If you have a strong stomach, you can watch the American Experience documentary on Dr. Walter Freeman, the Father of Transorbital Lobotomy, on PBS's website.
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/lobotomist/program/
It's a heart rending to thing to see. If you don't cry, you must have an iron constitution.
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Destroying the Past for Fun and Profit
I have just watched Discovery Channel's new program Treasure Quest. I had recorded the first few episodes on DVR and was planning to catch up in one fell swoop. Instead, after one episode I've deleted the recording and all the saved episodes. I believe this show is best described as greasy.Treasure Quest left me feeling dirty for having watched it and not at all convinced of the sincerity of the people involved at the Odyssey Exploration company or Discovery. What I thought would be a program about searching for underwater archaeological treasures like the Antikytheran wreck, turned out to be more a bastard offspring of Deadliest Catch and Indiana Jones, with all the excitement cut out. As Zach Zorich of Archaeology Magazine so succintly put it, "Treasure Quest [depicts] scenes of middle-aged men sitting in comfortable chairs, sipping coffee, and cracking lame jokes while the ROV pokes around a couple of wreck sites that had been discovered years earlier."
The show tries hard to reel people in, with exciting music, montages of bleeped profanity, and constant quotations of treasure values. I don't watch archaeology, history, and science programs for drama, so trying to imply drama and suspense seemed unnecessarily forced. The whole package of music and montages comes across as tacky editing, meant to attact people that love the manufactured conflicts of unreality shows like The Biggest Loser and Survivor.
That is not the main fault I found with the show, though. Rather, I was most appalled at the dishonest character of the treasure seekers, the methods used to recover the treasure, and the secrecy involved. Discovery chooses not to highlight any of the glaring problems or controversies surrounding this method of excavating, and I have to believe the omissions are intentional to make the show successful. The practices onboard the Odyssey's ships Explorer and the Finder are disgraceful.
At one point in the first episode, a representative of Odyssey, onboard the Finder, advises the ship's captain to let him know if anyone of authority challenges them, night or day. Shortly thereafter, a French Coast Guard ship radios in to ask their intentions in sailing into French territorial waters. The Odyssey representative lies and says they're avoiding some bad weather and will be sailing back into international waters later that afternoon, when in fact they're trolling with a sidescan sonar looking for new wrecks. The Odyssey dissuades the French from intervening, then orders the Finder's captain to sale in a random zigzag to conceal their true purpose from the French observers. No honest archaeological excavation I've ever seen has lied to governmental authorities in such a way. It belies a low moral character. If hunting for treasure there was legal, what harm would come to them by being honest?
Discovery spends little time discussing the science behind the project. If anyone is mapping the shipwrecks, cataloguing the locations of items before they're collected, making any effort to keep the site's archaeological record intact, it is never mentioned. Rather we see the ROV's arm vaccuuming up coins and bones, seemingly at random. This seems contrary to proper archaeological practice and makes the site worthless at saying anything about the past. Perhaps the correct treatment of the wrecks is being carried out behind the scenes, but I have strong doubts.
Most discouraging of all is the secrecy. I don't believe I've watched a show with so much blurring in all my life. Almost every computer monitor, every piece of paper, every scrap of identifiable information about the locations, the ships, the firms analyzing the data, etc. are concealed. That makes the whole affair seem dishonest. Science and archaeology are done in the open, with findings being shared with everyone. Treasure hunting like this is not archaeology, it's just sucking up the ocean floor for a profit. One of the ships in the first episode, at an area nicknamed Black Swan, contained millions of dollars worth of lead ingots. They found this out by having them tested at a secret lab. What process did they use to find out if the lead was a valuable, low-alpha variety? Which lab was used to do the research, so others could verify it as well? We don't know because that's a carefully guarded secret for some reason. Archaeology and secrecy do not go together. Archaeology could practically be defined as the process of bringing to light that which is hidden and revealing the truth of that which is kept secret.
Mister Zorich's article linked to his name above is far better at describing the problems with this show and with the company involved. I just wanted to express my own impressions. As I said, the Treasure Quest left me feeling dirty. Deceitful, money hungry scavengers are not archaeologists, even if they put a sign on their door to the contrary. If they're going to salvage the seas for profit, they shouldn't make a TV show out of it to glorify their work and try to paint it as something it certainly is not. Discovery should be ashamed of themselves for once again compromising their committment to real science in exchange for ratings.
