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Polybius (urban Legend)
''Polybius'' is an urban legend about a lost video game. According to the legend, a new game appeared in arcades around Portland, Oregon, in 1981. The gameplay was supposedly psychoactive, abstract, and dangerous. Children who played the arcade game were said to suffer from amnesia, seizures, night terrors, and hallucinations. Despite these adverse effects, the arcade cabinet was described as so addictive that players returned to ''Polybius'' repeatedly until they went insane, died, or vanished. The lack of any surviving ''Polybius'' cabinets is explained by men in black who were said to record data on the players before removing all the arcade machines. There is no evidence that ''Polybius'' ever existed. The earliest known print reference to the game is the September 2003 issue of ''GamePro''. The earliest online reference to ''Polybius'' is the coinop.org entry, dated to 1998. There is no evidence that the supposed publisher, ''Sinneslöschen'', existed. ''Snopes'' has call ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Brian Dunning (author)
Brian Andrew Dunning (born 1965) is an American writer and producer who focuses on science and skepticism. He has hosted a weekly podcast, ''Skeptoid'', since 2006, and he is an author of a series of books on the subject of scientific skepticism, some of which are based on the podcast. ''Skeptoid'' has been the recipient of several podcast awards such as the Parsec Award. Dunning has also created the ''Skeptoid.org'' spin-off video series, ''inFact'', and ''The Feeding Tube'' both available on YouTube. Dunning has produced two educational films on the subject of critical thinking: ''Here Be Dragons'' in 2008, and ''Principles of Curiosity'' in 2017. Dunning co-founded Buylink, a business-to-business service provider, in 1996, and served at the company until 2002. He later became eBay's second-biggest affiliate marketer; he has since been convicted of wire fraud through a cookie stuffing scheme, for his company fraudulently obtaining between $200,000 and $400,000 from eBay. In ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Night Terrors
Night terror, also called sleep terror, is a sleep disorder causing feelings of panic or dread and typically occurring during the first hours of stage 3–4 non-rapid eye movement (NREM) sleep and lasting for 1 to 10 minutes. It can last longer, especially in children. Sleep terror is classified in the category of NREM-related parasomnias in the International Classification of Sleep Disorders. There are two other categories: REM-related parasomnias and other parasomnias. Parasomnias are qualified as undesirable physical events or experiences that occur during entry into sleep, during sleep, or during arousal from sleep. Sleep terrors usually begin in childhood and usually decrease as age increases. Factors that may lead to sleep terrors are young age, sleep deprivation, medications, stress, fever, and intrinsic sleep disorders. The frequency and severity differ among individuals; the interval between episodes can be as long as weeks and as short as minutes or hours. This has ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Insomnia
Insomnia, also known as sleeplessness, is a sleep disorder where people have difficulty sleeping. They may have difficulty falling asleep, or staying asleep for as long as desired. Insomnia is typically followed by daytime sleepiness, low energy, irritability, and a depression (mood), depressed mood. It may result in an increased risk of accidents of all kinds as well as problems focusing and learning. Insomnia can be short term, lasting for days or weeks, or long term, lasting more than a month. The concept of the word ''insomnia'' has two distinct possibilities: insomnia disorder (ID) or insomnia symptoms, and many abstracts of randomized controlled trials and systematic reviews often underreport on which of these two possibilities the word refers to. Insomnia can occur independently or as a result of another problem. Conditions that can result in insomnia include psychological stress, chronic pain, heart failure, hyperthyroidism, heartburn, restless leg syndrome, menopause ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Amnesia
Amnesia is a deficit in memory caused by brain damage or brain diseases,Gazzaniga, M., Ivry, R., & Mangun, G. (2009) Cognitive Neuroscience: The biology of the mind. New York: W.W. Norton & Company. but it can also be temporarily caused by the use of various sedative and hypnotic drugs. The memory can be either wholly or partially lost due to the extent of damage that is caused. There are two main types of amnesia: * Retrograde amnesia is the inability to remember information that was acquired before a particular date, usually the date of an accident or operation. In some cases, the memory loss can extend back decades, while in other cases, people may lose only a few months of memory. * Anterograde amnesia is the inability to transfer new information from the short-term store into the long-term store. People with anterograde amnesia cannot remember things for long periods of time. These two types are not mutually exclusive; both can also occur simultaneously. Case stud ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Seizures
A seizure is a sudden, brief disruption of brain activity caused by abnormal, excessive, or synchronous neuronal firing. Depending on the regions of the brain involved, seizures can lead to changes in movement, sensation, behavior, awareness, or consciousness. Symptoms vary widely. Some seizures involve subtle changes, such as brief lapses in attention or awareness (as seen in absence seizures), while others cause generalized convulsions with loss of consciousness ( tonic–clonic seizures). Most seizures last less than two minutes and are followed by a postictal period of confusion, fatigue, or other symptoms. A seizure lasting longer than five minutes is a medical emergency known as status epilepticus. Seizures are classified as provoked, when triggered by a known cause such as fever, head trauma, or metabolic imbalance, or unprovoked, when no immediate trigger is identified. Recurrent unprovoked seizures define the neurological condition epilepsy. Clinical features Seizur ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Arcade Cabinet
An arcade cabinet, also known as an arcade machine or a coin-op cabinet or coin-op machine, is the housing within which an arcade game's electronic hardware resides. Most cabinets designed since the mid-1980s conform to the Japanese Amusement Machine Manufacturers Association (JAMMA) wiring standard. Some include additional connectors for features not included in the standard. Parts of an arcade cabinet Because arcade cabinets vary according to the games they were built for or contain, they may not possess all of the parts listed below: *A display output, on which the game is displayed. They may display either raster or vector graphics, raster being most common. Standard resolution is between 262.5 and 315 vertical lines, depending on the refresh rate (usually between 50 and 60 Hz). Slower refresh rates allow for better vertical resolution. Monitors may be oriented horizontally or vertically, depending on the game. Some games use more than one monitor. Some newer cabinets ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Golden Age Of Arcade Video Games
The golden age of arcade video games was the period of rapid growth, technological development, and cultural influence of arcade video games from the late 1970s to the early 1980s. The release of ''Space Invaders'' in 1978 led to a wave of shoot-'em-up games such as ''Galaxian'' and the vector graphics-based ''Asteroids'' in 1979, made possible by new computing technology that had greater power and lower costs. Arcade video games switched from black-and-white to color, with titles such as '' Frogger'' and ''Centipede'' taking advantage of the visual opportunities of bright palettes. Video game arcades became a part of popular culture and a primary channel for new games. Video game genres were still being established, but included space-themed shooter games such as '' Defender'' and '' Galaga'', maze chase games that followed the design established by ''Pac-Man'', driving and racing games which more frequently used 3D perspectives such as ''Turbo'' and ''Pole Position'', char ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Polybius Arcade 1 Cropped
Polybius (; , ; ) was a Greek historian of the middle Hellenistic period. He is noted for his work , a universal history documenting the rise of Rome in the Mediterranean in the third and second centuries BC. It covered the period of 264–146 BC, recording in detail events in Italy, Iberia, Greece, Macedonia, Syria, Egypt and Africa, and documented the Punic Wars and Macedonian Wars among many others. Polybius' ''Histories'' is important not only for being the only Hellenistic historical work to survive in any substantial form, but also for its analysis of constitutional change and the mixed constitution. Polybius' discussion of the separation of powers in government, of checks and balances to limit power, and his introduction of "the people", all influenced Montesquieu's ''The Spirit of the Laws'', John Locke's ''Two Treatises of Government'', and the framers of the United States Constitution. The leading expert on Polybius for nearly a century was F. W. Walbank (1909–2008), ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Polybius Square
The Polybius square, also known as the Polybius checkerboard, is a device invented by the ancient Greeks Cleoxenus and Democleitus, and made famous by the historian and scholar Polybius. The device is used for fractionating plaintext characters so that they can be represented by a smaller set of symbols, which is useful for telegraphy, steganography, and cryptography. The device was originally used for fire signalling, allowing for the coded transmission of any message, not just a finite number of predetermined options as was the convention before. Basic form According to Polybius' ''Histories,'' the device was invented by Cleoxenus and Democleitus, and further developed by Polybius himself. The device partitioned the alphabet into five tablets with five letters each (except for the last one with only four). There are no surviving tablets from antiquity. Letters are represented by two numbers from one to five, allowing the representation of 25 characters using only 5 numeric sym ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Arcadia (region)
Arcadia (; ) is a region in the central Peloponnese, Greece. It takes its name from the mythological character Arcas, and in Greek mythology it was the home of the gods Hermes and Pan. In European Renaissance arts, Arcadia was celebrated as an unspoiled, harmonious wilderness; as such, it was referenced in popular culture. The modern regional unit of the same name more or less overlaps with the historical region, but is slightly larger. History Arcadia was gradually linked in a loose confederation that included all the Arcadian towns and was named League of the Arcadians. In the 7th century BC, it successfully faced the threat of Sparta and the Arcadians managed to maintain their independence. They participated in the Persian Wars alongside other Greeks by sending forces to Thermopylae and Plataea. During the Peloponnesian War, Arcadia allied with Sparta and Corinth. In the following years, during the period of the hegemony of Thebes, the Theban general Epaminondas re ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Polybius
Polybius (; , ; ) was a Greek historian of the middle Hellenistic period. He is noted for his work , a universal history documenting the rise of Rome in the Mediterranean in the third and second centuries BC. It covered the period of 264–146 BC, recording in detail events in Italy, Iberia, Greece, Macedonia, Syria, Egypt and Africa, and documented the Punic Wars and Macedonian Wars among many others. Polybius' ''Histories'' is important not only for being the only Hellenistic historical work to survive in any substantial form, but also for its analysis of constitutional change and the mixed constitution. Polybius' discussion of the separation of powers in government, of checks and balances to limit power, and his introduction of "the people", all influenced Montesquieu's '' The Spirit of the Laws'', John Locke's '' Two Treatises of Government'', and the framers of the United States Constitution. The leading expert on Polybius for nearly a century was F. W. Walbank (1909 ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
