than I originally thought”. In my defense I only selected the main airport when booking the tickets but somehow we ended up booked to another airport anyway.

I had no idea where this airport was so when we landed I had to ask exactly where on the map we were. Turns out we were over an hour away from the city. Fantastic. This is where we got scammed into paying for a non-existant shuttle, followed by a “private cab ride”.

4. Research places before you go there
There are so many amazing places in Europe to see and depending on what you like; beaches, archaeological sites, museums, monuments, clubbing etc

Do a little bit of research beforehand to make a rough “plan of attack” about what you want to see and do. Don’t do what I did and think “Hmm this place looks cool from google image search, and it’s sunny… let’s go here!”.

This method CAN work out for you as it’s pretty adventurous to stumble upon places that you’d never expect to, but it’s also really nice to know the history behind everything.

A good website to use is wikitravel.

5. Bring an M11x!
Everyone who i’ve been around has loved this laptop, if only for the disco setting i’ve put the keyboard on. In all seriousness, it’s been my home away from home for the past 7 weeks. Right now I’m in Turkey and I’m enjoying QuakeCon as if I was at home!

Also since it’s summer holidays now, I’m trying not to let my brain fall asleep. Therefore, it’s my goal for the next month to post and comment on various areas of interest: including new gadgets, some stuff about gaming and of course science. Since this website won’t be strictly gaming any more, it probably doesn’t need an RSS feed on eSports Press but hopefully most of my readers will continue to enjoy the type of content i’ll be posting in the future.

Speaking of gaming, the last trip which I took was to DreamHack Summer in Jönköping a few weeks ago. It was fantastic to see all the old Quakers from over the years, as well as new friends too! Above you can see Videl (g0d’s latest addition) and I a little upset over the drinks situation at the LAN. We were just having a bit of fun ^^. It was a really nice idea that Telia had, where you could create your own “fan sign” for your favourite player at DreamHack.

QuakeCon is just around the corner and I wish I could go there also but sponsorship in Quake is pretty scarce right now, where even top players like Strenx and Spart1e have to seek out sponsorship (In case you missed it, they left fnatic). Thus, Quake is pretty dead in the sponsor department so I can’t make it to QuakeCon but certainly I’ll be watching and cheering from home, especially for the TDM players!

Scientists tested this dichloroacetate on human’s cells; it killed lung, breast and brain cancer cells and left the healthy cells alone. It was tested on Rats inflicted with severe tumors; their cells shrank when they were fed with water supplemented with DCA. The drug is widely available and the technique is easy to use, why the major drug companies are not involved? Or the Media interested in this find?

In human bodies there is a natural cancer fighting human cell, the mitochondria, but they need to be triggered to be effective. Scientists used to think that these mitochondria cells were damaged and thus ineffective against cancer. So they used to focus on glycolysis, which is less effective in curing cancer and more wasteful. The drug manufacturers focused on this glycolysis method to fight cancer. This DCA on the other hand doesn’t rely on glycolysis instead on mitochondria; it triggers the mitochondria which in turn fights the cancer cells.

Most pages have been really positive about these findings; likening it to some kind of “miracle drug” and focusing more on how pharmaceutical companies and the media won’t pick it up. Perhaps the media are not interested in disseminating this radical information yet as still further testing is required and it is not certain yet that it really works. You can read the original research here.

Glenn Beck even did a report about it:

But for some reason it seems like this has not been the “miracle cure” that it’s been painted to be, because it is still not widely used and some patients have reported some disturbing side effects such as numbing of the hands, feet and face.

It seems that this DCA solution is most effective when used in combination with other drugs, so in 2010 MIT researchers combined DCA with cisplatin. This then displayed a “dual-killing” mode which was only effective in cancer cells! However, further research is required. In the meantime, DCA is still not approved for cancer treatment in the USA.

People should be warned to search google for alternative answers for curing cancer, as it is articles like the one on hubpages that don’t fully explain the situation but instead pick a sensationalist headline (and forget the publication date? — most people won’t even notice that the first comment on this article was posted 4 years ago!) and perhaps may give false hope to those suffering from the illness.

The images of the damage are pretty intense and I am so happy to read everyone in NZs updates on facebook about how they are all gathering together and doing their part to help; donating blood, water, food, clothes, money etc… I’m also so happy to see that AirNZ is offering cheap flights for immediate family of victims or victims themselves.

I know that many of my readers are probably thinking “WTF why is she writing about this, it’s not about gaming”. But I grew up in New Zealand and it is really where i’m “from”… so to see the country in a state of national emergency, I really want to try and do *SOMETHING*, even if it’s just making a post on a blog, encouraging people to donate.

Donations can be made to the Red Cross online or via the GrabOne website or fundraiseonline.co.nz, as the Red Cross site has been crashing. Here is another official site set up by the government in the global appeal for help: http://www.christchurchearthquakeappeal.govt.nz/

You can also help by going to NZ for holidays!

If you’re in NZ, here are some other ways you can help! (although i’m pretty sure that you already know these things <3)