Eco-Terrorism and Final Fantasy 7

So I was thinking about Final Fantasy 7, one of my favorite games; and found myself contemplating something that I often think about when I reminisce about FFVII.  It is the interesting fact that the protagonists are terrorists.  AVALANCHE, the group that the player controls, is blatantly a terrorist organization.  When playing the game, the you plant bombs and blow up buildings, make assassination attempts, and routinely have to run and hide from law enforcement.  This feels like it might be a politically incorrect theme politically incorrect in this decade, especially the because the terrorists are heroes of epic proportions.  

So where do I stand on this whole topic of FFVII putting terrorism in a positive light?  I thinks its a great concept that might have been shot down is FFVII had been made in the year 2002.  After all, the Sons of Liberty were a terrorist organization and its perfectly fine to celebrate them in this country (I learned that from an awesome lecture I attended my senior year).  I think it's important to note that the kind of terrorism in FFVII is not really "911 terrorism" but really more along the lines of eco-terrorism.

Eco-terrorism is something I find to be really intriguing.  For one, loss of life is something that eco-terrorists work to avoid, just like AVALANCHE does in FFVII.  However, the FBI points out that their actions certainly can be dangerous enough to inadvertently take a life.  This reminds me of how the bomb AVALANCHE plants in FFVII is a lot bigger than the group planned for it to be.  Anyways, eco-terrorism is among the top domestic terrorist threats in the United States, and eco-terrorism has some significant advantages over terror networks such as Al-Qaeda that makes them such a unique breed of terrorism.  For starters, people can sympathize with them due to the fact that many people may agree with eco-terrorists motives of preserving the planet and the aforementioned fact that they try to avoid taking lives.

The real advantage that eco-terrorists have is that they do not need to operate in a network.  There is no need for coordinated attacks because their objectives are simple and individual cells can plan their attacks on their own.  This level of independence makes eco-terrorists hard to track down due to the lack of communication between cells.

Personally I don't have an opinion either way on the activities of eco-terrorists because even though I don't believe in reckless vandalism, I also think that too many people turn a blind eye to how they treat their planet.

Extra Limbs

So I was in the GEL lab today and I was contemplating what it would be like if human developed extra arms.  I figure more arms is the most practical evolution because more legs would be awkward and other things like extra ears don't really seem that practical.  Having an ear sprouting from an elbow would just be... weird.  However, if you believe in evolution, I don't think those sorts of things would make it past natural selection. If your a creationist, well at least for me "elbow ears" do not fall under the category of actions typical of a loving god, then again I think back to Catholic middle school religion class, and contemplate old-testament, vengeance God.  Perhaps a plague of ears will be set upon us if we make him angry enough.

Anyways, the thought of having four arms is a rather tricky sort of thing, because its such a foreign idea.  I've been trying to imagine them the way that amputees often still can sense their missing limbs.  However, even if I get somewhat close to actually tricking myself into believing that I have an extra set of arms, there is a gigantic problem with the concept of extra limbs.  The problem is that I don't think that the human brain is equipped to be commanding of that many hands at once.  I can't keep track of four hands at once in my head.  There's a reason why people generally have a dominant hand/arm, and I think that it's because we aren't very good at utilizing all of our resources at once.  I think that as the number of arms increases its likely that the usefulness of each new arm would significantly decrease.

I wish I could conduct a scientific study to look at all sorts of things concerning the effects of increasing the number of arms on a human, but unfortunately I can't just make people sprout extra arms.  I think this is one of those questions that I'll have to ask Jesus if I ever get the chance to meet him.

My shoes might be holier than the Pope

It has been snowing a lot at Michigan State for the past several days.  Which is great because I love snow (and snowboarding), but the first snow is also a learning experience.  The kind of learning experience where you get know which one of your shoes has more holes in it.  For me, the answer is the right one, with several small holes in the sole by the heel, the cold icy slush flows into my foot and makes it go numb when I'm walking between classes.  I think I'm going to have to invest in a new set of shoes.

The good news is that I started scripting my character controller for Manatee Quest and I've managed to get the manatee moving how I want it to except for a couple of tweaks I'm going to finish off before I go on Thanksgiving break.  Hopefully in the two weeks before Christmas break I'll be able to implement a good camera script and integrate some animation.

Ska died. Again.

I'm going to see We Are The Union tonight at Mac's Bar.  WATU is still going strong despite the fact that the ska scene that I knew and loved has begun to dissolve.  I feel like this always happens with ska music.  It dies but it won't stay dead.  Someone always comes along and turns it into something fresh, and it builds a following.  My friend Johnny Tsunami, saxophone player for WATU and The Flaming Tsunamis, told me a couple of weeks ago that everyone in the scene was friends.  The problem is that our scene's not growing, but rather growing up and getting old.  As a result, many of the significant bands have decided to call it quits, such as The Fad and Public Access, and there are more that have yet to officially announce that they will be no more.

Needless to say the whole thing bums me out a little bit.  It's especially weird that at the golden age of 18, I am "old."  However, I have a lot of hope that the next generation ska bands that are making something fresh and new.  I feel like Bomb the Music Industry! has started an entire era of bands releasing their music for free.  WATU is something fresh as well, considering they really do an awesome job of blending posi-pop punk with ska in ways that I find much more enjoyable than Less Than Jake, considering I never really could get into Less Than Jake.

Anyways, I'm stoked for some awesome music tonight and I think I'm going to make a road trip to Connecticut where a lot of the bands that are breaking up are playing one last show together.

Game Jam Conclusion

Balls to the Walls came in first by 1 point! If my team had contained more than 3 people I would have been inclined to say that I didn't contribute a whole lot. Charles Roman, the president of Spartasoft, held down the programming end of things, and was really what made our game happen. Eric Musser did sound and music as well as instructions, interfaces, and credits. As mentioned in the previous post, I cooked up the art assets and some level design. I'm excited to see what the other teams came up with when we present them at the Spartasoft meeting in 2 weeks. Fun stuff, I get to be back in the lab to work on more video games in 7 hours.