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Fallout (PC) - Review
I got Fallout 3 from my wife as an early Christmas present. After arriving at the first town in the game, I decided to stop where I was and go back to the originals to make sure I didn't miss any inside jokes. Fallout has such a rich and engrossing back story, plus a love for self-reference, that I felt like I'd be missing out in the new game if I didn't go back and remind myself of what the first two were like. After about three solid days, I've once again saved Vault 13 and broken up the scourge of the mutant armies. This is my first full play through in almost 10 years. How has the game held up? Let me tell you...If you don't know already, Fallout is a post-apocalyptic, retro-future game. It was created by Interplay in 1997 and is generally seen as a spiritual successor to an earlier game from EA called Wasteland. A nuclear war in 2077 has ravaged the planet, but pockets of civilization live on. Some people escaped altogether by living in underground shelters called vaults. The main character you play is from one of those vaults. You create your character RPG style, modifying stats, picking skills, and traits. At which point you're thrust out into the world to look for a water purifying chip for your home vault.
Played in a 3D isometric view on a hexagonal based map, the game is for all intents and purposes in realtime except in combat mode. It's played entirely with the mouse. The game is open ended to the point that you can conceivably defeat the last boss in the first few minute of play. Similarly, you could wander around the desert for 13 game years and never achieve any of the goals set for you. You can talk to everyone or shoot everyone on sight. Your choices aren't necessarily unlimited, but they're certainly varied. There are consequences to your actions in the form of the karma system, which causes you to be viewed positively or negatively by other characters, which can effect the dialogue choices you have with them or whether they'll pull a gun on you the moment they see you. Unlike most games with such good/evil systems, it's possible to complete the entire game killing everyone and everything you encounter. It's easier to play smart and use your words, though.
Most goals in the game can be achieved in several ways. If someone has something you need, for instance, you might be able to bargain with them for it, challenge them to a duel for it, shoot them out right and take it, pick pocket it from them, pick a dialogue choice (if your intelligence is high enough) that gets them to just hand it over, etc. The game has many sidequests and stray missions here and there that can be solved either with brute force, trickery, diplomacy, or all three. There are several alternate endings possible based on the choices you make, which causes the sidequests you take to feel more meaningful.Combat is turn based and strategic, carried out with an assortment of guns, hand to hand weapons, or simple fists. After combat is initiated and it's your turn, you have a limited number of action points to spend on walking, shooting, reloading, or just readying yourself for an attack. You use those up, then your enemies take a shot. This back and forth style allows you to think about your moves before you make them, weigh the pros and cons of shooting or running away, and makes the game feel more like a refined chess game with guns than a simple first person shooter.
One of the best aspects of Fallout is the game environment, which is a 1950s futurist vision of the future, complete with ray guns, tube based computers, dome headed robots, art deco architecture, etc. It's an alternate future where technology developed faster after World War II than in our own world, while the cultural icons stayed frozen in time. The opening sequence, complete with a classic song from the 1940s, "Maybe" by the Inkspots, sets the scene in a fantastically ominous way. In this post-bomb world, where the bottle cap is the legal currency, there are an eclectic mix of mutants, ghouls, gigantic insects, Mad Max-style gangsters, farmers, religious cults, peasants, rangers, businessmen, gamblers, and street vendors.Fallout does have a couple of annoying problems. First and foremost, the inventory system can be tedious. If you have collected a lot of items, you can wear out your hand clicking the down arrow to scroll through the list to find what you're looking for. Similarly, if you find a few thousand bottle caps you'll have to spend a fair amount of time moving them into your inventory 999 caps at a time because that's the limit on the number of things you can add to your inventory at once. Another problem I ran into frequently was getting stuck in rooms thanks to my NPCs. You don't control the sidekick you pick up along the way, and they have the bad habit of standing doorways you need to get through. About the only way to move them is to run further into the room and hope they follow to clear a path. There is also an issue with one of the great features of the game. Namely that the non-linear nature of the story can sometimes work against you. If you don't pay close attention to everything the characters say, you might miss a quest and find yourself wandering the wasteland for a few weeks before you get back on track. I can't say anything about my biggest gripe of all because it would ruin the plot. I'll say that one part of the ending always effects me emotionally. It's a kick in the stomach.
