US: Gamers to Play 'The Legend of Zelda' for 150 Consecutive Hours to Raise Funds for Charity

Image via Zeldathon.net

December 27 to January 2, more than 50 gamers will play "The Legend of Zelda" for 150 consecutive hours to raise money for HelpHOPELive, a top-ranked charity that supports fundraising campaigns for people with unmet medical and related expenses due to cell and organ transplants or catastrophic injuries and illnesses. The Zelda marathon, named "Zeldathon Hope," will kick off at4 p.m. on Dec. 27 to a live audience of thousands on Twitch, the world's leading video game streaming platform.

How The Nazis Co-Opted Christmas

A postcard depicts Adolf Hitler posing with a child and a Christmas tree. Author provided

By Joe Perry, Georgia State University

In 1921, in a Munich beer hall, newly appointed Nazi party leader Adolf Hitler gave a Christmas speech to an excited crowd.

According to undercover police observers, 4,000 supporters cheered when Hitler condemned “the cowardly Jews for breaking the world-liberator on the cross” and swore “not to rest until the Jews…lay shattered on the ground.” Later, the crowd sang holiday carols and nationalist hymns around a Christmas tree. Working-class attendees received charitable gifts.

For Germans in the 1920s and 1930s, this combination of familiar holiday observance, nationalist propaganda and anti-Semitism was hardly unusual. As the Nazi party grew in size and scope – and eventually took power in 1933 – committed propagandists worked to further “Nazify” Christmas. Redefining familiar traditions and designing new symbols and rituals, they hoped to channel the main tenets of National Socialism through the popular holiday.

Given state control of public life, it’s not surprising that Nazi officials were successful in promoting and propagating their version of Christmas through repeated radio broadcasts and news articles.

But under any totalitarian regime, there can be a wide disparity between public and private life, between the rituals of the city square and those of the home. In my research, I was interested in how Nazi symbols and rituals penetrated private, family festivities – away from the gaze of party leaders.

While some Germans did resist the heavy-handed, politicized appropriation of Germany’s favorite holiday, many actually embraced a Nazified holiday that evoked the family’s place in the “racial state,” free of Jews and other outsiders.

Four Films That Capture The Nightmare Of Christmas

By Bruce Bennett, Lancaster University

Forgive me, I’m about to go all Scrooge. Christmas, you see, is a particularly grim time of year. Rolling around with grinding, Groundhog Day relentlessness, it is an interval of dark days and long nights, bad music, kitsch clothing and decor, enforced jollity, stilted family gatherings, hyper-commercialism, over-consumption and tiresome end-of-year round-up articles.

But there’s no escape. As is demonstrated by Christmas with the Kranks (2004), in which a couple decide to avoid Christmas by going on a Caribbean holiday only to find themselves shunned by their appalled neighbours and children, participation in this ritual is mandatory.

And it drags on, too. As folk-singer, Loudon Wainwright III observes in Suddenly It’s Christmas, the joy lasts for weeks:

When they say “Season’s greetings” They mean just what they say:
It’s a season, it’s a marathon,
Retail eternity.

The Christmas film is almost as old as the medium of cinema itself – there are hundreds of them. Perhaps the first, by Brighton film-maker George Smith, dates from 1898. Few truly capture the real spirit of Christmas, but here are four that do.

Could A Truth Commission Have Saved The Star Wars Universe From Another Conflict?

If only Desmond Tutu were here… Lucasfilm

By James Sweeney, Lancaster University

A brutal regime is at last brought to its knees, its key leaders start fighting among themselves, and the old tyrant is killed without trial. Libya in 2011? No: the world of Star Wars at the close of Return of the Jedi.

The latest film, Star Wars: The Force Awakens was released last week (in case you hadn’t noticed). It is set in precisely the sort of conflicted environment that we see when contemporary totalitarian regimes collapse, be it the former Soviet Union, Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya or Egypt.

