Computer Human Interface in Cinema: An Example from Patriot Games

In general if we ask the question "Is it too much to ask that Hollywood represent the use of computers with some authenticity or correctness?" the answer would clearly be, yes, its too much to ask.

Authenticity is a dirty word in Hollywood and computers fit the rule, not the exception, here. A computer in a movie serves some generally shallow plot points: the computer acts as an oracle, or a dictator, or whimsical child, or God knows what. These shallow ideas generally mirror the genuinely and sincerely shallow level of understanding of the filmmakers. Water seeks its own level, and in this case its a pretty low level indeed.

But I came across a scene in a pretty stupid movie called Patriot Games (1992) starring Harrison Ford and the sequence is a pretty good representation of a classic late 60s, early 70s computer user interface, complete with user.

The sequence watches a preemptive strike on an IRA training camp in the desert somewhere (maybe Libya?) through a classic spy satellite, probably a KH-11 or 12. In the intel vault we watch a perfect example of a female computer programmer in real time controlling the imaging from the satellite. She types commands one line at a time.

Please notice the innovative command structure.   One command per line.  A nice 2 or 3 letter command abbreviation.  Commands such as zoom (zm), rotate (rot), and name (nm).   Intuitive and facile, our userette is a power user and slings those pixels around like no one's business.

Its pure and unspoiled.

You can see the sequence here:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZoVWedQOQl4

There is a lot of good information in the background voices, including the statement "Keyhole out of range" implying "KH" stands for Keyhole.

Patriot Games on IMDB

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0105112/

KH Satellites on Wikipedia

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/KH-11_Kennan

The NSA Guide to Using the Internet

The NSA has released a guide to using the Internet.

The document was written for internal use and released under the Freedom of Information Act. Because the NSA had no trouble releasing it, it is easy to be cynical about what it contains. It seems to be a general introduction to the Internet for someone who is not particularly Internet savvy but is not intimidated by computers.   The document itself can be found here:

http://www.nsa.gov/public_info/_files/Untangling_the_Web.pdf

For those who are unaware, the NSA or National Security Agency is a key component of the US Intelligence community, responsible for protecting the communications security of this nation and attacking that security of other nations.  Communications security is a fancy way to say code breaking, by the way.   For many years it is believed that NSA had the largest computer room in the world, underground, in Fort Meade, Md. Now it is not clear if it has the largest, e.g. how does it compare with Google or Facebook?

This document is probably only of modest interest.  It is the concept of an NSA "Guide to the Internet" that is amusing.

Table of Contents: 

Designing a Motto for Your New Crime Organization

Most American's have realized by now that if they are on the outside of the vast wealth in this country, that the only way to change that situation is through the time-honored American tradition of crime.  All great fortunes in this country started with a crime or crimes, and people are not being metaphorical when they say that. (3)

But if you are going to have a criminal organization, particularly an international criminal organization, then you are going to have a motto to inspire your members, and that motto has to be in Latin.  There are strict rules about such things: from Annuit Coeptus to Semper Fidelis to In Hoc Signo Vinces, (1)  our mottos in the West are required to be in Latin even for criminals.

Since our educational system has for years fallen into decadence and shame and failed to teach everyone how to read and write Latin, it is permissible, under the circumstances to use certain Internet-base crutches, such as the recent Google Tranlate English->Latin and Latin->English service.

You may find this useful capability here:  http://translate.google.com/#en/la/

We all know that the United States has mottos designed by Freemasons under the control of the Illuminati, hence the mottos Annuit Coeptus and Novus Ordo Seclorum.   Its fun to have people deny that there was Freemason influence in the creation of this country and show them the Great Seal of the United States.

One interpretation of the "Eye in the Pyramid" is that the Egyptians built the Pyramids with sacred knowledge, but that knowledge came directly from Satan.   

