The 6 Best Facebook Games of 2012

Sim City Social

While city building games are all over Facebook, it was nice to see the king return in 2012. Sim City has set the standard for city design since the 1980s, and the Facebook version brings back so many of the great features players love. Sim City Social capitalizes on players constructing cities with their friends, and how those relationships can form. While it still follows the conventions of a social game (energy consumption, bug your friends to improve), it offers a deeper and more customizable play experience. If anything, it serves as a nice way to curb the cravings for the PC Sim City release coming out next year.

Click here to view this gallery.

[More from Mashable: What Parents Need to Know About Facebook?s New Privacy Controls]

Let's face it: Most Facebook games aren't great. The constant bombardment of notifications, the suggestions to buy extra stuff at every turn, and the zillion popups are all hallmarks of an ecosystem that irritates serious gamers.

Mark Zuckerberg asserted earlier this year that 291 million Facebook users played games through the social network. While massive titles like FarmVille and Words With Friends claim the lion's share of the users, Facebook has a diverse range of games that many may appreciate.

[More from Mashable: Can Facebook Make You Fat and Poor?]

SEE ALSO: 7 Kid-Friendly Games for the Holidays

We rounded up our picks for the Facebook games that went above and beyond this year. Check out our list above, and let us know which ones you're really enjoying.

This story originally published on Mashable here.

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/6-best-facebook-games-2012-051032343.html

annalynne mccord billy the kid neville neville george lucas numerology the game

ECB shield helps Italy and Spain meet debt funding goal

MILAN (Reuters) - The European Central Bank's potent bond-buying scheme allowed Italy and Spain to complete their challenging 2012 debt funding requirements through successful auctions on Thursday.

The ECB's pledge in September to buy unlimited quantities of short-term government bonds of vulnerable euro zone members has proven to be a game-changer for Rome and Madrid over the last couple of months.

It again acted as an effective backstop this week when Italian Prime Minister Mario Monti's announcement to resign early unsettled Italian debt market with negative spillovers also for Spanish bonds.

A messy Italian election campaign and bigger Spanish funding needs next year will continue to test the ECB's resolve while the two countries labor to guide their respective economies out of a painful recession.

"Investors are reluctant to (be short of) Italian and Spanish bonds as an activation of the ECB's bond buying scheme in the future cannot be ruled out," said Cyril Regnat, strategist at Natixis.

Spain is widely expected to request access to the euro zone's rescue funds next year. Such expectations, together with appealing returns offered by Rome and Madrid paper and heavy redemptions, supported demand at Thursday's sales.

Rome sold nearly 3.5 billion euros ($4.56 billion) of the new BTP bond maturing December 2015 and paid a yield of 2.50 percent. This was down from 2.64 percent on a similar sale a month ago and the lowest since October 2010.

The treasury also sold 0.729 billion euros of a 15-year bond, issuing a total amount of 4.22 billion euros, just short of its top planned amount of 4.25 billion euros.

Spain issued 2 billion euros of bonds, hitting its target for the auction with borrowing costs falling on two medium-term issues but rising for a rare long bond.

CHALLENGES AHEAD

Spain met its 86 billion euro funding target for 2012 in November but has continued to auction debt to cover any potential deficit slippage in 2013.

Analysts say Madrid will need to sell more debt next year than in 2012 to fund redemptions and its ailing regional governments, which have lost access to capital markets.

Italy, on the other hand, is expected to issue around 420 billion euros in 2013 to refinance its 2 trillion euros debt, less than the 465 billion euros it tapped this year.

Italian bonds were hit on Monday by expectations of political uncertainty after Monti's departure and concern about Italy's willingness to keep up with much-needed reform.

Yet, rating agency Moody's said on Thursday Monti's exit would have limited impact on Italy's sovereign credit rating as it expected the next government to continue on a reform path.

General elections are now expected in February, a few weeks earlier than what was originally planned.

The agency rated the chances of Silvio Berlusconi returning as prime minister as low. Meanwhile, a victory of the center-left Democratic Party led by Pierluigi Bersani would likely result in a pro-reform government.

"We expect he will maintain a reform-oriented policy agenda," said Moody's, which rates Italy's sovereign debt Baa2, two notches above junk, with a negative outlook.

Analysts, however, expect debt market volatility to continue until the Italian political situation clears up.

"The run-up to the election, which is likely to take place in February, will be the biggest test for Italy's debt market since the sharp sell-off at the end of last year," said Nicholas Spiro at Managing Director at Spiro Sovereign Strategy.

Ten-year Italian yields were 331 basis points above core German yields on Thursday and Spanish yields were 407 basis points higher.

Both figures are well below year highs.

(Additional reporting by Madrid Newsroom; Editing by Lisa Jucca/Jeremy Gaunt)

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/ecb-shield-helps-italy-spain-meet-debt-funding-122325166--finance.html

Google News Obama Acceptance Speech 2012 dow jones Bbc News Selena Gomez ariel winter Paige Butcher

Love, Love Everywhere and Not a Drop to Drink | Psychology Today

French philosopher Alain Badiou has a new book called In Praise of Love (New Press). It?s a provocative and charming read. Badiou argues that love is no longer the ?tenacious adventure? that it is, and should be.

How can this be so, you might retort. The world is drowning in romantic love and its trappings. It?s obsessed with true love. Scores of reality TV shows talk about finding love, planning a wedding, getting engaged, and confessing to relationship problems.

But that?s precisely Badiou?s point. The managed, safe simulacrum of romance and love has supplanted the more chaotic, random, coincidental, life-affirming experience that Badiou has in mind when he uses the term ?love.? ?

Hence, love is everywhere, and love is endangered. I talk about this in my book, too, when I describe the ?post-romantic? age.

In fact, one touchstone for Badiou?s book were the ?really disturbing,? ubiquitous posters in Paris for the Meetic internet dating site. The ads promise, ?Get Love Without Chance!,? ?Be in Love Without Falling in Love!? and get ?coaching in love.?

?Risk and adventure must be reinvented? against this kind of ?safety and comfort,? Badiou asserts. Because love exists in the wilds and the woods. It?s a frontier, a space where chance and coincidence might develop into something profound. Badiou writes,?love encompasses the experience of the possible transition from the pure randomness of chance to a state that has universal value. Starting out from something that is simply an encounter, a trifle, you learn that you can experience the world on the basis of difference,? and not only on narcissistic terms. ?And you can even be tested and suffer in the process.?

Then, there is what we call ?love,? which is more like a guided tour. It?s a bus tour along a safe, over-trod, meticulously trailheaded path with the usual iconic sites to be seen along the way, to check off the list, and to experience with companions on the bus who have been pre-screened by their capacities to pay, and their interest. They are your economic and socio-cultural peers. ?If it?s Tuesday, it must be Belgium (if you?re under the age of 40, you might have to Google that cinematic reference).

The ?Wedding Merchants? business and the wedding planners aren?t just about wedding planning. ?They?re metaphors of the over-managed, stage-crafted, even bureaucratic view of love and romance that Badiou challenges in this book.

It?s best not to wander into the woods, such as they exist anymore, or the untamed nether regions, such as they haven?t been trimmed and hedged for us by our own litigious, risk-averse, safe-sex fixated collective imagination.

I don?t think we can overestimate just how deeply the fear of risk, danger, litigation, heartache, or impolitic behavior has infiltrated and delimited our consciousness. It?s not just a literal set of reasonable concerns concerning, say, STDs or pregnancy. It?s a pervasive fearfulness of passion, and life. And risk-aversion doesn?t pertain just to business, but to matters and habits of the heart.

No, it is better?safer, tamer, more sanitary, and less disruptive?to take the guided tour.

On the tour bus of love you get all the usual sites. You have your wedding, you have the usual guidebooks of marital advice and ?Marriage Takes Hard Work? harridans to keep you on track, and who will swat down as ?selfish? any wandering expression of a dissenting, ambivalent , or rebellious feeling about love. ?You have the advice columnists to narrate for you the problems of love and sex. It?s all trite, predictable.

On this guided tour, even the bumps in the road of love are more like the speed bumps manufactured and marked in advance to retard artificially your otherwise reckless, headlong progress. Arguments that feel intensely personal, eccentric, and private? They?re not. We?ve got 20 books for that. Sexual conflicts over bizarre acts, tastes, or predilections? It?s covered in hip, blas? prose in free city newspaper columns every week.

There is no closet, in the good sense of the word?as a place of secret worlds, rather than of shame?in which privacy and desire fulminate. It?s all mapped out for you.

And this love sickness isn?t just a problem of romantic love, actually. The same warily constrained, delimited view of passion too often characterizes women?s views of their life?s work.

Talk to female undergraduates, and you?ll find that they?ve internalized the fearful, sad, timid voice of the pre-defeated?there?s no way that they?ll be able to ?juggle? or ?balance? or ?manage? or insert another dreary verb here the very stuff of life: love, and work.

These young women are prematurely and prophylactically jaded. ?

Missing in these accounts is a notion of that unruly mission, a quest that you can?t predict in advance when you?re 18, that can upend your plans, where ?juggling? and struggling to conform to an other-directed, superficial simulacrum of the rich, ?having it all? life of Two Children and a Husband and a Career has absolutely nothing to do with it. Missing, in other words, is the feeling of love for a mission that isn?t about managing the components of life. That passion may be chaotic, but you are, at least, living, and letting your muse drive your ambitions rather than outward conformity to the simulacrum of a ?happy life.?

One of Badiou?s points as I read it is that we go through the motions. The more hollow the experience of the romantic quest?in the biggest sense of the term?the more obsessively we think about it, compensate for its absence, and fuss over its outward rituals, travails, pantomimes, gestures, and scripts.

And so it is that we can be drowning in romantic love when romantic love is dying.

Source: http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/marriage-30/201212/love-love-everywhere-and-not-drop-drink

donald driver donald driver robin thicke mariana trench transcendental meditation trayvon martin obama care

Former Thai PM denies murder charge over protest deaths

BANGKOK (Reuters) - Former Thai Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva denied on Thursday a murder charge brought against him for his role in a bloody military crackdown on anti-government protesters in 2010.

About 100 people, including family members of some those who were killed during the crackdown, gathered at the Department of Special Investigation (DSI) in Bangkok, part of the Justice Ministry, as Abhisit arrived to meet investigators.

Some protesters were dressed in black and held signs saying "blood on your hands". Some shouted "civilian killer".

Prosecutors filed murder charges against opposition leader Abhisit and his former deputy prime minister, Suthep Thaugsuban, on December 6 under article 288 of the criminal code for allowing security forces to live ammunition that led to the death of civilians.

"I have denied the charge against me and have asked for clarification on some points," Abhisit told reporters as he left the DSI. Suthep also denied the charge, a lawyer said.

Thailand has been gripped by waves of violence in recent years between supporters of former prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra and their opponents, largely members of royalist groups who accuse Thaksin of trying to undermine King Bhumibol Adulyadej. Both sides have used violent protests to try to bring down governments they oppose.

In March 2010, thousands of supporters of Thaksin took to the streets of Bangkok to demand elections. They accused Abhisit of coming to power with the help of the military following a 2006 coup in which Thaksin was ousted.

While soldiers confronted the protesters, at some stages during the disturbances, mysterious black-clad gunmen mingled among the protesters and battled the troops.

Suthep was in charge of a crisis control center that authorized "live fire" zones. Troops forcibly dispersed the protesters who had occupied some city streets on May 19. In all, more than 90 people were killed over about five weeks of trouble.

Thaksin lives in Dubai to avoid a jail sentence handed down for abuse of power in 2008. He is hugely popular with many of Thailand's poor.

If found guilty Abhisit and Suthep could face the death penalty. But analysts say a trial will take years and the charges against them are politically motivated and unlikely to result in heavy sentences.

(Writing by Amy Sawitta Lefevre; Editing by Robert Birsel)

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/former-thai-pm-denies-murder-charge-over-protest-114154062.html

Beach Volleyball Olympics 2012 Jessica Ennis Oscar Pistorius Aliya Mustafina Kirk Urso London 2012 Javelin roger federer

The Science Of Productivity [Video] - Business Insider

'; } } if (google_ads[0].bidtype == "CPC") { /* insert this snippet for each ad call */ google_adnum = google_adnum + google_ads.length; } document.write(s); return; } google_ad_client = 'pub-0604454314447934'; /* substitute your client_id (pub-#) */ // google_ad_channel = '1122334455667788'; google_ad_output = 'js'; google_max_num_ads = '5'; // google_ad_type = 'text_html'; // google_image_size = '728x90'; google_feedback = 'on'; google_skip = google_adnum; /* to skip for multiple units, insert this snippet for each ad call */ google_ad_channel = '1230120361'; /* our ad channel */ // -->

Source: http://www.businessinsider.com/the-science-of-productivity-video-2012-12

mario williams

Poll: Strike a Cliff Deal Now (WSJ)

Share With Friends: | | Politics - Top Stories Stories, News Feeds and News via Feedzilla.

Source: http://news.feedzilla.com/en_us/stories/politics/top-stories/270325979?client_source=feed&format=rss

nfl 2012 schedule gmail down ryan oneal file taxes online tupac shakur sledge hammer tax day freebies

