I was going to write an article about the American military mind, what's wrong with it, etc, but, in reality, I don't know enough about it for what I was going to write to really be accurate. All I can say is that I don't like what I see. Americans, stereotypical Americans, I don't like what I see there. It's often been said that Americans (or the Swiss, or the Israelis, or the North Koreans, depending on who you ask) have the best military in the world. The idea of so much power, mixed with the American ignorance of the rest of the world, crusade mentality, and self-serving nature.. scary.

Anyhow, let's segue from that into problems I see with the American military, starting with the thing that inspired me to write in the first place. Take a look at this. Yes, American military forces toyed with prisoners in Iraq, making pyramids out of them or staging them in sexual innuendo, writing stuff on their skin, and committing other abuses. This is absolutely incredible. As a brief aside, BushJr, according to the article, knew about this for awhile, but didn't comment on it until the photos hit the papers. These things are unforgivable, and will do incalcuable damage to the efforts of reconstructing Iraq, itself a situation that America never should have been in, but now is stuck to, thanks to the idiot at the helm. This, and little else, will be what Iraqis remember 20 years from now -- that Americans invaded their country to remove a pretty bad leader, and showed the kind of society they could be if they tried. Wonderful. I've had a few friends who have family in the military, and one of the things they describe is that the military teaches you to hate the enemy and dehumanize them. Looks like our troops have leaned that lesson rather well. BushJr said it very well, "That's not the way we do things in America". Yup, America normally scoots people out of the public eye, to Cuba or some other place where the media isn't, in order to commit atrocities. Of course, that's just the first ring in our military circus. Observe the freak show of freakishly backwards homophobic rules, justified by arguments that would happily also justify making the military all white, male, protestant, republican, and let's not forget, non-Irish. Don't ask, don't tell. Sshh. And then there's the Crusade ring, where military folk describe the American military as being an army of their god, out to crush the Muslim heathens, people who start drawing up plans when they hear about plans for a new Crusade. America, the land of clowns with guns, now coming to a country near you.

On a similar note, here's an interesting article on routine, minor censorship that occurs in video games on its way to the United States. I was completely unaware of this...

"And that gets to the second reality: There are well organized forces that work hard to punish software makers and sellers for what they consider religious transgressions."

These transgressions include having crosses as earrings for characters, or similar. These are put in the context of a lot of other localization that they did, and while they reach different conclusions, I think there are some pretty clear guidelines that gamemakers should use when making a localized version of a game.. first, yes, translate to the local language -- it's not good to assume everyone in the world speaks Japanese (or any other language) (although leaving in the original language might also be a good thing, so people can choose). Second, adopt to conventions, when it make sense, that are completely unrelated to the content (interpreted very inclusively) of the game. The article mentions controller button usage, there are probably other examples. Next, try really hard to retain all content from the original, just adding little explanations when needed to provide background. If Americans learn, in a quick cut-scene, that Japanese have an elaborate tea ceremony they sometimes use, you're doing them a public service, and people actually like to learn things, so they'll remember your game a bit more. Finally, don't remove stuff you can explain unless it's *very* clear that Americans won't get it -- if you're going to make them do a quiz over "Hello Kitty" to progress in the game, or similar, it's ok to replace it with something else or chop it. Don't ever, ever, bow to local customs like hiding areas of your culture that might create culture shock.

More neat science -- Israeli researchers have made an amazing advance -- they've tied their previous work with molecular computers to medical technology, designing what promises to be an injectable doctor which could seek out and repair/destroy malfunctioning cells. This kind of thing does have some people a bit worried, but at the very least it's fascinating what they've done...

Apple recently made an upgrade to iTunes, to lock out open source folk who connected to their service without using their client. Within 24 hours of their upgrade, one of us figured out the changes, and adapted the code so people who used it are back on. Amusing.

Anyhow, classes are done for this semester, so I just need to finish with finals and the last paper, and I can relax... ahh, that sounds nice.