David Hale-

The best way to ask someone out

E3 2011: Batman: Arkham City -- Could Robin Make an Appearance?

For a Batman fan, one of the best things about 2009's Arkham Asylum was the copious amount of Easter Eggs. Even rarely used characters like nut job Maxie Zeus got a nod. With a game world five times the size of the Asylum, Batman: Arkham City looks like it could be packed with considerably more hidden gems. One of the more interesting Easter Eggs we've seen hints at the emergence of Robin.

In the comic books, Bruce Wayne takes a night off to go to the circus, only to witness the shocking "accident" that ends the Flying Graysons. The lone survivor is the Graysons' acrobatic son. Wayne takes him in as his ward, eventually reveals his secret cave, and soon enough the two become the famed Dynamic Duo.

During a demo for Batman: Arkham City, we caught sight of a poster. It advertised the Flying Graysons, with the words "cancelled" stamped across it. The tragedy has already happened. But how long ago? It seems likely that young Dick Grayson is now under the care of Bruce Wayne, but it's uncertain if he's already assumed the role of Robin.

You may have caught this poster quickly passing by in the most recent Batman: Arkham City Trailer. Now we have a clear view of the poster and a number of evasive answers from Game Manager Dax Ginn, who agreed that a "tragedy" did happen to the poor Graysons and their show has "most definitely been cancelled."

This could mean Dick Grayson or Robin might show in Batman: Arkham City or it could be a tease for a third Batman game, one that features the Dynamic Duo. We probably won't have that answer for some time. After all, Batman: Arkham City isn't even out yet. Expect it in October, when we'll at least know if Dick Grayson or his alter ego will make an appearance in 2011.

And now let your mind jog a bit...

Love Styles

Love styles are models of how people love, originally developed by John Lee (1973, 1988). He identified six basic love styles—also known as "colors" of love—that people use in their interpersonal relationships:

• Eros – a passionate physical and emotional love based on aesthetic enjoyment; stereotype of romantic love
• Ludus – a love that is played as a game or sport; conquest; may have multiple partners at once
• Storge – an affectionate love that slowly develops from friendship, based on similarity (kindred to Philia)
• Pragma – love that is driven by the head, not the heart; undemonstrative
• Mania – obsessive love; experience great emotional highs and lows; very possessive and often jealous lovers
• Agape – selfless altruistic love; spiritual; motherly love

Possibilianism

Possibilianism is a philosophy which rejects both the idiosyncratic claims of traditional theism and the positions of certainty in atheism in favor of a middle, exploratory ground. The term was first defined by neuroscientist David Eagleman in relation to his book of fiction Sum. Asked whether he was an atheist or a religious person on a National Public Radio interview in February, 2009, he replied "I call myself a Possibilian: I'm open to...ideas that we don't have any way of testing right now." In a subsequent interview with the New York Times, Eagleman expanded on the definition:

"Our ignorance of the cosmos is too vast to commit to atheism, and yet we know too much to commit to a particular religion. A third position, agnosticism, is often an uninteresting stance in which a person simply questions whether his traditional religious story (say, a man with a beard on a cloud) is true or not true. But with Possibilianism I'm hoping to define a new position -- one that emphasizes the exploration of new, unconsidered possibilities. Possibilianism is comfortable holding multiple ideas in mind; it is not interested in committing to any particular story."

Oh, the Possibitiles...