If you have never played Fallout, now would be a good time to do so. Before you tackle the new game I'd recommend getting back to the roots of the series. I had fun leading my ragtag band of misfits around the wasteland protecting the innocent and slaughtering the evil. I saw things I'm pretty sure I missed on my original playthrough because of that whole varied ways of achieving the same goal thing. The game takes time, but it will feel like time well spent when you get those cutscenes telling how your actions impacted the environment. If you like to grind levels in an RPG, this is a game well suited to you. If you like guns, blood and guts exploding everywhere, off color humor, and general chaos, then you should enjoy this game as well. Fallout covers a great many genres quite well. Pick it up today off Amazon or eBay. Try to find one of those dual packs with Fallout 2 in it if you can.
Speaking of Fallout 2, that's what it's now on to. I got quite a ways into this game back in the day and never finished for some reason. I'm hoping this time will be the charm. I'll come back to tell you all about it if I finish. Read more on "Fallout (PC) - Review"
Wacky Mormon Fun: Real Things Are Fake
I watched the South Park episode about Mormonism again tonight. It got me thinking about the Mormon faith, so I started with Joseph Smith and wikied my way out in the usual fashion. Of course, we all know he claimed to have found golden plates with the Book of Mormon written on them in the mountains of New York, and that he translated them with the help of God, then they were taken back by the angel Moroni, so no one ever saw them but Smith and some friends. I went off into a branch of study on one of his many potential successors, a man named James Strang, who claimed to have dug up the brass plates of Laban, mentioned in the Book of Mormon, near Voree, Wisconsin. He said God guided him there and helped him translate the plates into English. Unlike Smith, Strang actually produced the plates for anyone who wanted to see and feel them. Strangely, members of the Latter Day Saints see Smith as a prophet and Strang as a forger and fraud.Do a search for James Strang if you want all the finer details of his life and eventual assassination, because what I want to talk about here is the hilarious irony of reading the comments of a devout Mormon about this breakaway leader. Looking for more information about what happened to the plates after Strang's death, I came across a Latter Day Saints blog, where someone was trying to give an impartial analysis of the plates' writing system. In the comments, a poster went into a protracted rant against Strang, stating that the LDS Church and all its affiliated branches, except the Strangites themselves, consider him a charlatan, who was just trying to imitate their beloved prophet Joseph Smith.
The thing that most amused me was that this person put the word "witnesses" in quotation marks, as though to suggest Strang's assistants in digging up his plates were not qualified to witness anything. I guess the LDS doesn't consider them as credible as the 11 mysticism-loving, treasure-seeking friends that Smith supposedly showed the Golden Plates to after he found them. Something seems very backwards in praising the man who showed a handful of people his plates, while denouncing the one who went out of his way to show off the plates he had found. Don't get me wrong, they're both follower-hungry zealots, but at least Strang had the decency to offer something tangible as proof of lost tribes of Israelites roaming North America. He didn't ask people to test their faith and intelligence by just believing he saw and translated magic plates because he and some friends said so.
Actually, providing physical proof was probably Strang's undoing, and why his church only has a few hundred members today, compared to Smith's millions. People could see that his plates were fashioned from brass that looked like it came from a tea kettle, and that the writing system was similar to one he used in his own diary. Smith smartly created divine rules about the plates to keep him from having to show them to anyone, said he could translate them without having them present, made up new imaginery plates when the first 116 pages he translated got lost, and then presented eyewitness testimony from close friends as the only real proof of their existence. As statements from the LDS poster confirm, real artifacts are of less significance to the faithful than something spiritual in nature. It's apparently better to have a vision of a golden plate, than to hold a brass one in your hands.
This kind of conflict isn't anything really special when it comes to religious sects. It's just another case of one outlandish faith questioning another for its own supernatural beliefs. This one is just more ironic because the LDS calls foolishness and forgery at someone for trying to pull exactly the same scam their founder did, just with a little bit more credibility in the way of evidence. In addition to rebuking the plates veracity, there is also some suggestion that the LDS eventually wound up with the plates, after a church member asked to borrow them from one of Strang's descendants. The church refutes them, but they're not crazy enough to let them exist as an iconic relic to an opposing faction. I imagine they were destroyed by the Mormon Church, right along with all the other contradictory documents and artifacts they've collected over the years. I'd write a couple paragraphs about the Hofmann forgeries to follow that up, but the murder-suicide aspect makes it kind of a downer for this forum. Go look it up if you're interested.
