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John Alan Schwartz: From Faces of Death to reviewing movies on YouTube "I said before the film has historical importance (and it does), but it's relevance was more recognized in 1978 than the present day. The YouTube generation will be unable to comprehend what purpose the film served thirty years ago, and thus it's difficult to ignore how hopelessly dated Faces Of Death really is." It's relevance may have faded, but the intrigue remains. Deadspin recently interviewed the writer and producer of four compilations of death and gore, John Alan Schwartz. And of course, they discuss the fake gore in the monkey scene (interview clip with special make-up effects creators Allan Apone and Douglas White, with the memorable scene). And what is Schwarts up to today? He and his wife post videos of their movie reviews on YouTube (Tumblr, YouTube profile page, their website). brrrrrrr It's pretty darn cold in Europe this winter, with over 300 dead as a result sadly. John Christopher [1922-2012] Samuel Youd, who wrote under the name John Christopher, has passed away. Youd, who published under a number of pseudonyms, wrote the influential disaster novel No Blade of Grass, and the popular YA Tripod novels. A rather interesting interview from 2009 is here. RIP. OneSwarm OneSwarm is a privacy preserving BitTorrent client that offers permissions for restricting access to shared content and sharing without attribution, with the anonymity being provided by fellow OneSwarm peers routing transfers. There are several interesting use cases outlined in the author's paper "Privacy-Preserving P2P Data Sharing with OneSwarm" (pdf), such as employing permissions to share a photo archive with only a subset of friends, or downloading a security patch without indicating that your machine is currently vulnerable to the patched exploit. "OneSwarm differs from [previous anonymous peer-to-peer applications] in its support for a spectrum of data-sharing models and peer trust relationships" There is a longstanding issue that BitTorrent dislikes the Tor anonymity network. OneSwarm provides sharing without attribution by implementing a Tor-like anonymity network which the authors describe as "new design point in [the] tradeoff between privacy and performance." I haven't yet worked out whether OneSwarm's routing avoids building a public key infrastructure behind the scenes, much less how much privacy this might sacrifice, but the authors cite the "Slicing the onion" article. "It was as if he knew he was going to a very dark place and he knew he couldn't do anything about it," Artistic decline through Alzheimer's - William Utermohlen was diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease in 1995 yet he continued drawing. His last self portraits painted between 1995 and 2001 tell a unique tale of an implacable disease encroaching on to his mind and senses. "He died in 2007, but really he was dead long before that, Bill died in 2000, when the disease meant he was no longer able to draw." As his disease progressed, Utermohlen became more and more interested in self-portraiture, and his own head - particularly his cranium - became an ever more prominent feature in his works. Utermohlen's wife also drew attention to strange, black, half-open doorways which started to appear in the background of his works. "It was as if he knew he was going to a very dark place and he knew he couldn't do anything about it," she said. "By the end he couldn't even recognise his own paintings... that was the saddest thing". Videogamers Embark on Non-Killing Spree Some video game aficionados are now trying to beat violent games without killing any other characters in the process. The 'Donorsexual' The Virgin Father 'Trent Arsenault is 36 years old and has never had sex, but he's the father of fifteen children — and counting.' Multipage version. His site: trentdonor.com includes a gallery of babies. The FDA has issued a cease & desist order. Interview with Anderson Cooper. HuffPost Q&A. More from SFWeekly. Why the olympics suck Will Self on the 2012 London Olympics . What makes Ron Paul tick? "He believed in not too much federal government," said Siegfried Smith, a classmate. "And this was a time when we didn't have a lot." "You play Eimear, an innocent little girl with reprehensible parents." Oíche Mhaith (Good Night) is a game by IGF Festival Finalists Stephen (increpare) Lavelle and Terry Cavanaugh about families, bereavement and resurrection. With some potentially NSFW language and content, the game represents a collaboration between two well-known players in the field of micro and art games. Lavelle has more than 100 games on his website. Cavanagh is less prolific, although he has just released the first of five planned "small games", ChatChat, a simple graphical MUD/chatroom in which the players are all cats (previously). Both Cavanagh and Increpare have games nominated as finalists at the 2012 Independent Games Festival - Increpare for English Country Tune, and Cavanagh for At A Distance, a two player puzzle game "about solitude in shared experiences", with a mechanic players are asked not to reveal to those who have not yet played it. Oíche Mhaith is reminiscent in gameplay and some themes of Cavanagh's earlier work, the simple, 5-screen RPG Hero's Adventure, and of increpare's (very NSFW and potentially triggering) The Terrible Whiteness of Appalachian Nights. However, this (spoiler-heavy) review by Kill Screen, from which the post title is taken, sees more to it than the simplicity of its gameplay. Yet while Eimear's situation pertains to her gender and the specifics of her personal tragedy, the player develops a sense of empathy for her. You internalize the role of this child, and feel the yearning she has for her family's affection, and the confusion and sadness of its denial. (Note: "slut/slutty" in Ireland has an alternate but associated meaning - a woman who does not keep a clean and tidy house.)

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