Some of our most notable mottos / slogans are in fact fictional, including my favorite from Edgar Allen Poe's A Cask of Amontillado.  In this short story our hero, Montresor, lures his enemy into a dungeon, secures him with chains, and imprisons him up behind a wall of bricks to leave him to die of starvation.  The motto of the Montresor family is Neme Me Impune Lacessit or "none may attack me with impunity".    (2)

So now what would constitute a good Latin motto for a crime organization, whether international or local?   Presumably the motto would indicate either a lofty goal, or an act of revenge, or in some way indicate what made our criminal group a center of excellence, e.g. the very best bank robbers, the very best despoilers of virgins, the best at repressing justice hand-in-hand with the politicians, that sort of thing.   In the case of organizations rising up from oppression, one could imagine an oddly paranoid phrase as a contender, and I included one below.

To inspire complete and efficient vengeance, perhaps

     Debent Omnes Morimur  -- They Must All Die

     Occidite Eos Celeriter  --  Kill Them Quickly


To inspire discipline and accuracy among our members, we might have

    Stultus Est Errare  --  To Err is Stupid    

   
To remind us what our goals are, consider

    Pecunia et Potentia  --  Money and Power

    Carpe Pecuniam  --  Seize the Money

    Nisi Mentis Inops, Pauper Est  --  Only an Idiot is Poor

    Furantur a Divitibus  --  Steal From the Rich


Finally, my favorite, for those of us with low self-esteem

    Omnes Me Oderunt  --  They All Hate Me


Here are a few thoughts on the technicalities of using Google English / Latin / English translator. Remember that Latin is an inflected language (defined in a moment) and English has lost most of its inflections.   By inflected, linguists mean that the form of the word changes depending on its use in a sentence, and specifically, the end(ing) of the word changes.  In English, I may call someone stupid, and stupid bacially has one form.  But in Latin, it may have six forms, depending on its uses.   I am fucked, he is fucked, you are fucked, we are fucked and so forth, has one ending in English but would have six in Latin.  Why should you care?

Because in using the English to Latin translator, giving it a few words, a short phrase, is much better than giving it a single world, e.g. a verb.  "They are stupid and must die" is much better than "Stupid. Die" because of how the languages work.

I hope that this has inspired you to design a motto for your new career in crime and I look forward to reading some of your efforts in this area.

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Notes:

1. They mean "he knows and approves", "always faithful" and "by this sign you shall conquer" respectively.

2. You can find this story here on the Internet, below.  http://xroads.virginia.edu/~hyper/POE/cask.html

3. Real honest to God crime is meant here.   You know, guys with guns, that sort of thing.  But with good politicians and friends in high places to make it all look good and cover it up later.  You know, like the Railroads, or the Trusts or the slave labor (Chinese and Irish) use to build the railroads and so forth.

A More Personal and Analog Approach to Computer Art

Those of us who worked to create a new art form(s) with computers have been gratified by some of the progress in the creation of computer generated art. But we must also acknowledge that the process of exploration has been uneven, with some areas going from triumph to triumph, and others lying neglected and underappreciated. Sure, it is easy to be enthusiastic about vast expense paid to create impossibly stupid movies with computers which are sequels to impossibly stupid movies that make a half a billion dollars.   Indeed, how could we not celebrate them as clearly they are the very highest form of art that our society could aspire to. And this is shown in the most sincere way we prove these things: by success at generating commerce. Without commerce, some would say, there is no real art.

It is easy to celebrate a film and a director who publically dismisses as irrelevant the technologists and artists who made his lead character of his film, in this case a tiger. A director who laughs at them in their misery and impoverishment. It is the fate of these so-called digital artists to suffer as they are worthless scum and anyone can be hired off the street and be trained to do their job. In fact governments spend hundreds of millions of dollars to impoverish and destroy their places of employment so that they may have the glamour of computer animation facilities in their own country. That is only natural and correct. (1)

Since we must acknowledge that doing computer animation as it was traditionally performed is a failure in this country, with a few exceptions, it is time I think to reexamine our roots and look at other forms of expression with computers. For example, a friend of mine, Tom Brigham, sent me an interesting youtube video of an unknown artist (unknown to me) doing an art experiment by applying the power of a neon sign transformer to a former LCD television. Thus the artist experiments with the interface between the analog represented by the unexpected voltage from the transformer, with digital, as represented by the cracked digital display, in unexpected and creative ways.