#LGBT - New Songs Make a Positive Statement for Transgender Artist [Video Included]

Rizi Timane -- recording artist, author, actor, and life coach to the transgender community -- has just released three new trans-affirmative singles: "Yeah! It Feels Good to Finally Be Me," "Let's Make Love," and "I'm Beautiful," all of which are available for download from iTunes and at www.rizitimane.com.

How Star Wars' Famous Title Sequence Survived Imperial Assaults

‘A long time ago …’

By Iain Macdonald, Edinburgh Napier University

At the beginning of the Star Wars movies, that famous typographic walkway has always been essential to the experience. It both echoed the silent movie era and was filled with futuristic vision. How thrillingly disorientating to read “A long time ago …” while looking out at what was not yet possible.

The great cinematic graphic designer Saul Bass once said that he “saw the title as a way of conditioning the audience, so that when the film actually began, viewers would already have an emotional resonance with it”. Star Wars is one of the great examples of what he was talking about. Not surprisingly, it reappeared in all subsequent instalments. Yet the fact that no one has managed to wreck it along the way was by no means a sure thing.

A Force Awakened: Why So Many Find Meaning In Star Wars

Mark Hamill as Luke Skywalker in Star Wars: Episode IV – A New Hope. 20th Century Fox

By Patti McCarthy, University of the Pacific

After witnessing the overwhelming popularity of Star Wars, director Francis Ford Coppola told George Lucas he should start his own religion.

Lucas laughed him off, but Coppola may have been onto something.

Indeed, the Star Wars saga taps into the very storytelling devices that have structured myths and religious tales for centuries. And with every new film, fans are able to reinforce their unique communities in a world that has grown, in many ways, increasingly isolated.

Show You Care and Help Canada Welcome Syrian Refugees [Video Included]

To help create a positive start, CARE Canada is asking Canadians to welcome Syrian refugees with a new online campaign.

UK: Give A Lost Teddy A New Home This Christmas For Charity

Airport launches campaign to rehome lost and unwanted teddies to help raise money for charity.
(PRNewsFoto/London City Airport)

Teddy bears give their owners unlimited love and hugs, but who's there to hug them when they get left behind?

People travelling through the airport often forget things such as belts, laptops and mobile phones, and sometimes their furry friends too. Some make it home, but some get forgotten. 

When staff at London City Airport found Ted in lost property, they started a campaign to get him home. The response they received from the public led them to create Adop-TED, a website for rehoming lost and unwanted teddies.

Peake Viewing: From Bizarre Astronaut Traditions To Awe-Inspiring blast Off

Tim says bye. Reuters

By Monica Grady, The Open University

Having spent days following him around, it was amazing to finally see the first official UK astronaut, Major Tim Peake, launched into space from Russia’s Baikonur cosmodrome in Kazakhstan. He’s been through six years of training to get to this moment, and will do a six-month tour of duty on the International Space Station.

I was part of the press team that followed Peake and his crew mates Tim Kopra (NASA) and Yuri Malenchenko (Roscosmos) around as they went through the final few tests prior to their launch. It was a really interesting experience seeing all the strange traditions taking place away from the public eye – and not just from the point of view of finding out about astronaut preparation.

Tobacco Use Widespread in Video Games Played By Youth [Video Included]

Smoking is prevalent and often glamorized in video games played by youth,
according to a new report released by Truth Initiative.

Smoking is prevalent and often glamorized in video games played by youth, according to a new report released today by Truth Initiative. The report, Played: Smoking and Video Games, comes at a time when parents are holiday shopping for their children and a wave of new video games have recently hit the shelves.

European Youth Expect Tough Economic Future

• Nearly a third (29%) of young people in Europe feel their finances are in a poor condition 

• Two thirds (66%) of people in Europe feel young people have to make more financial decisions than the older generations did when they were young  

• Some 75% of people across Europe agree it is more important for young people today to learn how to manage money

Almost one in three (29%) young people across Europe are barely in control of their finances*.

A new international study of financial behaviour questioning about 15,000 people across 15 nations reveals there is widespread concern about the financial prospects of the younger generation.