Ta-Nehisi Coates

"We're finally seeing a point where companies realize that they're not going to create the next great MMO by just copying what's come before," said Christopher Lye, global brand director at ArenaNet, who believes the definition of an MMO has come to mean games that follow a similar quest and combat structure to World of Warcraft. 

"'MMO' is a platform and set of technologies, not a game design model - and we've barely scratched the surface of what's possible ... Honestly, I think the problem is that there's been a lack of change in MMO design and that Guild Wars 2 is a reaction to that."

ArenaNet is also breaking what Lye called the "holy trinity" of MMO combat -- tank, healer and DPS -- and omitting a dedicated healing class all together, giving some healing abilities to each profession. The designers hope this will "free players up from that dependency, so you see a lot more creativity in party make-up and tactics," said Lye.

I don't think this Beenie Man's apology, which you can see above, is much of one. I'm in sympathy with the point about being young--especially for artists. A lot of us come from a place where being out is hazardous to your health. Then you go out into a world where gays are integrated into everyday life and you feel a little ignorant. Of course Beenie didn't say that. I don't even think he actually apologized. But I do think, taken with T.I.'s statement last week, you are actually seeing something new here--shame. People are becoming ashamed of being labeled homophobic.

When you think about bigotry there's a point where folks will just out and out express the most hateful thoughts--think Ben Tillman advocating lynching from the Senate floor. They usually do this because they have a crowd behind them. Sometimes they deeply believe what they're saying, and other times are simply looking for someone weaker to smack down.

So it's fine to use gay slurs, to urge violence against gays as long as there's a crowd that finds this either acceptable, or not particularly lamentable. The black past is filled with incidents of violence perpetrated by whites--not as racial terrorism--but simply as hedonistic malevolence.

It's Friday night and you've been drinking. You're looking for some amusement. You don't really have much in the way of political thoughts. But there are certain groups which the crowd views as outside of society. When they are victimized, the crowd may not always cheer you on, but you can count on them looking the other way.

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Get a gun, a mask, an escape route

Some duct-tape'll make em take you to the house.

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I don't care. I don't see what the big deal is, why some people are so against it. Why would you be so against it if it doesn't affect you or your lifestyle? I'm not in that world and it doesn't affect me if they did or they didn't... I don't care enough one way or another. If something doesn't affect you, you should not take a strong position against it.

All that said, when I gave a draft of the script to Jean last year for her opinion, I secretly hoped that she would want to sign on. Partly, that was because of her music. Her lyrics demonstrated the same unabashed commitment to storytelling, language, and occasionally brutal, emotional honesty that I was striving for in this screenplay. (If you're not familiar with Jean's music, start at her website and work your way slowly back into a coma.) 

Also, I knew that Jean understood character. Like all rappers, there is something of a persona to Jean Grae--in case you were wondering, no, her parents did not actually name her after a Marvel superhero. But Jean is not stuck in the box she built for herself.

Death - faced with it - run to it - not from it 

Swallow all the pills in the medicine cabinet 

Chase it with a bottle of 151, hug mommy 

Head outside, smash windows in, trash my hotel lobby 

Break the grip off the time at last Find a kid to hem up, 

Wish I did more sinning Get a strap on run up in some women 

Lay in the middle of a highway wait for pain to hit me 

Steal a camera with people looting, screaming "come and get me"

The connection between American slavery and freedom is evident at many levels if we care to see it. Think, for a moment, of the traditional American insistence on freedom of the seas. "Free ships make free goods" was the cardinal doctrine of American foreign policy in the revolutionary era. But the goods for which the United States demanded freedom were produced in very large measure by slave labor. 

 The irony is more than semantic. American reliance on slave labor must be viewed in the context of the American struggle for a separate and equal station among the nations of the earth. At the time the colonists announced their claim to that station, they had neither the arms nor the ships to make that claim good. They desperately needed the assistance of other countries, especially France, and their single most valuable product with which to purchase assistance was tobacco, produced mainly by slave labor. 

So largely did tobacco figure in American foreign relations that one historian has referred to the activities of France in supporting the Americans as "King Tobacco Diplomacy," a reminder that the position of the United States in the world depended not only in 1776 but during the span of a long lifetime thereafter on slave labor. To a large degree it may be said that Americans bought their independence with slave labor.