All potential practitioners of this process are reminded to be very careful with those high voltage logic probes.

Although the final work is not a success, the process demonstrated by the artist clearly has potential and I hope that many will also experiment with creating new art in this way. Of course, I hope they are very careful with the power transformers, and avoid death by electrocution, which would be unpleasant.

LCD TV vs Neon Sign Transformer

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e4VypcXwHLg

Ed Systems on Youtube

http://www.youtube.com/user/Aussie50/featured

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1. Examples of such countries include Canada, the UK, Taiwan, the People's Republic of China and New Zealand.

Anti-Platonic Counterrevolutionaries and the Significance of George Pal's Lost Movie About Atlantis

[revised 5-9-2013]

For decades an important film, George Pal's Atlantis: The Lost Continent was completely unavailable in any form.  You could look all you wanted, even for Japanese or other sources of DVDs and videos from the mysterious east (as found on 8th Avenue near 42nd street in NY, for example) and never find it.  How could this be?   A civilization that can make many seasons of Baywatch available should be able to distribute a film by George Pal, one might think.   Some people believe that this suppression was an indication of a conspiracy at the highest levels, a conspiracy to deny the existence of Atlantis and thus of Atlantean Crystal Wisdom.

This essay argues the opposite.  That the suppression of this film was in fact evidence of something else entirely, although also in a sense a conspiracy.  We argue that in fact this film was not made by George Pal at all, but by anti-Platonic counterrevolutionaries who intended to destroy our society by attacking the underpinnings of Western Civilization philosophical thought by slandering the history and purpose of this important and misunderstood civilization and its advanced technology.   Thus the suppression of the film was not the suppression of truth, but the suppression of a perversion of the truth created by a previously unsuspected secret society of Plato haters.

Robert Graves, in his work The Greek Myths (1), reminds us that many myths contain within them the record of political events of the past.   A classic example, from his point of view is the birth of Athene/Minerva from the head of Zeus.   The backstory here is that Zeus had previously swallowed Metis, a previous goddess of wisdom.  According to Graves, this story is really about the Hellenic invaders controlling an indigenous religion by making the goddess of wisdom clearly subservient to and descended from the patriarchal and intrusive religion of the invaders as represented by their chief phallus wielder, Zeus (2).   The point that Graves makes time and again is that myth is not random, or some reflection of a collective Jungian unconsciousness, but contains elements of genuine political and religious struggle from the past.

With that in mind, let us consider the case of Atlantis and this mysteriously missing film Atlantis The Lost Continent from 1961.

This movie was seen by every young boy in the Los Angeles area many times on television where they were amazed by the evil crystal death rays, the exotic and dangerous women, and the horrible priests of an evil religion who used crystals to turn prisoners into beasts as slaves.    It was obvious even to a 10 year old that this was a bad movie, even a very bad movie, but it was entertaining.    Then, like a dream, it disappeared.

As time went by it became clear that this film must have some sort of history around it.   It was both produced and directed by George Pal, and yet the film was nowhere near the quality of his other films, which included War of the Worlds, the 7 Faces of Dr. Lao, The Time Machine, When Worlds Collide and other classics of the genre.  Some people suspected that it was being suppressed by Disney, who had their own Atlantis film to promote.   Others, that the rights were tied up in some way that made it awkward to release on DVD.   But others suspected that something else was going on, something behind the scenes, something that did not want to be exposed.

At one point, I found the trailer for the film on a DVD that had a documentary about George Pal.  That was the only footage I could find, but it was definitely the movie I had remembered, at least. (3)

Then after all these years, I discovered that Atlantis: The Lost Continent had just been released on DVD and that the trailer, with a narration/appreciation by John Landis, was on Youtube.    Landis recounts how he saw the movie in the theatre when it came out, talks about how as an 11 year old he really loved the movie and relates trivia about the film including such things as the submarine model was a feature of Forrest Ackerman's landscape for many years, that all the crowd scenes are lifted from Quo Vadis, also an MGM movie.   He ends the piece by wondering how George Pal could have made such a terrible film, and what a shame it is that it could not be as good as the memories of an 11 year old boy, which was how old he was when he saw it.

Here is the trailer with John Landis narration.  I think you should watch it first, and then I will disclose my theory about why this film was unavailable for so long.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DZSheTgrUhs

It is probably unnecessary to remind the reader that Atlantis holds a very special place in the hearts of all scholars of the field of ancient history and religion.   All one has to do is to bring up the topic and ask an innocent question, such as what light archaeology can shed on the well-known fact that the Egyptians used Atlantean Crystal Wisdom to build the Pyramids, and one is placed irrevocably in a "certain category" in the eyes of most scholars. One never has to worry about being taken seriously again.

And yet, the first attestation of Atlantis in the received literature is from none other than Plato.   Yes, that Plato, one of the philosophers whose work lies at the very foundation of Western Civilization and thought.   The one who was a student and devoted follower of Socrates, the guy who wrote The Republic.  He is the one who first mentions Atlantis with an apparent straight face, claiming that he got his information from the Egyptians.

Clearly this is the face of an honest man.  How could we not believe something that came from Plato?

Almost immediately, his followers started spreading the story that of course he wasn't serious, he was just using this story to make a point about political economy.  It was a metaphor, for goodness' sake, they would say, don't be so literal about everything.  This seems like a very dangerous course to take.  Once you start chipping away at this and that, where do you stop?   Today its Atlantis, tomorrow perhaps its the tripartite theory of the soul, and then where are you?  No, I think you have to accept pretty much all of Plato or none of it.  This is somewhat of a strict-constructionist approach, but let us go with that and see what light it sheds on the issue at hand: why you could not get this important film on DVD for decades.

From the very beginning, enemies of Plato and Platonic Thought attacked Plato and his followers over the issue of Atlantis as a way of discrediting the whole of Plato's work.   And this movie shows Atlantis not as a triumph of government and technology, but a society that has fallen into evil and decay, and which is destroyed thereby.

But why would George Pal make a movie that attacked Plato and also attacked the use of science? Clearly Pal was a friend of science.  My theory is that George Pal was duped and used to create this slam on Plato's thought or that he was working under duress.  Perhaps this helps explain why the film is so very bad.

Take for example this frame from the trailer, referring to "The Weird Cult of Science Worship."  That is not something George Pal would say.   Never.   This is the man who brought HG Wells War of the Worlds to the screen in which the science of evolutionary biology and of our immune system brings down the haughty Martians.  Pal was devoted to science.   This could not be his work.  No, it must be the work of people who hate science.

It is my thesis that supporters of Pal and Plato worked to suppress this propaganda piece.  I admit that I have no evidence for this theory beyond the fact that this Plato-hating bad movie was suppressed for so long.   One day the truth will be revealed.

Look into my eyes and become a beast slave !

Exotic women ! 

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1. The Greek Myths by Robert Graves is considered the classic reference work in English on the topic of Greek mythology because of its thorough research by Graves of the literary sources and his meticulous citations to those sources.    Grave's interpretations of the myths themselves are more controversial, however.  See http://www.amazon.com/dp/0143106716/ref=rdr_ext_tmb

2. In the world of historical linguistics, Zeus is believed to be cognate with the Latin word deus, as in deus ex machina.

3. Students of voice over will recognize and appreciate the voice of Paul Frees on the trailer.

Atlantis the Lost Continent (1961) on IMDB

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0054642/

George Pal on Wikipedia

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Pal

Editorial: A Rush to Judgement about G. W. Bush?

