Taliban calling...

Mom got installed at the local nursing home yesterday for 2-3 weeks of physical rehab. It was a bit worrisome that she was running a temperature when she was admitted. We're hoping that the infection that had left her so weak while at St. Francis hasn't flared up again. In the meantime, the agenda is to get her ambulatory as much as possible, which will require a lot of effort on her part. We're continuing to pray for a complete recovery.

Today, mysteriously, a lot of the MIA gungirl thumbnails have reappeared on ImageShack. Would love to think that it's because the Powers-that-be over at that image host site heard the rumblings from the Olympus that is the HQ - but I know I only have one regular and a few other occasional readers. But it's nice to fantasize. In any case, any new gungirl is going to be stored on Imgur from now on.

A flurry of stories and opinion features is starting up as facts about the Medal of Honor 'Taliban option' start to rile up the sensationalizing general news media and to worry the overly sensitive gaming news media. Is Electronic Arts taking a page out of Activision's book by having some controversial 'controlling the enemy' segment in Medal of Honor? I frackin' hope not. In this case, imitation isn't the sincerest form of flattery. It would be laziness combined with a lack of imagination and blatant exploitation. I'm certainly not going to judge sight unseen, but I hope that it's not like the ill-advised 'No Russian' segment from Modern Warfare 2. I'm not squeamish - especially having been trained by Uncle Sam to do Bad Things to People Wearing the Wrong Uniform at any distance out to 300 meters - but I thought it was a graceless thing to have in a videogame...
Today's featured Modern Warfare 2 vid is a barebones FFA match on Estate using the MP5K. In the second vid, Pyrotoz explores the capabilities of the MW2 .50 Barrett sniper rifle. Moving on...

• Activision: Call of Duty: Black Ops special editions now available for pre-order.
• Black Ops PS3, 360 pre-orders in GameStop Top 10.

• Medal of Honor single player details emerge.
• Fox News takes aim at Medal of Honor 'Play as the Taliban' option.
• F.E.A.R. 3 delayed until 2011.
• Kinect to launch 10 November 2011 - presumably when 20 million gamers like me will be playing Black Ops.
• Google shows the future of browser games. I was under the impression that Quake Live had already done that.
• Five games that will never see the light of release. A few months ago, Duke Nukem Forever would have been top of the list. Now, it's looking possible that DNF might actually be released. Whether time has passed Duke by is another question entirely.
• Monetizing 'free-to-play' gaming models.

• APOD 8/15: Layered hills in Arabia Terra sector of Mars.
• Fifteen futuristic weapons which will certainly make a mess. Tho they've got a Halo SMG in place of a 'plasma rifle'. Nothing worse than an ignorant nerd.
• Dutch hackers create wi-fi sniffing drone.
• Study: Video quality less important when you're actually enjoying the content. And the reverse is true, as any SyFy viewer who has 'enjoyed' Mansquito in HD will attest.
• Real-life Quasimodo discovered in Tate Archives.
• TV commercial crash test dummies go to The Smithsonian. As if there weren't already enough dummies in Washington, D.C.
• Accused 'Craigslist killer' commits suicide in jail by hanging. He got off too easy.
• Is Resident Evil the only good videogame-to-movie franchise? It depends on your definition of 'good'. For my money, each entry has been slightly weaker than the last.

(Credit: Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal)