Art Update Soon...

Sorry I haven't posted much as of late. Been busy with school and art. Expect some art up here in the next two weeks.

"Remember, Science is your only friend!"

That is an actual quote from one of the many interactive museum games I looked at in class today. Some are very well done (if not a little odd) like the ones at the Virtual Museum of Canada. Others, however are little more than typical boring old games appropriated for the museum websites (like dinosaur "Memory").

However, I found that even on the good interactive games, I could not get over the fact that I was essentially being forced to learn something, which is not really a good feeling. I play a lot of video games, and I think a hallmark of good game design is having the user perform tasks and learn things without them realizing that they are doing. In many games, you may be basically reduced to being a messenger or deliveryperson, but in good ones, you do not realize that you are doing it. This is the difference between say a Legend of Zelda and a bargain basement RPG. The good game is so immersive that you do not realize that you're performing mundane tasks, or even learning.

Another good recent example is Guitar Hero. This game teaches people the rudiments of rhythm and music, and they don't even realize it. They're just having fun pretending to be rock stars. Yet, after they play, everyone has a better understanding of rhythm and tempo, and many other rudimentary musical concepts. It doesn't do this outright. Rather it is an intuitive, piece of the game.

For educational games, I feel their sense of good game design reached its apex in the very early 90's: with Oregon Trail. Everyone remembers this. We all had fun trying to get to Oregon, and teasing our friends when the party members we named after them died of dysentery. And for the most part, no one thought they were learning about the inherent hardships and travails that a small family would encounter caravanning across the American West. Nope. We were hunting deer, and fording streams, and hoping our Wagon Leads didn't break their legs and die of gangrene. But though all that we all got the message: travelling across the old west was really, really hard. And many, many people died trying to do it. Well, if you could bottle whatever it was Oregon Trail had, and give it to nearly all of these museums, I think we'd all be in a better educational boat.

The Catalyst Theory

The following is an excerpt from a treatise by a person identifying him or herself only as "Delphi." Delphi is a popular conspiracy theorist that posts on various message boards and conspiracy websites around the internet. Delphi is different from most modern theorists in that he/she does not ascribe to the popular "Illuminati/Lizardmen/New World Order" theory, but instead has created a new one. This new theory, which is known as "The Catalyst Theory" after the identifier Delphi gives one of the major subjects of the treatise, has some similarities to the "New World Order" delusion, but strikes out in its own unique way, as you will see. Delphi is also somewhat of a historical/mythological revisionist, in that he/she typically reveals the "true" events behind myths, while writing new myths, that Delphi says are based on events occurring in the present day. This excerpt is from the beginning of the essay.

"Aliens walk among us. Not the gray-headed, vacant eyed dwarfs that the rank and file dupes travel to some god-forsaken desert in hopes of finding every year, or the slimy reptilian sub-humans, but unseen ones that live inside a great many of us. My conjecture will indeed be met with derision from the so-called 'scientists' and the close-minded idiots that roam the net still looking for the second shooter on the grassy knoll. However, it is the truth, and it is my duty to make it known.

In order to explain the existence of these invaders, I'll have to feed you, dear reader, a little advanced physics. I will not get too technical. After all, I hardly understand all the sigmas and summations myself, but the math is irrelevant to what I'm doing here. I do have friends and acquaintances that do understand the sticky stuff, and they distilled it down to something you and I can understand.

You see, my friends, there two branches of physics known as sting theory and quantum mechanics. They are very complicated pieces of science, but the practical implications of them are staggering.

You see, our universe has four dimensions: length, width, depth, and time. These define how objects exist and move in our universe. These are like rules that impose constraints on our universe, and everything within it.

However, these branches of physics have postulated the existence of more dimensions. And when you have more dimensions, you can do more things, as you have new rules that define those things.

Well, where are those dimensions? Have you ever seen the fifth dimension? The thirteenth? Of course you haven't. They aren't here. Or rather they are, but as we are custom built for this restrictive universe, we can only perceive the first four.

These dimensions are out there, and there are probably universes out there that have five, six, eleven dimensions. These universes lay parallel to others, or so physics speculates.

Imagine a loaf of of sliced bread, stood on end. Now pick a slice in the middle. We'll call this our universe. Everything you've ever known and loved, your friends and family and annoying jobs are on a single atom of a single starch molecule in that vast slice of grain and oats. Now look. Our universe is in the middle. There are a whole lotta slices above and below. Those are the other universes. And if we were built differently, perhaps we could perceive them with all of their strange dimensions. And sometimes some of us can. And what we see at those times drive us mad.

At any rate, it is possible that since life evolved here. it will have evolved in any of those other universe in the 13.7 billion years since they all burst into existence. Now what if some of those extra-universal organisms evolved sentience and began to penetrate the universal barriers of the multiverse, exploring and conquering? What if more than one of them did and came into conflict?

Now, what if these organisms came across your little corner of our little constrained universe when humanity was just climbing out of the trees? Now maybe they decided to stay. Maybe they liked it here, or maybe they saw some sort of potential in infant humanity. Or just maybe we are some sort of valuable resource to them.

But they can't stay here as their eleven-dimensional (or whatever) selves. They have to play by our four-dimensional rules, you see, and all the restrictive conservation of mass and energy and Newtonian and Einsteinian physics and such that go with those rules. So they take human hosts. And they play games with us.

And suppose you are an early human, knowing nothing about physics or chemistry or biology. And you see beings of indescribable power performing wonderful and terrible acts. You see though the alien organisms can't break the rules of our universe, perhaps they can bend them. What would you do? Would you fear them? Or perhaps worship them? Maybe they would become like gods... or angels... or, maybe demons?

Well, you see that is exactly what happened, my dear friends. The aliens are still here. They are the demons of myth, and yet they aren't. Their struggle against their enemies and their enslavement of humanity is the basis for every myth and legend and religion on the planet. And though no one believes in them any more. They are still here. Waiting and watching..."