You have only one sneeze. Use it wisely. Yes, it’s “Stop Swine Flu,” the video game.
PHOTO : AP
The action starts with a splosh of green mucus hitting your screen, then switches to a street somewhere. Your avatar stands among pedestrians. The background noises are coughs, sneezes, noses being blown. Choose your moment, then tap the space bar to sneeze. Everyone hit by your spray turns green, then sneezes in turn, infecting others. How many are infected determines whether you go to the next level, which could be a train station, a factory floor or a nursery school.
Infecting a child is five points; an elderly person is 15. “I sort of like it, but I think it’s really warped,” said an eight-year-old who noticed the game on Sunday when it reached the Top 10 on his favorite free children’s game site, www.miniclips.com.
“Stop Swine Flu” — which probably ought to be called “Spread Swine Flu” — is actually a new name for a game released this year as “Sneeze,” before the possibility of pandemic flu dominated the news. And “Sneeze” was created with the best of intentions: to subversively teach young people healthy habits. It was commissioned by the Wellcome Trust, the world’s second largest charity after the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.
“We did it to engage the older teen audience and teach them that where you sneeze matters,” said Daniel Glaser, the trust’s chief of special projects. “All the science is embedded in a contest that will look familiar to the YouTube generation.”
The game does drop hints that it longs to be pedagogical. Each new level offers a germ fact: more than 100 viruses cause colds, colds cost $25 billion a year in lost productivity and so on.
But still — points for infecting toddlers? Isn’t that the product of a ... well, of a sick mind?
“It’s no sicker than Ring Around the Rosy, which is alleged to date from the time of the plague,” Glaser retorted. “People have always caught virus and died. I don’t think there’s anything inappropriate about it.” (NEW YORK TIMES)
你只能打一次噴嚏，所以得「加以善用」。沒錯，這就是「抵抗新流感」電玩遊戲。
這個遊戲以一團綠色黏液噴濺到你的螢幕開始，然後畫面就轉到某處街景，你的角色就站在一群行人之間。周圍傳來很多咳嗽、打噴嚏和擤鼻涕的聲音。選定時機後，就輕敲空白鍵打噴嚏。所有被你的鼻嚏噴到的人都會變成綠色，然後輪流打噴嚏，傳染給其他人。你總共傳染給多少人會決定你是否進入下一關，場景可能換成在火車站、廠房或護理學校。
傳染給一名兒童可獲得五分，老人則有十五分。一名八歲男孩上週日在他最喜歡的免費兒童遊戲網站www.miniclips.com上發現這個名列排行榜前十名的遊戲後說：「我還蠻喜歡這個遊戲的，但我覺得它實在很變態。」
這個今年推出的遊戲原本名為「打噴嚏」，但在可能造成全球大流行的新流感佔據新聞版面後便改名為「阻止新流感」──或許該叫「傳播新流感」才對。「打噴嚏」的設計宗旨是出於一片好意：用顛覆性的方式教導年輕人衛生習慣。該遊戲是由威爾康信託委任製作，威爾康信託是全球第二大慈善機構，僅次於比爾蓋茲伉儷基金會。
該信託特別企劃主任丹尼爾．葛萊瑟說：「我們設計了這款遊戲吸引年齡稍長的青少年，希望教導他們打噴嚏應慎選地點。科學知識就蘊藏在這些YouTube世代熟悉的遊戲競賽中。」
這個遊戲的確蘊含教育意義。每個進階關卡都會提供一個關於細菌的知識，例如：有超過一百種病毒會引發感冒、感冒每年造成兩百五十億美元市值的生產力損失等等。
但話說回來，傳染病毒給幼童的意義為何？這是否是一個…唔，一個病態的遊戲？
葛萊瑟反駁說：「這個遊戲沒有比以鼠疫為年代背景的兒歌『圍著玫瑰色斑疹繞圈』病態。世上總有人染上流感而死亡。我不覺得這有什麼不恰當之處。」（紐約時報╱翻譯：袁星塵）
Taiwan on Sunday beat Australia 11-3 to advance to the 2024 WBSC Premier12 Super Round, finishing second in Group B to secure a place in the Premier12’s Super Round alongside group winners Japan, as well as the top two teams from Group A, the United States and Venezuela. The 2024 WBSC Premier12 is being co-hosted by Mexico, Taiwan and Japan from Nov. 9 through Nov. 24, featuring the 12 highest-ranked national baseball teams in the world, based on the ranking system of the World Baseball Softball Confederation (WBSC), baseball’s world governing body, as of the end of 2023. What’s the difference between
A: Apart from Blackpink member Lisa, who else is set to visit Taiwan? B: Supergroup Take That will perform in Kaohsiung on Nov. 16, followed by singer Dua Lipa in Taoyuan on Nov. 20. A: Oh my gosh, Take That was my favorite group when I was young. B: Plus, South Korean singer BoA is also coming to Taipei on Nov. 23. A: As a first-generation K-pop diva, BoA’s show will definitely be awesome. A: 除了Blackpink 成員Lisa，還有哪些藝人會來台？ B: 天團接招合唱團11月16日在高雄開唱，歌手杜娃黎波20日在桃園開唱。 A: 天啊，接招是我年輕時最愛的樂團！ B: 南韓歌手寶兒，23日也將在台北開唱。 A: 她可是第一代韓流天后，一定超精彩。 （By Eddy Chang, Taipei Times／台北時報張聖恩）
The phenomenon known as a solar eclipse occurs when the Moon passes between the Sun and the Earth, and all three directly align. In such a situation, the Moon casts its shadow on the Earth and blocks the Sun. To observers on Earth, the Sun may partially or fully vanish, the sky eerily darkens, and the wind may pick up. In ancient civilizations, these events brought on profound fear and bewilderment. For many centuries and millennia, humans speculated about the reasons for what was happening in the sky above them. Without scientific knowledge and sophisticated equipment to analyze solar eclipses, our
Experts agree that the total solar eclipse over North America on April 8, 2024, dubbed the Great North American Eclipse, was indeed special. In fact, some say it was the most remarkable one in hundreds of years thanks to its duration, appearance, and other factors. First, the duration of totality — when the Sun appears completely covered by the Moon — was 4 minutes and 28 seconds, which surpassed the last total solar eclipse in North America in 2017. In addition, the outermost region of the Sun’s atmosphere, the corona, appeared larger and more symmetrical than other previous eclipses. A possible
RSS