Cambodian Students Review Hollywood, part I

Most home-grown Cambodian
films involve scary ghosts.

Last year when I was teaching in Cambodia, I decided to start a weekly lending library of sorts for DVDs, since they were cheap (to me) and would provide an additional flow of English to students, not to mention entertainment. Unlike EFL students in more developed countries like Indonesia, students had seen relatively few western films, and were generally unaware of who big movie stars were. (This made the lesson on "Little-known facts of the Stars" a total pain to teach.)

Once a month, I would have them write reviews. I have a good number of these, so it's likely to be an ongoing series. Here goes...

Cambodian Movie Reviews

Fly of the Concord: Germain and Bret are close friends. They are the main characters in the movie. They are kind of funny characters. Every episode they have one or two songs that describe their lives and feeling. In an episode the two friends get hurt because they faile in their love. At first I thought only Bret that have a broken heart, but later in the episode Saly also broked Germain's heart.

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Today's Bizarre Primary Source

LIGHT GIVES LIGHT, TO LIGHT DISCOVER -- "AD INFINITUM."

ST. LOUIS, (Missouri Territory,)

NORTH AMERICA, April 10, A. D. 1818.

TO ALL THE WORLD!

I declare the earth is hollow and habitable within; containing a number of solid concentrick spheres, one within the other, and that it is open at the poles 12 or 16 degrees; I pledge my life in support of this truth, and am ready to explore the hollow, if the world will support and aid me in the undertaking.

Jno. Cleves Symmes.

Of Ohio, Late Captain of Infantry.

N. B. -- I have ready for the press, a Treatise on the Principles of Matter, wherein I show proofs of the above positions, account for various phenomena, and disclose Doctor Darwin's Golden Secret.

My terms are the patronage of this and the new worlds.

I dedicate to my Wife and her ten Children.

I select Doctor S. L. Mitchill, Sir H. Davy, and Baron Alex. de Humboldt, as my protectors.

I ask one hundred brave companions, well equipped, to start from Siberia in the fall season, with Reindeer and slays, on the ice of the frozen sea: I engage we find a warm and and rich land, stocked with thrifty vegetables and animals if not men, on reaching one degree northward of latitude 82; we will return in the succeeding spring. J. C. S.

Mark Twain sounds off

I'm currently writing up my talk from September at Paraflows, and digging into Mark Twain's observations on the technology of his day. He's probably the first author to be published on the absurdity of one-sided conversations. Alexis Madrigal, the Atlantic's tech editor, notes how Twain picked up on the oddity of "speech detached from its surroundings and social environment, existing fully only on the electrified line connecting two people."

In 1906 the New York Times recorded the old salt's reaction when shown the teleharmonium, my personal favorite when it comes to electromechanical musical instruments weighing 200 tons or more. Twain remarked that

"The trouble with these beautiful, novel things is that they interfere so with one's arrangements. Every time I see or hear a new wonder like this I have to postpone my death right off. I couldn't possibly leave the world until I have heard this again and again."

That's a pretty great summation of how exciting modern invention can be. Check out the rest of the account for some of his experiences cussing over the phone. (if you can access it, Times archive here)

Games and Learning, part 2

Greetings, fellow vagabonds. I hope you'll excuse the absence, as I was off canvassing in Bucks County, PA, trying to salvage a few candidates for the Dems. So it goes.

 Anyway, as we were discussing last time, games can best educate when they put you in someone's shoes, and give you a better sense of the decisions they had to make, moreover of what their decision space was. You need to have the freedom to see all of the options available, and to take those paths as best you can. Historical simulation games are, almost by definition, also contrafactual alternate-history generating games. If you want to see figure out what was in Napoleon's head at Waterloo, then set up the table with a couple of friends (Or, the computer alone) and play it out.

The logo of the
 most famous war game
 fail of all time.

But there are a few wrinkles involved. Particularly when it comes to wargames. Despite their attempt to include Clausewitzian concepts like "fog of war," a lot of wargames basically presume perfect command, control, communications, and intelligence. (This was part of the problem with Millenium Challenge 02, from what I gather.) When we play on computer, every epoch of war is translated into our modern information-centric model, where the commander has perfect knowledge of what's going on and perfect confidence that his troops will do what he says. This is because it's built into the interface to be responsive and transparent.

But any student of military history, (or indeed any warrior today) could tell you that reality is not necessarily so. You may issue orders that may or may not be interpreted correctly (rivers of ink have been spilled over whether Richard Ewell misinterpreted Robert E. Lee's command to "take the hill, if practicable.") I may be uninformed, but I haven't seen any really good way in games to model unreliable communications and signals intelligence, despite the fact that entire campaigns have turned on such things. And with a few exceptions, there seems to be little emphasis placed on lines of supply and communication, cutting of which is one of the main points of modern war.