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Five Games That Scared Me
My recent review of Fatal Frame got me thinking about other horror games I've played. In the interest of adding more lists to the blog, I thought I'd throw together the five scariest games I've personally played. Not just games with a scary atmosphere, but games that legitimately caused me to jump. The list comes after the jump.
5. Alone in the Dark (PC DOS)
So much about a good horror game is sound. This blocky, plodding game about a detective investigating a murder in an old house might seem pretty clunky by today's standards, but when I played it about 1996 or so it scared me to death. The creak of your detective's feet on the wooden floors, the gibber of the monsters, the occasional whipser, it would send chills up your spine. The killer for me, though, was the alert sound. Whenever a monster was about to attack you, there was a sudden audio cue and then the music would change to let you know there was trouble. I'd be walking around in a quiet room, and that alert sound would hit, and my heart would skip a beat. Sitting, alone in the dark, naturally, it was enough to make you scream. It was mostly about the sounds. Well, except for the tunneler worm at the end. That freaked me out on sight alone. If you can find a copy of Alone in the Dark, it's well worth the time to get it up and running on DOSBox or an older game machine. However, avoid the
4. Aliens vs. Predator 2
As an Alien or a Predator, this game is just pure fun. Especially if you make it a challenge to collect the heads of everyone you kill as a predator. The scary part is playing as the human Marine, single handedly trying to survive attacks from both xenospecies. Running down empty metal corridors, with acid burned and blood stained walls, listening to the chitter of invisible predators and the hiss of angry aliens; it's enough to make you look over your shoulder in real life. A good pair of headphones, a dark room, and a sweaty mouse hand are all you need. Just as in the movies, aliens will burst out of almost anywhere, charging for you and making you spray machine gun bullets in random patterns of fear. Sincerely, this game gave me nightmares. It desperately needs a sequel, too.
3. System Shock 2
Are you afraid of zombies? Killer computer programs? Cyborgs? Don't play this game then, because it has all three. There are few games with as much atmosphere, nuance, and superb story telling as SS2. The first game was touted as a sleeper hit, crushed by the power of DOOM. Personally, I can't play it because I played SS2 first and the control and look of the original just can't compete. This is an epic space game with horror wrapped around it. A combination of 2001: A Space Odyssey, Aliens, Virus, and Carrie. Talking monsters, taunting radio messages, screaming psionic monkeys, and a generally desolate atmosphere make this a great game. It's also not just a run and gun FPS, but a real fleshed out thriller with data tapes and a constant encouraging voice helping to tell you the tale of the alien infestation you wake up to from cryosleep. Find this game, play it. You'll be glad you did. Unless you have a heart attack from the terror of the talking mutant zombies!
2. Eternal Darkness
Fight an evil that spans generations. Witness your characters die or be imprisoned in almost every chapter. Begin to wonder if this game is even winnable. Eternal Darkness is the only reason I own a GameCube. I purchased it exclusively to play this one game. A multi-tiered tale cut from the same cloth as the stories of HP Lovecraft. Giant other-worldly gods do battle and you're stuck in the middle of it, trying to imprison them all back beyond the veil. Wield an assortment of medieval and modern weapons. Be a priest, a fireman, an archaeologist, or a blond girl of indeterminate profession. The story is linear, but fantastic. The surprises are, surprising, and they'll make you jump. Oh, and did I mention the game screws with you based on your sanity meter? From turning off the TV, turning down the volume, or claiming your save games have been erased, this game is out to get you. Have a Wii? Buy Eternal Darkness.
1. The Thing (XBox Version)
This was a hard decision, but this game frightened me the most I think. It cheated constantly, having your people turn out to be infected with the Thing, even if you had checked their blood for it only seconds before and they'd had no contact with anything, they'd still have extra arms burst out of their head when you least expected it. You'd be talking to a character, having a very subdued discussion about something, and suddenly they'd explode into some hideous monster. It was disturbingly faithful to the film, and impressively frightening as a result. Perhaps I pick it because my memory of it is getting more and more vague, and if I played it again I would no longer be frightened. For now, though, it stands atop the heap as the scariest for me. Got an XBox or XBox 360? Ever wondered what happened at the end of John Carpenter's The Thing? Buy this game and find out. Seriously, it resolves the ending of the movie.
