Threnody

US poster, public domain, 1945

But you must remember there was never a war when crimes weren't committed, and there never will be.
-Rochus Misch

All too often alternative history fiction revolves around the concept of the Axis forces winning the Second World War. Robert Harris' Fatherland used it as the setting for an Orwellian murder-mystery, yet it's largely a cliché of the genre. Likely because alternative history often hinges on decisive military actions, and the most over-used conflict in popular media is the centrepiece struggle of the 20th century against the unambiguously evil enemy in the form of the Nazis. Germany is made to bear the responsibility alone while the other axis members are often overlooked (especially any other than the following two); the armed forces of Fascist Italy are always seen as something of a joke, and Imperial Japan's conduct of the war was downplayed with the emergence of the Cold War and maintained with its rise as an economic superpower. Japan was, however, the scene of the spectacular conclusion of the conflict. You need only mention the cities Hiroshima and Nagasaki - I don't even need to implicitly state what happened in 1945. As someone who has dabbled in alternative history, it's struck me for a number of years that far more interesting than a world in which the axis triumphed would be a history like our own where they were defeated, with the key exception that nuclear weapons were not available and the invasion of Japan was necessitated. The debate about the use of those weapons started before they were even dropped, and for me it's a subject that I've wished to write about since the very first post on this blog.

The Drift of Air

DeLorean DMC-12, foshie, 2007

Is there anything I haven't said about Gran Turismo 5 yet? I know it's an open-ended game, but you'd think with the impending arrival of the sixth instalment of the series I wouldn't be approaching ten thousand words about playing this game. It has been six months, though, since I last waffled on about activities prolonging my interest in the game beyond the core of beating A-Spec mode. I've gone through several phases of losing interest only to buy a new car and bring life back into using the wheel and pedals: I didn't play much after beating the 24 Hours of Le Mans until I dabbled with muscle cars last November and continued along with the novelty of the wheel and pedals, then designing eight custom tracks. After that, GT5 lost out to other concerns for a number of weeks. My interest came round again when I decided to try out some rides amongst Gran Turismo's copious garages. Perhaps you can guess.

Activation Theme / Windowlicker

Windows 3.1, Microsoft Corp. 1992

Tomorrow it's two entire decades since Windows 3.11 was released. The anniversary of a service pack for Windows 3.1 is a poor excuse to launch into this post, I know. You'll have to forgive the nostalgia - my first computer was an IBM PS/2 running 3.1. A technician had to be called out several times at expense to reinstall Windows as a result of my exploring the system. That computer is long gone after being replaced with a new Aptiva in 1998 - itself twice succeeded. Something about the old system still lingers fondly in my memory. I recall the last times I used that old operating system.

Orbiting Your Living Room, Cashing in The Bill of Rights

Prism Demo [...], ubiquit23, 2013

Batman: Beautiful, isn't it?
Lucius Fox: Beautiful... unethical... dangerous. You've turned every cellphone in Gotham into a microphone.
Batman: And a high-frequency generator-receiver.
Lucius Fox: You took my sonar concept and applied it to every phone in the city. With half the city feeding you sonar, you can image all of Gotham. This is wrong.
Batman: I've gotta find this man, Lucius.
Lucius Fox: At what cost?
Batman: The database is null-key encrypted. It can only be accessed by one person.
Lucius Fox: This is too much power for one person.
Batman: That's why I gave it to you. Only you can use it.
Lucius Fox: Spying on 30 million people isn't part of my job description.
- The Dark Knight, 2008

Wake Up The City

Lego Chicago City View 2001, Otto Normalverbraucher, 2005

Like the photograph to the left, I had a large Lego city that eventually had to be packed away. Next week is thirteen years since it was boxed up when I moved out of my old house, and to date it's still in the basement buried under even more boxes of unpacked stuff. The thing about Lego is it takes up space. In my old room at the end of the 90s it was all set up on two spare paint tables - there isn't even room for half a table now. In a way Lego followed Scalectrix and Subbuteo in being replaced by digital products that could better emulate reality and required nothing more than a computer and a compact disc. In all the years I've missed building with Lego, SimCity has provided a constructive outlet.

Message Oblique Speech

PART THREE OF A SERIES.

Copyright J Michael Haynes, 2008

"the fair use of a copyrighted work, including such use by reproduction in copies [...],
for purposes such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching [...], scholarship,
or research, is not an infringement of copyright."

How do you think he'll react to you when you learn what a real revolution is? You don't know what a revolution is. If you did, you wouldn't use that word.
-Malcolm X, Message to the Grassroots, 1963

The previous essay in this series details why we are sold the neoliberal system. This post describes how we are sold it. The first rule of the system we live in is you do not talk about the system we live in. The second rule is you blame the financial crisis on the previous administration. It's oft repeated that it was Huxley, not Orwell, that correctly predicted the future. Arguably Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four is better known than Brave New World, perhaps considering its relevance during the cold war; however, rarely is it considered that they were both right about elements of present society. Huxley's nightmare was not that the people would be deprived of freedom and subjugated by a totalitarian state - it's they would be so distracted by a deluge of entertainment they wouldn't care. How ironic a 'reality television' programme brought that vision to life and used an Orwellian term - Big Brother.

I Thought It Was The UK, Or Just Another Country

PART ONE OF A SERIES.

Na Nož, Jaroslav Věšin, 1913

Britain isn't cool you know, it's really not that great / It's not a proper country, doesn't even have a patron saint / It's just an economic union that's past its sell-by date
-Take Down the Union Jack, Billy Bragg, 2002

At the deepest historical time-depths there is a very basic notion of identity between the self-identified civilised peoples and the barbarians. While the concept of being Greek (Hellenes) didn't yet exist, the city states at the base of the Balkan peninsula saw a commonality between themselves but not with others to the uncharted North or in the later conquered territories of Alexander's empire. The genesis of this fraternity also lies in transmission of culture as the Greek alphabet (save for some regional variations) allowed folk culture to be stored. The established alphabet may also have smoothed over the dialects as it only represents the sounds distinguished within a dialect and not the phonlogical distinctions between the dialects. That would not be unlike the unifying force that Hanzi had on the disparate Chinese languages by representing words and not the component sounds of the languages (which are as wildly different though related as French and Romanian). Indeed, language is one of the most prominent pillars of ethnic identity along with religion (historically Slavic, Germanic, Celtic, etc paganism for pre-modern Europe) and, of course, land.