Yudhoyono proposes Australia-U.S.-Indonesia exercises

[ [ [['Connery is an experienced stuntman', 2]], 'http://yhoo.it/KeQd0p', '[Slideshow: See photos taken on the way down]', ' ', '630', ' ', ' ', ], [ [['Connery is an experienced stuntman', 7]], ' http://yhoo.it/KpUoHO', '[Slideshow: Death-defying daredevils]', ' ', '630', ' ', ' ', ], [ [['know that we have confidence in', 3]], 'http://yhoo.it/LqYjAX ', '[Related: The Secret Service guide to Cartagena]', ' ', '630', ' ', ' ', ], [ [['We picked up this other dog and', 5]], 'http://yhoo.it/JUSxvi', '[Related: 8 common dog fears, how to calm them]', ' ', '630', ' ', ' ', ], [ [['accused of running a fake hepatitis B', 5]], 'http://bit.ly/JnoJYN', '[Related: Did WH share raid details with filmmakers?]', ' ', '630', ' ', ' ', ], [ [['accused of running a fake hepatitis B', 3]], 'http://bit.ly/KoKiqJ', '[Factbox: AQAP, al-Qaeda in Yemen]', ' ', '630', ' ', ' ', ], [ [['have my contacts on or glasses', 3]], 'http://abcn.ws/KTE5AZ', '[Related: Should the murder charge be dropped?]', ' ', '630', ' ', ' ', ], [ [['have made this nation great as Sarah Palin', 5]], 'http://yhoo.it/JD7nlD', '[Related: Bristol Palin reality show debuts June 19]', ' ', '630', ' ', ' ', ], [ [['have made this nation great as Sarah Palin', 1]], 'http://bit.ly/JRPFRO', '[Related: McCain adviser who vetted Palin weighs in on VP race]', ' ', '630', ' ', ' ', ], [ [['A JetBlue flight from New York to Las Vegas', 3]], 'http://yhoo.it/GV9zpj', '[Related: View photos of the JetBlue plane in Amarillo]', ' ', '630', ' ', ' ', ], [ [['the 28-year-old neighborhood watchman who shot and killed', 15]], 'http://news.yahoo.com/photos/white-house-stays-out-of-teen-s-killing-slideshow/', 'Click image to see more photos', 'http://l.yimg.com/cv/ip/ap/default/120411/martinzimmermen.jpg', '630', ' ', 'AP', ], [ [['He was in shock and still strapped to his seat', 6]], 'http://news.yahoo.com/photos/navy-jet-crashes-in-virginia-slideshow/', 'Click image to see more photos', 'http://l.yimg.com/cv/ip/ap/default/120406/jet_ap.jpg', '630', ' ', 'AP', ], [ [['xxxxxxxxxxxx', 11]], 'http://news.yahoo.com/photos/russian-grannies-win-bid-to-sing-at-eurovision-1331223625-slideshow/', 'Click image to see more photos', 'http://l.yimg.com/a/p/us/news/editorial/1/56/156d92f2760dcd3e75bcd649a8b85fcf.jpeg', '500', ' ', 'AP', ] ]

[ [ [['did not go as far his colleague', 8]], '29438204', '0' ], [ [[' the 28-year-old neighborhood watchman who shot and killed', 4]], '28924649', '0' ], [ [['because I know God protects me', 14], ['Brian Snow was at a nearby credit union', 5]], '28811216', '0' ], [ [['The state news agency RIA-Novosti quoted Rosaviatsiya', 6]], '28805461', '0' ], [ [['measure all but certain to fail in the face of bipartisan', 4]], '28771014', '0' ], [ [['matter what you do in this case', 5]], '28759848', '0' ], [ [['presume laws are constitutional', 7]], '28747556', '0' ], [ [['has destroyed 15 to 25 houses', 7]], '28744868', '0' ], [ [['short answer is yes', 7]], '28746030', '0' ], [ [['opportunity to tell the real story', 7]], '28731764', '0' ], [ [['entirely respectable way to put off the searing constitutional controversy', 7]], '28723797', '0' ], [ [['point of my campaign is that big ideas matter', 9]], '28712293', '0' ], [ [['As the standoff dragged into a second day', 7]], '28687424', '0' ], [ [['French police stepped up the search', 17]], '28667224', '0' ], [ [['Seeking to elevate his candidacy back to a general', 8]], '28660934', '0' ], [ [['The tragic story of Trayvon Martin', 4]], '28647343', '0' ], [ [['Karzai will get a chance soon to express', 8]], '28630306', '0' ], [ [['powerful storms stretching', 8]], '28493546', '0' ], [ [['basic norm that death is private', 6]], '28413590', '0' ], [ [['songwriter also saw a surge in sales for her debut album', 6]], '28413590', '1', 'Watch music videos from Whitney Houston ', 'on Yahoo! Music', 'http://music.yahoo.com' ], [ [['keyword', 99999999999999999999999]], 'videoID', '1', 'overwrite-pre-description', 'overwrite-link-string', 'overwrite-link-url' ] ]

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/yudhoyono-proposes-australia-u-indonesia-exercises-055728113.html

aladdin black forest ufc 144 fight card ufc 144 results acura nsx all star weekend 2012 giada de laurentiis