Perhaps Dead Rising or Bioshock will unseat these games once I've had a chance to play through them. For now, this stands as my list. Oh, for an honorable mention I'd throw in American McGee's Alice and Clive Barker's The Undying. While not really scary, they are disturbing and atmospheric. Good horror themed games, just not the scariest.
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Junkyard Wars - My Belated Complaints
Ah, Junkyard Wars, how I fondly remember watching this show with my friends at the turn of the century. Recently, though, I've been recording the reruns on TLC and I've noticed some problems. It's a little late to complain, what with the American version having been cancelled five years ago, but I'm going to anyway. If you're not familiar, the show pits two teams of four people, three friends plus an expert, in a battle to build a specialized machine in 10 hours time. The show started life on UK television as Scrapheap Challenge in 1998. Discovery Communications bought the US broadcast rights, then ordered US localized episodes that ran in five seasons from 2001-2003. The original British show was shelved for retooling just this year, with the BBC desiring a daytime show with lower production costs.
When I used to watch the show in one or two episode a weeks spurts, it seemed far more innovative and fascinating. Watching whole seasons at a sitting, the cracks start to show. I think the primary issue I have is that they can't decide if it's a trick to get people interested in science, a reality show with manufactured drama, or a legitimate competition. My preference would be for it to stick to the latter. There are all sorts of things that stood in the way of the show being a fair competition. First and foremost, the experts wield far too much control. In researching the behind scenes of the show, I learned that the producers met with the experts beforehand and had them present their design ideas. For the purposes of making it interesting, the producers would then encourage them to pick different methods of achieving the same goal. This results in one team being stuck with the lousy idea and being almost assured defeat. In season three, for instance, the Geeks team from MIT was given two experts that wanted to use unconventional methods. In one case, the expert insisted on a aluminum sail for their land sailboat, which just happened to actually work, and in the other the expert wanted a water pump manufactured from a four stroke engine. In both episodes, team members suggested using the method being employed by the other team, a cloth sail and a centrifugal pump respectively, but the experts fought with them until they agreed to the crazier methods. In the Geeks second appearance, they lost because their pump actually worked, while their opponents, the Pit Crew, couldn't even get their's to function.
Reality show additions like a workshop camera for people to complain to about their team mates, putting teams with judges that have ideas that are so far out there that the team captain has to overrule them just to get things done, and instituting a rule so people can steal parts from their opponent's garage if no one is watching it reek of trying to manufacture drama. It worked, too. One member of the Pit Crew became enraged and nearly started a fight with an opposing team member over a junked car. One team was saddled with a seemingly drugged out hydrofoil racer, who proved so useless the team had no choice but to try to design his stupid plan without his help.
Junkyard Wars just doesn't stand up very well anymore for me. I've seen too much, too fast, and realized the competition is all a joke and the inventions aren't really the ingenious frankenstein contraptions they seemed to be, when I watched originally.
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History Book Deleted Scenes I
Every so often I stumble across articles and websites dedicated to little known events in history. I store their subject matters away until I can spring them on unsuspecting friends and relatives, under the pretense of really fascinating history. Not everyone finds them as interesting as I do, so this becomes the alternative method of sharing what I've found. Today, let's look at the Battle of Bloody Mingo.
Bloody Mingo
After watching the movie October Sky, I became interested in a reference made by a character to Bloody Mingo. I looked it up and found it was a nickname for Mingo County, West Virginia, which was involved in a conflict referred to by some as the Coal Wars. Between 1920-1921 there were frequent clashes between members of the United Mine Workers of America, who were trying to get safer working conditions, better wages, and shorter working hours, and the private armies of the coal companies, who ostensibly fought on the grounds that it was their patriotic duty to prevent Communism. In May 1920, a particularly important battle or massacre, depending on who you ask, occured at Matewan, Mingo County, WV. There, miners, backed by Police Chief Sid Hatfield and 14 private detectives hired by the Stone Mountain Coal Company, engaged in a brief gun battle. The detectives had been forcibly evicting union sympathizers from their company-owned homes, and Hatfield was trying to arrest them, saying they had no legal right to evict anyone. In the end, the Mayor of Matewan, four miners, and seven detectives were killed. Hatfield became a hero to the miners. He was acquitted of murder charges, but while standing trial for conspiracy he was shot on the court house steps by the surviving detectives from the Battle/Massacre of Matewan. The men who killed him were not sought by authorities. This led to the Battle of Blair Mountain. A subject for another one of these posts.
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