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On our third day of so-so meals, erratic service and no Jacuzzi or bike repair, I went to a manager and complained, telling him that we felt as if we were at a dress rehearsal for someone else's vacation. 

He was very polite and apologetic, but there was a look in his eye that spooked me -- like that of a hostage who opens the door and pretends everything is O.K. though there is a gun prodding his back. He thanked me for my comments, and though there was no discernible improvement in service, we did later get a thank-you note from the general manager with a tray of chocolate-dipped strawberries. 

So we decided to head over to Miami, restoring our pride and palates over Cuban sandwiches and croquetas at the Versailles restaurant in Little Havana. But all it took was a few minutes in South Beach -- and a peek inside Dash, the Kardashian boutique, where sunburned tourists took pictures of one another -- to make us realize that we didn't have it quite so bad on Fisher Island. 

At least there we weren't surrounded by drunken, half-naked college students racing Segways along Ocean Drive. "I know I sound like I'm 90," Emma whispered, "but I just want them to put some clothes on and go to vocational school." 

 We took the ferry back to the island and felt a surge of affection for its verdant, antiseptic beauty. 

That didn't last. I walked over to the mansion at sunset, pleased to see a line of golf carts parked in front and the sound of laughter and clinking stemware -- le tout Fisher Island had poured out in full resort finery -- for what turned out to be a $125-a-head four-course meal prepared by Daniel Boulud.

That sounded fun and almost like a bargain compared with his New York restaurants, so I raced to the front desk to ask if there was room for two more -- and why had we not been informed about the dinner ahead of time. The woman at the desk looked embarrassed, telling me that it had been mentioned on a flyer given to guests on arrival (I never got one) but that anyway it had sold out long ago.

A medical report compiled by the family physician of accused Trayvon Martin murderer George Zimmerman and obtained exclusively by ABC News found that Zimmerman was diagnosed with a "closed fracture" of his nose, a pair of black eyes, two lacerations to the back of his head and a minor back injury the day after he fatally shot Martin during an alleged altercation...  

The morning after the shooting, on Feb. 27, Zimmerman sought treatment at the offices of a general physician at a family practice near Sanford, Fla. The doctor notes Zimmerman sought an appointment to get legal clearance to return to work. 

But the report also shows Zimmerman declined hospitalization the night of the shooting, and then declined the advice of his doctor to make a follow-up appointment with an ear nose and throat doctor. In addition to his physical injuries, Zimmerman complained of stress and "occasional nausea when thinking about the violence." 

Applauding the president for endorsing same-sex marriage last week, the rapper said, "I think it's the right thing to do ... whether it costs him votes or not." 

"I've always thought it as something that was still, um, holding the country back," Jay-Z explained. "What people do in their own homes is their business and you can choose to love whoever you love. That's their business. It's no different than discriminating against blacks. It's discrimination plain and simple."

The opinions of whites largely reflect the population as a whole: 49% say Obama's expression of support for gay marriage did not alter their opinion of the president. Among those who say it did, somewhat more say it made their view of him less favorable than more (29% vs. 20%). 

Most African Americans, on the other hand, say the announcement did not alter their opinion of Obama. About twothirds (68%) say this, while about as many say it made them view Obama more favorably (16%) as less favorably (13%).

There's also the data cited above. As of April, the gap between African-Americans and white support for gay marriage was eight points (39 percent of African-Americans support, while 47 percent of white support.)  The gap between the same groups in terms of opposition was four points (47 percent of blacks oppose and 43 percent of whites opposed.) 

This not strike me as the kind of yawning gulf which could sever Obama from his base. I would go further. Given black America's particular characteristics--more Southern, more culturally conservative, and more religious--focusing on "race" as the defining difference seems like a bad idea. 

It also isn't a very forward-thinking one:

Since 2008, the proportion of African Americans favoring gay marriage has increased from 26% to 39%, while opposition has fallen from 63% to 49%.

In future races, religious people are going to start going after people's political careers," Jackson, the head of Stand4MarriageDC, told U.S. News and World Report. "You're going to see a bloodletting that is going to mark a new style of engagement for people who are against same-sex marriage." Jackson's was no idle threat. 

