JOHANNESBURG (AP) ? Laurie Kay, a South African pilot best known for flying a Boeing 747 passenger jet low over a Johannesburg stadium before the final of the 1995 Rugby World Cup, has died at the age of 67.
Kay had a suspected heart attack on Wednesday at the offices of the anti-rhinoceros poaching unit in Kruger National Park, South Africa's showcase game reserve, according to the country's parks service. Kay flew helicopters on patrols aimed at stopping poachers and was also doing technical work on a new anti-poaching surveillance aircraft, said Ike Phaahla, a parks spokesman.
"He was a great aviator," Phaahla said. "He was a gentleman. He had this outgoing personality. He made you feel very easy around him."
Kay was a South African Airways pilot when he swooped twice over Ellis Park stadium in a big jet at the start of the June 24, 1995 rugby final in which South Africa defeated New Zealand by a score of 15-12. The stenciled underside of the plane read "Good Luck Bokke" in a message of support for South Africa's national team, the Springboks.
The daring stunt, depicted in the Hollywood movie "Invictus," electrified tens of thousands of fans who had no inkling that authorities had planned for a giant passenger jet to roar overhead. South Africa's ensuing victory on the field was a euphoric, unifying occasion for a country that had recently emerged from white racist rule.
Nelson Mandela, the anti-apartheid leader who became South Africa's first black president in 1994 elections, attended the game in a South African team shirt. It was a powerful gesture of reconciliation because rugby was a cultural bastion of white Afrikaners, who were guardians of the apartheid system.
Kay's flyover in a densely populated city flouted the most basic guidelines in international aviation, said John Carlin, author of "Playing the Enemy: Nelson Mandela and the Game That Made a Nation."
"The idea was to release maximum vibrations, noise and power into the stadium with a view to energizing the crowd and energizing the players," Carlin said in a telephone interview from Spain. "He got the plane very near to stalling in order to get that maximum power effect when he was over the stadium. It was pretty outrageous."
According to South African Airways, Kay and his crew had spent the previous week plotting the course, flying it many times in a light plane, and spending hours in a flight simulator. Director Clint Eastwood included the flyover episode in "Invictus," the 2009 film about South Africa's rugby victory that starred Morgan Freeman as Mandela.
The Boeing 747 was empty save for a small crew during the flyover, making it highly maneuverable despite its large size, noted Tony Smit, a longtime friend and pilot.
"There was nothing daredevil about Laurie," said Smit, who praised Kay for charity work and the mentoring of young pilots. "Everything that he did in aerobatics shows, everything is calculated to the finest degree."
Carlin said Kay, like many South African whites, initially had reservations about Mandela as the African National Congress leader negotiated an end to apartheid in the early 1990s. But that changed when the pair met on an international flight, according to the author. Mandela asked Kay, the captain, if he could upgrade members of his delegation from economy class, and Kay was charmed by Mandela's gracious manner.
"He was one more in a long, long line of people who succumbed to Mandela's charisma and general seductive abilities," Carlin said.
Even Mandela was startled during the 1995 flyover, said Carlin, who interviewed some of the president's bodyguards afterward.
"I don't think he had been prepared for this particular detail of the day's choreography," he said.
LOS ANGELES (AP) ? Gwyneth Paltrow says she's thrilled to be picked by People magazine as "World's Most Beautiful Woman" for 2013 but it's "obviously not true."
Paltrow questioned her own selection as she walked the red carpet at the Hollywood premiere of "Iron Man 3" Wednesday night wearing a colorblocked illusion gown with wide sheer panels down the side ? shoulder to hip, except for the waistband ? that left almost nothing to the imagination.
"It's funny, these things, because it's like obviously not true. But it's very sweet to be named that," Paltrow told The Associated Press. "Because I mean you can't say that, you know! But it's been wonderful. It's been very wonderful. And as my friend said, it's so nice that someone who has kids and is a mom and is not like 21 is named that. It's really an honor."
Paltrow said her two children weren't aware of the news in this week's edition of the magazine, but she'd been getting plenty of congratulatory emails from friends and family.
The 40-year-old actress stars as Pepper Potts, Tony Stark's love interest and assistant-turned-business partner in the "Iron Man" trilogy. Her co-stars in "Iron Man 3" praised People's proclamation.
"Completely justified. Completely justified. She's gorgeous," said Guy Pearce.
"Let me tell you: She is as gracious and beautiful inside as she is outside. She's got a good heart. She's got a good heart. A lovely girl," said Ben Kingsley.
Apr. 25, 2013 ? Melatonin injections delayed symptom onset and reduced mortality in a mouse model of the neurodegenerative condition amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), or Lou Gehrig's disease, according to a new study by researchers at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine. In a report published online ahead of print in the journal Neurobiology of Disease, the team revealed that receptors for melatonin are found in the nerve cells, a finding that could launch novel therapeutic approaches.
Annually about 5,000 people are diagnosed with ALS, which is characterized by progressive muscle weakness and eventual death due to the failure of respiratory muscles, said senior investigator Robert Friedlander, M.D., UPMC Endowed Professor of neurosurgery and neurobiology and chair, Department of Neurological Surgery, Pitt School of Medicine. But the causes of the condition are not well understood, thwarting development of a cure or even effective treatments.
Melatonin is a naturally occurring hormone that is best known for its role in sleep regulation. After screening more than a thousand FDA-approved drugs several years ago, the research team determined that melatonin is a powerful antioxidant that blocks the release of enzymes that activate apoptosis, or programmed cell death.
"Our experiments show for the first time that a lack of melatonin and melatonin receptor 1, or MT1, is associated with the progression of ALS," Dr. Friedlander said. "We saw similar results in a Huntington's disease model in an earlier project, suggesting similar biochemical pathways are disrupted in these challenging neurologic diseases."
Hoping to stop neuron death in ALS just as they did in Huntington's, the research team treated mice bred to have an ALS-like disease with injections of melatonin or with a placebo. Compared to untreated animals, the melatonin group developed symptoms later, survived longer, and had less degeneration of motor neurons in the spinal cord.
"Much more work has to be done to unravel these mechanisms before human trials of melatonin or a drug akin to it can be conducted to determine its usefulness as an ALS treatment," Dr. Friedlander said. "I suspect that a combination of agents that act on these pathways will be needed to make headway with this devastating disease."
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The above story is reprinted from materials provided by University of Pittsburgh Schools of the Health Sciences, via EurekAlert!, a service of AAAS.
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Journal Reference:
Yi Zhang, Anna Cook, Jinho Kim, Sergei V. Baranov, Jiying Jiang, Karen Smith, Kerry Cormier, Erik Bennett, Robert P. Browser, Arthur L. Day, Diane L. Carlisle, Robert J. Ferrante, Xin Wang, Robert M. Friedlander. Melatonin inhibits the caspase-1/cytochrome c/caspase-3 cell death pathway, inhibits MT1 receptor loss and delays disease progression in a mouse model of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis. Neurobiology of Disease, 2013; 55: 26 DOI: 10.1016/j.nbd.2013.03.008
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Disclaimer: This article is not intended to provide medical advice, diagnosis or treatment. Views expressed here do not necessarily reflect those of ScienceDaily or its staff.
TORONTO (Reuters) - Canada's main stock index closed little changed on Tuesday as sluggish economic data from China, Germany and the United States revived concerns about the global recovery. Lackluster earnings reports from some Canadian companies also weighed down investor sentiment.
Apple unlocks more cash for investors as profit slides
SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - Apple Inc on Tuesday bowed to investors' demands to share more of its $145 billion cash pile, while posting its first quarterly profit decline in more than a decade. The new expanded capital plan includes issuing debt for the first time to fund $100 billion in share repurchases and higher dividends until the end of 2015. That doubles the amount from a program set up last year and makes Apple the largest dividend-paying company in the world.
Analysis: Sleeping ad giant Amazon finally stirs
SAN FRANCISCO/NEW YORK (Reuters) - Amazon.com Inc is known in the advertising industry as the "sleeping giant" because the world's largest Internet retailer harbors a trove of consumer-spending data that many marketers have called an unrealized opportunity. Now it's awakening to the potential. After running ads on its own website for years, the company has taken the first steps toward becoming a true Internet advertising network, using the knowledge garnered from its data to place targeted ads for some of the world's biggest advertisers across thousands of other websites.
Barclays first-quarter profit hit by restructuring charge
LONDON (Reuters) - British bank Barclays said first-quarter profit fell a quarter from a year ago after a rise in losses in its European business and a hefty bill for the cost of a restructuring plan by its new chief executive. Barclays on Wednesday reported an adjusted pretax profit for the three months ended March of 1.79 billion pounds ($2.74 billion), down from 2.4 billion a year ago and just below a mean forecast of 1.85 billion from analysts polled by the company.
BOJ's new price forecasts Friday to be credibility test
TOKYO (Reuters) - The Bank of Japan is set on Friday to project that it will meet its 2 percent inflation target in two years, a forecast analysts say may be too optimistic and could put the bank's credibility on the line. The central bank, charged with overturning years of dogged deflation, is not expected to come up with any fresh policy initiatives after new Governor Haruhiko Kuroda stunned markets on April 4 by promising to inject about $1.4 trillion into the economy to hit the inflation target in roughly two years.
Asian shares rise on firm U.S. earnings, soft money outlook
TOKYO (Reuters) - Asian shares advanced on Wednesday, tracking global equities higher on the back of solid U.S. earnings, but the euro was pressured by soft German data tipping a possible rate cut to support the fragile euro zone economy. European equities will likely remain underpinned by this expectation of further monetary easing, and European stock markets are seen rising. Financial spreadbetters predict London's FTSE 100 <.ftse>, Paris's CAC-40 <.fchi> and Frankfurt's DAX <.gdaxi> will open up to 0.3 percent higher. <.l><.eu/>
ZURICH (Reuters) - Credit Suisse's quarterly earnings beat analysts' expectations and the bank flagged a cash dividend for this year, as the restructuring of its investment banking division starts to bear fruit. Switzerland's second-largest bank reported first-quarter net profit of 1.303 billion Swiss francs ($1.38 billion), up from 44 million francs a year earlier. The result beat the average estimate of 1.255 billion francs in a Reuters poll Of analysts.
Apple's cash plan takes heat off Cook, buys him time
(Reuters) - Tim Cook wants investors to "think different" about Apple: less as a hyper-growth startup-like company and more as a mature but robust technology corporation with the world's most lucrative dividend. If Wall Street follows Apple's famous advertising slogan of old, it may relieve some of the pressure on Apple's chief executive, quiet investors' grumbling about its recent share price slide, and buy the company time to do what it says it does best: come up with and market new products.
Nasdaq may set aside $10 million to settle probe on Facebook IPO: WSJ
(Reuters) - Nasdaq OMX Group Inc is planning to set aside $10 million in anticipation of settling a probe over its botched handling of Facebook Inc's initial public offering last year, the Wall Street Journal reported, citing people familiar with Nasdaq internal discussions. Nasdaq executives had been hoping for a settlement of about $5 million, the Journal said.
Bank of Canada's Macklem confirms interest in governor role
OTTAWA (Reuters) - Tiff Macklem, currently second in command at the Bank of Canada and widely seen as the lead contender to succeed Governor Mark Carney, confirmed on Tuesday that he would be interested in running the central bank. "Yes if asked I will serve, but there is a process that is ongoing and I don't think it would be appropriate to start asking interview questions here when there is a separate process," Macklem told a House of Commons committee, when asked if he would take the job.
Amazon doesn’t share details on how well its Amazon Appstore apps sell, but according to mobile app analytics firm App Annie, the app marketplace is seeing growing traction among developers. The company surveyed over 1,500 developers, and found that 22.5 percent of them were now publishing to the Amazon Appstore, and half of that group (50 percent) cited the game category on the Amazon Appstore as their leading revenue driver. Previous reports have confirm roughly the same thing: that Android developers are turning to Amazon’s Appstore in greater numbers, and are seeing the benefits. Amazon Appstore’s revenue per user tops that of Google Play, or even iOS, in some cases. Last summer, for example, mobile gaming startup TinyCo, was saying that its revenue per user was higher on Amazon than on iTunes or Google Play. However, another report from Flurry?said that iTunes was number one, and Amazon was in second place in terms of its revenue generation capabilities. Flurry had found that for every $1 spent on the iOS store, Amazon’s store generated $0.89, and Google Play $0.23. But this was over a year ago;?App Annie itself said this month that Apple’s was still the store to beat, in terms of revenue. Today’s report also found that top paid iOS and Google Play applications have higher average price points than those on Amazon. Comparing the average price of the top 400 paid apps, the company noted that Amazon’s average was $1.73 compared with $2.21 on iPhone, $3.39 on iPad, and $3.55 on Google Play. However, it might be a little early to paint such a rosy picture, depending on whose data you believe more. For instance, App Annie competitor Distimo also released a report this month, examining similar trends among the two leading Android app marketplaces. Its findings were a bit different. Although it too saw Amazon’s influence growing, it found that overall, Google Play was still beating on revenue. Distimo said that the number of paid downloads in Google Play is twice the size of paid downloads on Amazon, but the revenue gap was smaller.?According to its analysis, the top 200 paid applications in Google Play in the U.S. made $5.2 million in March 2013, making Google Play 1.7 times bigger than the Amazon Appstore by revenue. However, that report noted that there were some examples of applications that did better on Amazon, which essentially backs up the broad
Mayor Billy Kenoi and the Hawai?i County Department of Parks and Recreation are proud to welcome the public back to a thoroughly renovated and improved Wai?kea Recreation Center.
Under renovations a few months ago.
A public blessing and re-dedication ceremony will be held from 5:30 p.m. to 7 p.m. Friday, April 26, at the Hilo facility. Refreshments will be served, and several martial arts and other groups that use the Wai?kea Recreation Center will perform free athletic demonstrations.
Located at 1634 Kamehameha Avenue, the Wai?kea Recreation Center has undergone a five month, $1.7 million makeover that has made it more comfortable, accessible and safer for the numerous groups and individuals who use it.
New roof insulation, ceiling fans and lighting have been installed in the main gym area. Extensive termite and water damage have been repaired, new roofing systems installed, hazardous building materials removed, existing bathrooms and showers renovated, the entire facility repainted, and various other improvements performed to meet federal accessibility standards.
General contractor Stan?s Contracting Inc. also installed an underground drainage system in the parking lot, graded and repaved the parking area and three driveway entrances, and connected the facility to the County?s wastewater treatment system.
Many others helped to make an improved Wai?kea Recreation Center and save taxpayer money. Several martial arts organizations volunteered their time to complete various finishing touches in preparation for this weekend?s reopening, while personnel from the Department of Parks and Recreation?s Maintenance Division performed numerous repair tasks that complemented the contractor?s efforts.
The Department of Parks and Recreation wishes to thank the Shudokan Judo Club for improving the judo mat area, the Hilo Seishikan Aikido Club for repainting the kitchen, the Hilo Shin Shin Toitsu Aikido Club for beautifying the planter boxes, and the Kongo Zen Shorinji Ryu Son Ryu Karate Club for repainting the wooden floor of the martial arts practice area.
The department also wishes to recognize the following organizations for their monetary contributions and/or volunteer efforts toward improving the facility: Hilo Reshinkan Kendo Club; Hilo Tae Kwon Do Association; Wai?kea Judo Club; Hawai?i International Karate League; Hilo Kobukan Kendo Club; Hayaite Shotokan Karate; Atkins Martial Arts; Mo Min Kuen; Danish Fitness; Morning Fitness; Evening Fitness; and Insane Workout.
A sincere mahalo is extended to all Wai?kea Recreation Center users and the general public for their patience and understanding while this important recreational center was being enhanced, repaired, and made more accessible.
For more information, please contact Jason Armstrong, Public Information Officer, at 345-9105, or jarmstrong@co.hawaii.hi.us.
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Filed under: aloha, Announcements, Big Island, Community, Entertainment, Hawaii, Hawaii County Public Notices, Hilo, Kids, Sports Tagged: | Hawaii County Parks and Recreation, Mayor Billy Kenoi, Waiakea Recreation Center
Pride, prejudice and strategic thinking: Jane Austen wrote the book on game theoryPublic release date: 23-Apr-2013 [ | E-mail | Share ]
Contact: Meg Sullivan msullivan@support.ucla.edu 310-825-1046 University of California - Los Angeles
Quiz: This beautiful mind was promoting game theory long before Cold War think tanks used mathematics to understand strategic maneuvering. Plotting, as a result, has never been the same.
Is it John Nash, the Nobel Prizewinning mathematician portrayed in a 2001 Oscar-winning biopic? John von Neumann, game theory's founding father? Go back further, much further, urges a UCLA game theory expert and fan of 19th-century novelist Jane Austen.
"Austen's novels are game theory textbooks," Michael Suk-Young Chwe writes in "Jane Austen, Game Theorist," which Princeton University Press published April 21. "She's trying to get readers to use their higher thinking skills and to think strategically."
At its most basic level, game theory assesses all the choices available to two (or more) people in a given situation and assigns a numerical value to the benefit each person reaps from each choice. Often, the choice that is most valuable to one player comes at the expense of the other; hence, game theory's best-known phrase "zero-sum game." But just as frequently, there is a choice with unexpected benefits for both players.
"In game theory, you make choices by anticipating the payoffs for others," Chwe explains.
Chwe argues that Austen explores this concept in all six of her novels, albeit with a different vocabulary than the one used by Nash, von Neumann and other game theory greats some 150 years later. In Austen's romantic fiction, this type of strategic thinking is described as "penetration," "foresight" or "a good scheme."
In "Pride and Prejudice," for instance, Mrs. Bennet, a mother eager to marry off her five daughters, sends her oldest, Jane, on horseback to a neighboring estate, even though she's aware a storm is on the way. "Mrs. Bennet knows full well that because of the rain, Jane's hosts will invite her to spend the night, thus maximizing face time with the eligible bachelor there, Charles Bingley, whom Jane eventually marries," Chwe said.
In "Persuasion," the unmarried heroine, Anne Elliot, is approached by Sophia Croft, the sister of a man whose marriage proposal Anne spurned eight years earlier a decision she still bitterly regrets. Mrs. Croft casually asks Anne whether she's heard that her brother has married. Anne flinches, thinking the reference is to her former beau, Captain Frederick Wentworth, but relaxes upon learning that Mrs. Croft is actually referring to their younger brother, Edward.
"It's hard to imagine a better way for Mrs. Croft to gauge Anne's visceral interest in her unmarried brother," said Chwe, a UCLA associate professor of political science (whose last name is pronounced like "chess" without the "ss"). The rest of the novel involves schemes to give Captain Wentworth so many signals of Anne's enduring love that he finds the courage to propose to her again.
And readers may recall how, in "Mansfield Park," the 18-year-old heroine, Fanny Price, intervenes when her 5-year-old sister, Betsey, brazenly appropriates a knife that had been given as a gift to their older sister, Susan, by their departed sister, Mary. Calculating that the youngster is more interested in the object itself than its sentimental value, Fanny buys a new knife and gives it to Betsey. In response, Betsey returns the keepsake to Susan, and domestic harmony is restored. The incident so clearly demonstrates game theory for Chwe that he illustrates it in his book using game theory's mathematical language: the matrix and decision tree.
(Hear Chwe interviewed on game theory by a UCLA colleague: http://ucla.in/178rw0U.)
By Chwe's count, more than 50 such strategic manipulations appear in "Pride and Prejudice," "Sense and Sensibility," "Persuasion," "Northanger Abbey," "Mansfield Park" and "Emma." Indeed, the entire plot of "Pride and Prejudice," which ranked second in a 2002 BBC poll of the 200 best novels in the English language, can be seen as a series of manipulations and schemes, Chwe contends.
In many cases, by making tough choices and predicting how others will respond, Austen's young, often financially deprived heroines triumph over seemingly stronger forces, including well-to-do men and older women of higher status, he argues. In so doing, they find happiness and just as importantly in an era with limited employment and inheritance possibilities for women financial security.
"They build a theory of strategic thinking," writes Chwe, "not to better chase a Soviet submarine, but to survive."
And such machinations don't just enable beloved characters to lure mates; they allow them to bond and fall in love. "Austen argues that strategic partnership, two people joining together to strategically manipulate a third person, is the surest foundation for friendship and marriage," Chwe writes.