Warning: I am holding back my real feelings in this essay.  You may wish to read between the lines to imagine what I really think.

Various Republicans have taken the opportunity of the new Bush Library to claim that George W. Bush is being judged harshly, and that we should not "rush to judgment" about his presidency, the implication being that he will be vindicated with time.  Well, it is true that time does change some judgments. For example, Richard Nixon seems like a fucking genius relative to Bush, do you suppose that is the kind of vindication that these people mean?

Two such editorials can be found here and here.

I have reread these things and I have gone from merely annoyed to actually quite annoyed, even outraged at their no doubt sincere, corrupt beliefs.   Their views lower my opinion of this country which was already low enough, believe me, and makes me wonder if one should even care.  The Republicans through their insanity either have or will destroy the country.  Depends, I suppose, on your point of view.

Lets go over the facts of the so-called Bush Presidency, shall we?

1. George Bush was not legally elected.

Everyone in the world knows that Bush was not elected. If the votes had been counted in Florida, Gore would have won the state and the election. Everyone in the world knows this ... except the Republicans. They don't know it. I personally believe that the USA lives in a world of denial about the dark side of their own history in many ways. I think that they/we fail to realize their involvement in the genocide of Native Americans, in their responsiblity to the policy of slavery in this country, and the absence of due process when the South was forcibly rejoined to the so-called republic. You may not agree with all this, I understand. But even though the election process has been notably flawed throughout American history, we had not, to the best of my knowledge elected the chief executive in a way that was obviously fraudulent. Now I realize as I type this, that I might be wrong about this because I am also woefully ignorant of certain periods of early American history. Certainly there has been fraud in important presidential elections, but in my lifetime as an adult I watched Bush being put into office illegally and I know, from personal experience, and most Americans know from personal experience, that elections dont matter and voting doesn't matter because the rich are going to put their friends in power whatever the vote says. And they proved this by refusing, flat out refusing, to count the votes in Florida. Good job guys.

2. The Supreme Court dishonored themselves permanently.

When the Supreme Court unilaterally decided that Bush was president using an argument that no one believes, they ceased to be the Supreme Court. To be the Supreme Court you have to have moral integrity. The court has none. You can pretend there is a supreme court if you want to, but I don't. And quite a few Americans do not either. Every decision made since the one that put the Bush Administration into power needs to be examined by a real supreme court if one ever exists. Sorry to have to tell you this. I dont think it will ever happen. The Supreme Court proved in my lifetime by this event that they are just a tool of the right wing and will compromise any principle at the call of their masters. Thus Bush destroyed the justice system in this country.

3. The USA is now permanently associated with a policy of torture.

In all the wars and conflicts of this nation's history, we never resorted to torture as an official policy. Now, I can tell you that I am quite sure that there were individual exceptions to this rule. I am sure that there were prisoner interrogations during WWII that used excessive force, but these were not policy, in fact, they were against policy. I am also quite sure that during various periods of the Cold War that we would regularly turn prisoners over to countries that did use torture. But we did not use those kind of methods ourselves, directly, as a matter of policy. Perhaps this is a subtle distinction, we were certainly compromised by the use of torture of our allies. But I think that there was some value to be had in the principle that we did not use torture ourselves.

But now and for all time, the American moral position has been stained and demeaned by the policy of torture of the Bush Administration.

4. The war in Iraq

Whether or not the war in Afghanistan was justified by the events of 911  (1), there is no justification for the war in Iraq that I can see. The Bush administration deliberately lied about why we should be there but even more important, they were wrong that we should be there.  In other words, Iraq was not strategic for us. Saddam Hussein may have been an asshole who killed people, but what else is new? This war did nothing to protect America, it cost a fortune in all the ways that one can measure costs of a war, and it diverted attention and resources from other problems that needed that attention and money.

And now we are associated historically with the sewer that is Iraq.  Before our intervention we had plausible deniability for that train wreck.   Now we don't.     And I am not even going to the issue of the Sunni/Shiite power struggle with Shiite Iran right next door.  Jesus, didn't these people read even one book about the history of the region before they started this little intervention?