Stand4MarriageDC is backed by the National Organization for Marriage. NOM's president, Brian Brown, serves as Stand4MarriageDC's treasurer. In the past two years, NOM has successfully exploited local backlashes against advances in gay rights. In Maine, NOM worked to secure a ballot initiative to outlaw same-sex marriage. 

In New York, it helped torpedo the nomination of moderate, marriage-equality-supporting Republican Dede Scozzafava, which left the contest to two candidates who both opposed same-sex-marriage rights. It aided in the passage of Proposition 8, the California ballot initiative that banned same-sex marriage in the same election that sent Barack Obama to the White House. 

The California victory was initially pinned on the increased turnout of black voters, so on paper, it's easy to see why NOM might have seen Washington, D.C. -- which is more than 50 percent African American -- as the site of another potential victory. Last night's primary election was the time to make good on Jackson's threat. 

But in the nine months since, there's been a lot of cash spent with little blood spilled. According to filings with D.C.'s Office of Campaign Finance, NOM has spent around $140,000 opposing pro-equality candidates in Washington, D.C., all of whom won last night or were defeated by other pro-equality candidates.

An influential rabbi came last summer to the Brooklyn district attorney, Charles J. Hynes, with a message: his ultra-Orthodox advocacy group was instructing adherent Jews that they could report allegations of child sexual abuse to district attorneys or the police only if a rabbi first determined that the suspicions were credible. The pronouncement was a blunt challenge to Mr. Hynes's authority. 

But the district attorney "expressed no opposition or objection," the rabbi, Chaim Dovid Zwiebel, recalled. In fact, when Mr. Hynes held a Hanukkah party at his office in December, he invited many ultra-Orthodox rabbis affiliated with the advocacy group, Agudath Israel of America. He even chose Rabbi Zwiebel, the group's executive vice president, as keynote speaker at the party....

In 2009, as criticism of his record mounted, Mr. Hynes set up a program to reach out to ultra-Orthodox victims of child sexual abuse. Called Kol Tzedek (Voice of Justice in Hebrew), the program is intended to "ensure safety in the community and to fully support those affected by abuse," his office said. In recent months, Mr. Hynes and his aides have said the program has contributed to an effective crackdown on child sexual abuse among ultra-Orthodox Jews, saying it had led to 95 arrests involving more than 120 victims. 

But Mr. Hynes has taken the highly unusual step of declining to publicize the names of defendants prosecuted under the program -- even those convicted. At the same time, he continues to publicize allegations of child sexual abuse against defendants who are not ultra-Orthodox Jews. 

This policy of shielding defendants' names because of their religious status is not followed by the other four district attorneys in New York City, and has rarely, if ever, been adopted by prosecutors around the country.

Some African Americans will think twice about voting for President Obama in November after he declared his support for gay marriage, according to Republican Rep. Allen West of Florida. 

"I think it's going to cause an incredible discussion in the black community, because, as you know, on Sundays in the black community the most conservative people in America are in those black churches," West told ABC News on Thursday. 

"I think it may have been a huge miscalculation, especially when you have 41 states that recognize marriage between one man and one woman, and you just came off an incredible loss to them. Sixty-nine percent voted for [the recent same-sex marriage ban] in North Carolina, which is a key swing state he barely won last time," West said.

We will be lining up on Taaffe Place between Myrtle and Willoughby Avenues in Fort Greene, Brooklyn, right near the Pratt University campus. Our costume department humbly requests that all extras try to bring or wear lightweight fall clothing. No heavy jackets. Pants and long sleeves. Preferably no bright colors or logos. 

The call time for extras will be 7:30 a.m. (It's early, yes. But this way, you can participate and still make it in to the office on time.) If you know in advance that you're going to be able to make it, please drop me a line by emailing me or leave confirmation in the comments section below. This is strictly for headcount reasons. You can also just show up. The production will be most grateful either way. 

In addition, we will be staging a mock reading with The Atlantic editor and writer Ta-Nehisi Coates at 8:30 a.m. on Saturday, May 12, at a wonderful bookstore in Soho. If interested, contact us via email and we will provide the location and further details. As my assistant director says often and with gusto: "Let's make a movie, people!"