The film 'Clueless' becomes a game-changer
Although whiffs of game theory have been discerned in writings as old as Plato, its conventional history begins with the 1944 publication of von Neumann's seminal "Theory of Games and Economic Behavior." The techniques gained prominence as a means of anticipating attacks and counterattacks among superpowers during the Cold War, and they played a role in determining the quantity and positioning of U.S. nuclear warheads. Today, game theory is more frequently deployed in non-military applications, particularly in business and economics.
Chwe, in his more traditional research, applies game theory to the dynamics of political protests, but he is no stranger to unconventional approaches, having studied the ways in which slave folktales such as Brer Rabbit and the Tar Baby embody key principles of strategic thinking.
Still, no one had considered Austen as an unheralded pioneer of game theory until Chwe stumbled on her work at age 40 after taking his son and daughter to see the film "Clueless," a 1995 romantic comedy loosely based on "Emma." Set in late 20th-century Los Angeles, the movie follows a scheming Beverly Hills teenager as she blunders in her matchmaking attempts.
Soon the game theorist was reading one Austen novel after another, shaking his head at her seeming obsession with the nuts and bolts of his discipline choice, preference and strategy. In the tales of women dependent on men, Chwe came to see a parallel with African American folktales about slaves struggling for autonomy.
"Game theory," he said, "may be associated with hegemonic Cold War strategy, but it's also one of the original weapons of the weak."
Chwe sees Austen's heroines as possessing strategic abilities in different measures. Calm and level-headed Elinor Dashwood ("Sense and Sensibility") and feisty and clever Elizabeth Bennet ("Pride and Prejudice") are set up from the beginning as master strategists. One of the reasons "Pride and Prejudice" is so popular, Chwe contends, is its heroine's aptitude in this regard: "Elizabeth is always doing this rapid-fire strategic stuff."
Meanwhile, he sees motherless Anne Elliot ("Persuasion"), one-time tomboy Catherine Morland ("Northanger Abbey") and Fanny Price ("Mansfield Park") as characters who develop strategic skills as the novels progress. At the other end of the spectrum is Emma Woodhouse ("Emma"), whose scheming nearly prevents her gentlemanly neighbor George Knightley from proposing to her. The heroine embodies the hubris of being "overstrategic."
But it's with her least strategically adept characters that Austen may actually tread on the boldest frontier, Chwe contends.
Remember Lady Catherine, Fitzwilliam Darcy's imperious aunt in "Pride and Prejudice," who demands that the heroine, Elizabeth, promise not to marry him? When Elizabeth refuses, Lady Catherine reports the response to Mr. Darcy as an example of the young woman's impertinence, disregard for social rank and general unsuitability for him.
But what Lady Catherine fails to anticipate is that Mr. Darcy still has feelings for Elizabeth. So when his aunt conveys the news, it emboldens him to propose, signaling to him that Elizabeth would likely accept. Lady Catherine's efforts blow up in her face.
What is Chwe's phrase for this tendency that has yet to be mathematized by modern game theory? Prepare yourself because it is a bit technical: "Cluelessness."
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Pride, prejudice and strategic thinking: Jane Austen wrote the book on game theoryPublic release date: 23-Apr-2013 [ | E-mail | Share ]
Contact: Meg Sullivan msullivan@support.ucla.edu 310-825-1046 University of California - Los Angeles
Quiz: This beautiful mind was promoting game theory long before Cold War think tanks used mathematics to understand strategic maneuvering. Plotting, as a result, has never been the same.
Is it John Nash, the Nobel Prizewinning mathematician portrayed in a 2001 Oscar-winning biopic? John von Neumann, game theory's founding father? Go back further, much further, urges a UCLA game theory expert and fan of 19th-century novelist Jane Austen.
"Austen's novels are game theory textbooks," Michael Suk-Young Chwe writes in "Jane Austen, Game Theorist," which Princeton University Press published April 21. "She's trying to get readers to use their higher thinking skills and to think strategically."
At its most basic level, game theory assesses all the choices available to two (or more) people in a given situation and assigns a numerical value to the benefit each person reaps from each choice. Often, the choice that is most valuable to one player comes at the expense of the other; hence, game theory's best-known phrase "zero-sum game." But just as frequently, there is a choice with unexpected benefits for both players.
"In game theory, you make choices by anticipating the payoffs for others," Chwe explains.
Chwe argues that Austen explores this concept in all six of her novels, albeit with a different vocabulary than the one used by Nash, von Neumann and other game theory greats some 150 years later. In Austen's romantic fiction, this type of strategic thinking is described as "penetration," "foresight" or "a good scheme."
In "Pride and Prejudice," for instance, Mrs. Bennet, a mother eager to marry off her five daughters, sends her oldest, Jane, on horseback to a neighboring estate, even though she's aware a storm is on the way. "Mrs. Bennet knows full well that because of the rain, Jane's hosts will invite her to spend the night, thus maximizing face time with the eligible bachelor there, Charles Bingley, whom Jane eventually marries," Chwe said.
In "Persuasion," the unmarried heroine, Anne Elliot, is approached by Sophia Croft, the sister of a man whose marriage proposal Anne spurned eight years earlier a decision she still bitterly regrets. Mrs. Croft casually asks Anne whether she's heard that her brother has married. Anne flinches, thinking the reference is to her former beau, Captain Frederick Wentworth, but relaxes upon learning that Mrs. Croft is actually referring to their younger brother, Edward.
"It's hard to imagine a better way for Mrs. Croft to gauge Anne's visceral interest in her unmarried brother," said Chwe, a UCLA associate professor of political science (whose last name is pronounced like "chess" without the "ss"). The rest of the novel involves schemes to give Captain Wentworth so many signals of Anne's enduring love that he finds the courage to propose to her again.
And readers may recall how, in "Mansfield Park," the 18-year-old heroine, Fanny Price, intervenes when her 5-year-old sister, Betsey, brazenly appropriates a knife that had been given as a gift to their older sister, Susan, by their departed sister, Mary. Calculating that the youngster is more interested in the object itself than its sentimental value, Fanny buys a new knife and gives it to Betsey. In response, Betsey returns the keepsake to Susan, and domestic harmony is restored. The incident so clearly demonstrates game theory for Chwe that he illustrates it in his book using game theory's mathematical language: the matrix and decision tree.
(Hear Chwe interviewed on game theory by a UCLA colleague: http://ucla.in/178rw0U.)
By Chwe's count, more than 50 such strategic manipulations appear in "Pride and Prejudice," "Sense and Sensibility," "Persuasion," "Northanger Abbey," "Mansfield Park" and "Emma." Indeed, the entire plot of "Pride and Prejudice," which ranked second in a 2002 BBC poll of the 200 best novels in the English language, can be seen as a series of manipulations and schemes, Chwe contends.
In many cases, by making tough choices and predicting how others will respond, Austen's young, often financially deprived heroines triumph over seemingly stronger forces, including well-to-do men and older women of higher status, he argues. In so doing, they find happiness and just as importantly in an era with limited employment and inheritance possibilities for women financial security.
"They build a theory of strategic thinking," writes Chwe, "not to better chase a Soviet submarine, but to survive."
And such machinations don't just enable beloved characters to lure mates; they allow them to bond and fall in love. "Austen argues that strategic partnership, two people joining together to strategically manipulate a third person, is the surest foundation for friendship and marriage," Chwe writes.
The film 'Clueless' becomes a game-changer
Although whiffs of game theory have been discerned in writings as old as Plato, its conventional history begins with the 1944 publication of von Neumann's seminal "Theory of Games and Economic Behavior." The techniques gained prominence as a means of anticipating attacks and counterattacks among superpowers during the Cold War, and they played a role in determining the quantity and positioning of U.S. nuclear warheads. Today, game theory is more frequently deployed in non-military applications, particularly in business and economics.
Chwe, in his more traditional research, applies game theory to the dynamics of political protests, but he is no stranger to unconventional approaches, having studied the ways in which slave folktales such as Brer Rabbit and the Tar Baby embody key principles of strategic thinking.
Still, no one had considered Austen as an unheralded pioneer of game theory until Chwe stumbled on her work at age 40 after taking his son and daughter to see the film "Clueless," a 1995 romantic comedy loosely based on "Emma." Set in late 20th-century Los Angeles, the movie follows a scheming Beverly Hills teenager as she blunders in her matchmaking attempts.
Soon the game theorist was reading one Austen novel after another, shaking his head at her seeming obsession with the nuts and bolts of his discipline choice, preference and strategy. In the tales of women dependent on men, Chwe came to see a parallel with African American folktales about slaves struggling for autonomy.
"Game theory," he said, "may be associated with hegemonic Cold War strategy, but it's also one of the original weapons of the weak."
Chwe sees Austen's heroines as possessing strategic abilities in different measures. Calm and level-headed Elinor Dashwood ("Sense and Sensibility") and feisty and clever Elizabeth Bennet ("Pride and Prejudice") are set up from the beginning as master strategists. One of the reasons "Pride and Prejudice" is so popular, Chwe contends, is its heroine's aptitude in this regard: "Elizabeth is always doing this rapid-fire strategic stuff."
Meanwhile, he sees motherless Anne Elliot ("Persuasion"), one-time tomboy Catherine Morland ("Northanger Abbey") and Fanny Price ("Mansfield Park") as characters who develop strategic skills as the novels progress. At the other end of the spectrum is Emma Woodhouse ("Emma"), whose scheming nearly prevents her gentlemanly neighbor George Knightley from proposing to her. The heroine embodies the hubris of being "overstrategic."
But it's with her least strategically adept characters that Austen may actually tread on the boldest frontier, Chwe contends.
Remember Lady Catherine, Fitzwilliam Darcy's imperious aunt in "Pride and Prejudice," who demands that the heroine, Elizabeth, promise not to marry him? When Elizabeth refuses, Lady Catherine reports the response to Mr. Darcy as an example of the young woman's impertinence, disregard for social rank and general unsuitability for him.
But what Lady Catherine fails to anticipate is that Mr. Darcy still has feelings for Elizabeth. So when his aunt conveys the news, it emboldens him to propose, signaling to him that Elizabeth would likely accept. Lady Catherine's efforts blow up in her face.
What is Chwe's phrase for this tendency that has yet to be mathematized by modern game theory? Prepare yourself because it is a bit technical: "Cluelessness."
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Amazon doesn’t share details on how well its Amazon Appstore apps sell, but according to mobile app analytics firm App Annie, the app marketplace is seeing growing traction among developers. The company surveyed over 1,500 developers, and found that 22.5 percent of them were now publishing to the Amazon Appstore, and half of that group (50 percent) cited the game category on the Amazon Appstore as their leading revenue driver. Previous reports have confirm roughly the same thing: that Android developers are turning to Amazon’s Appstore in greater numbers, and are seeing the benefits. Amazon Appstore’s revenue per user tops that of Google Play, or even iOS, in some cases. Last summer, for example, mobile gaming startup TinyCo, was saying that its revenue per user was higher on Amazon than on iTunes or Google Play. However, another report from Flurry?said that iTunes was number one, and Amazon was in second place in terms of its revenue generation capabilities. Flurry had found that for every $1 spent on the iOS store, Amazon’s store generated $0.89, and Google Play $0.23. But this was over a year ago;?App Annie itself said this month that Apple’s was still the store to beat, in terms of revenue. Today’s report also found that top paid iOS and Google Play applications have higher average price points than those on Amazon. Comparing the average price of the top 400 paid apps, the company noted that Amazon’s average was $1.73 compared with $2.21 on iPhone, $3.39 on iPad, and $3.55 on Google Play. However, it might be a little early to paint such a rosy picture, depending on whose data you believe more. For instance, App Annie competitor Distimo also released a report this month, examining similar trends among the two leading Android app marketplaces. Its findings were a bit different. Although it too saw Amazon’s influence growing, it found that overall, Google Play was still beating on revenue. Distimo said that the number of paid downloads in Google Play is twice the size of paid downloads on Amazon, but the revenue gap was smaller.?According to its analysis, the top 200 paid applications in Google Play in the U.S. made $5.2 million in March 2013, making Google Play 1.7 times bigger than the Amazon Appstore by revenue. However, that report noted that there were some examples of applications that did better on Amazon, which essentially backs up the broad
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Public release date: 23-Apr-2013
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