5. The Deficit

When Clinton left office we had a surplus. When Bush left office we were in a major depression with a huge deficit.

6. Tax Breaks for the Rich

Increase taxes on the middle class to destroy them, give tax breaks to the rich to increase inequality in this country. 

7. The Economic Breakdown and the Bailout

The financial system committed gross financial malfeasance. The Bush administration failed to regulate them properly and then bailed them out when they failed to the tune of ... how much money did we spend? Does anyone really know? Not less than a trillion dollars. Some people think that is a lot of money.  Where is my bailout?  I am waiting.

8. Denial of Global Warming and Science in General

By denying Global Warming and failing to act, millions and probably hundreds of millions of people will be impoverished or killed. Probably. Global Warming is real, it is not clear where it will all go, nor is it clear what we should do about it, but denying it for 8 years did not help. The Republicans in general and Bush in particular should be held accountable for this as time goes on. We were the most powerful country in the world at the time when the world needed to act, and we denied its existence.

9. Criminal Judges, Environmental Disasters, the List Goes On

From right wing judges who perjured themselves to get approved, to animals taken off the endangered species list by right wing scum appointed by Bush to the EPA, the list of crimes of the Bush Administration goes on and on.

A rush to judgement?

There are very serious issues with the Republican failure to see what a disaster Bush was.  It may mean the destruction of the Republican party (which would be a good thing) or it may mean that we are so polarized as a nation that we can not govern ourselves, which is the current state of affairs.   

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1. Afghanistan was and is a nightmare, and one that, contrary to popular belief, we did not have that much to do with creating.   After 911, and the Taliban's refusal to act on Bin Laden and his organization, no administration could have survived that did not act.    On that point at least the Bush administration did not fuck up.  Thereafter, in their management of the conflict, things are less clear.

Articles on Long Term Unemployment and Ageism: You Are Completely Fucked

[rewritten 4/24/2013]

Lets continue our little discussion of unemployment in America with two articles in the online media.

The first article discusses the discrimination against those who have been unemployed for a while and to that I would add to those who have chosen a non-traditional career track in any way.  Woe unto them because they are doomed. 

The second discusses ageism in the technical fields. I do not agree with everything that the author says about why companies do this, but I do agree with the general thrust of his article. I do not agree that there is nothing to be done about it, however. That I completely reject.  But I do agree with the fundamental premise, that being over 35 or so means you are a bad person and should be rejected and or destroyed.  Certainly all our employment law supports that principle.  

http://www.slate.com/blogs/moneybox/2013/04/15/rand_ghayad_on_long_term_unemployment_the_long_term_unemployed_are_discriminated.html

http://www.linkedin.com/today/post/article/20130422020049-8451-the-tech-industry-s-darkest-secret-it-s-all-about-age

Discrimination of any form is very hard to relate to unless you have experienced it.   And of course paranoia can play its role.  Did you not get the job because of your skin color, or because they just hate your face and want you to die?    This is even more true when dealing with very stupid people, such as people in the entertainment industry, where you often run into people who are anti-semitic but are not actually educated enough to realize that is what is going on.

One thing you do not have to worry about in most circumstances involving technology or the motion picture industry is the fear that you might intimidate them by using big words.  This is not as much of a problem as it used to be because in the current manifestation and economic climate they are not going to talk to you anyway, or take you seriously, or consider you for the position.  If they did consider you seriously then they might talk to you and then they might hate you because you used big words, but realistically that is not going to happen.

In fact, the whole job application process is not designed for experienced or intelligent people.  If you are one of those two categories, dont bother.  You are just wasting your time, and everyone knows it.  That is why when you tell people you are looking for work, and they tell you to look at the web site, what they are really saying is that you should go fuck yourself and die.

Long Term Unemployed:

Ageism:

We will discuss both of these in later posts.