SFLAG 1

The debugging aspect of Star Ocean: The Second Story is mad... I knew this game was legendarily problematic to hack because of its readiness to shift memory around, and that getting to the debug room involved activating a flag option on the debug menu, then entering a certain town in the game. It turns out that with 'SFLAG' up, trying to enter certain areas in the game can result in seeing other areas, though not necessarily with a controllable or a visible party—and what you get can depend on other flags and where you enter from; trying to enter the main area of Arlia from the left, at different stages of the game, I've been presented with both a bakery and a hallway. Trying to turn Lacour into the debug room is trickier than the FAQs make out; I got sent to several other places, including the middle of the ocean. (Rena didn't drown, but she couldn't walk either.) I eventually got in when I tried the Private Action mode.

As for the room itself... well, you're invisible. Rena's sprite is buffered, but isn't drawn in the actual room. (Incidentally, in the bottom right of the buffer is the part of Lacour one would have entered in normal circumstances.) There's a background image but it's just a backdrop. Other than that it's a nice, functional debug room; apart from the version details nothing seems to have been attended to in the translation, but at least the translated game can still display Japanese script correctly.

Essential Restoration

The fire on the Cutty Sark, with the current hopes for a partial restoration, raises some potential philosophical questions in the 'cultural heritage' area. If a heritage object has undergone alteration, even if that's restoration, then parts of it aren't the original parts, and it isn't really clear how heritage ethics should then deal with value attribution. I hope I'm not going to have to dig terribly deep into mereology... How did Pratchett put it in The Carpet People? Something like this: 'The head and the handle had been replaced a few times, but technically it was the same axe...' (Of course... persistence of identity through change is related too...)

Actually that's just the sort of problem which a holistic approach ought to be well equipped to handle—if I can sort out all the problems with moving from a holistic construal of 'culture' to specific, practical decisions. (On a related note I've been wondering about parodies, rip-offs, homages, etc. to culturally significant works: they necessarily share structural elements with the originals, but intuitively don't gain significance thereby...)

On a non-technical note, I wish those involved in the restoration efforts the very best of British luck.

Unfinished Battle With Debug Menu

Having previously posted a video of the Valkyrie Profile test map, I thought I'd add an image of the battle debug menu. (It didn't seem suitable material for a video. Okay, it's frankly not that interesting just to look at...) It's basically as described in Aryuze RV's debug FAQ, except that I couldn't get those codes to work, so I made the code 800A965A 0007 to trick the game into trying to move the cursor to the eighth position in the main battle menu. (Maybe the Ultimate Hits edition has variant innards...)

Mostly Chrono-Related, For Some Reason

Today's procrastination: looking at the various ways of setting images to game music.

Show/hide the videos...

The 'avoid gameplay footage' method (which seems a bit of an awkward limitation, though the result is fine, and I like the song):

The 'mix sprite animation with anime footage' method:

The 'just stick with sprites' approach:

The Mario Paint method:

It doesn't really belong with the others, but if you can manage it: the 'orchestra' method. Oh, to have been there... I liked the way Chrono Symphonic handled the Chrono Trigger opening theme, but it seemed quite different from the original in places, so this is very heaven.

My Conspiracy Theory

While looking into user agent error handling (because of a problem with viewing some pages on Mozilla Suite—I mean, besides the assault on one's eyes) I came across one of those pages which just begs to have its markup examined, and noticed this: <meta name="ICBM" content="35.724989, -078.885263">

Since it's a while since I read up on <meta> tags I imagine this is probably just some protocol I haven't heard or have forgotten about, but I quite like the idea that it might be a secret geolocation message for a nuclear strike. [Insert Lehrer/Strangelove reference here.] It reminds me of an interesting article about the things people squirrel away in HTTP response headers... (I miss being able to view Durham headers and see which proxy I'd got. Squirrel and Hamster, I haven't forgotten you...)

[Update: a bit of both, as it turns out. I remain darkly amused.]

‘All You Need Is Censorship’

This definitely isn't one of my careful philosophical reflections on the overlooked role of normativity in media effects debates, but I think it does capture an aspect my more respectable treatments don't: what a constricting view of human agency it is I'm looking at. I started this ages ago, and finished it off to keep me amused in between bouts of essay-writing. To be sung to the tune of All You Need Is Love, and rather consciously contrasting with it.

Cen-sor-ship,
Cen-sor-ship,
Cen-sor-ship...

Psychopaths abound: don't be surprised;
Act before we're all desensitised
By immoral books and films and playing computer games:
It's easy!

Nothing you can do once they're depraved,
Copying how some film star behaved;
Therefore we must keep ev'ryone as pure as possible:
It's easy!

All you need is cnsrshp!
All you need is cnsrshp!
All you need is cnsrshp, cnsrshp!
Censorship you need...

Nothing you can know that's not approved;
Nothing you can see that we've removed;
No-one should be free to see what no-one should want to see:
It's easy!

All you need is cnsrshp!
All you need is cnsrshp!
All you need is cnsrshp, cnsrshp!
Censorship you need...
(Repeat to fade, with occasional cuts.)

Theremins

I took it into my head to search the Web for 'babushika' – guess why – and found something quite interesting:

As I sat in the front row, each student removed from their bag a matryoshka – a Russian nesting doll – and a stethoscope. Then they put one arm of their stethoscope into one ear and placed the end on the side of their doll.... [and] the band began to wave their free hands back and forth in front of the dolls—creating an electronic warble that I soon recognized as a haunting version of 'Over the Rainbow'...

Reading the first issue of Steampunk Magazine gave me a slight interest in offbeat (no pun intended) musical instruments – that and my interest in chiptunes – and I hadn't heard of theremins before, let alone theremins inside Russian dolls.

Should Deny the Divine Destiny of Gravity

More test map levitation! Here we have some invisible scenery in Valkyrie Profile.

Voynich-Inspired Animation In Black and Green

This seemed to go quite nicely with that Borges-inspired video: nice timing regarding its appearance on the VMS mailing list, and bonus points because the creator's name is very similar to that of one of our departmental tutors. It's nicely summarised by one list member: 'Well, that was... confusing. And disturbing. Didn't like it at all.'

Unreal Embodiment

I've been reading some Cordwainer Smith recently, and a couple of his stories made me think very much of the phenomenology of embodiment. Scanners Live In Vain is largely focussed on the imaginative possibility of observing one's body without 'inner' sensory experience, without even proprioception. 'How easy it was... when you really stood outside your own body... and looked back into it with your eyes alone. Then you could manage the body, rule it coldly... But to realise that you were a body, that this thing was ruling you, that the mind could kick the flesh and send it roaring off into panic!' The Lady Who Sailed the Soul (co-written with Genevieve Linebarger) imagines someone on life-support equipment whose experiences have been greatly slowed down: 'She could feel the steady roar of her heart like a fast vibrator as it ticked against the time-span of her awareness... On her abdomen, she felt as if someone had built a fire... She could look at her arms with blurring vision, note the skin tightening, loosening and tightening again, as changes in temperatures affected it.'

I wonder whether this kind of imaginative approach to embodiment could be put to any philosophical work. (Maybe people who work on animal phenomenology are doing something similar—but then, any 'imaginative' work there would have Nagel's bat to deal with... For that matter, not just there.) Note to self: see whether any papers have been written on the phenomenology of lycanthropy, vampirism, etc.

Heart Beat Time

There's no particularly good reason for my owning a copy of Alice In Cyberland; I spotted a secondhand copy going cheap while ordering some other things, and since I knew there was a vague link to Serial Experiments Lain I bought it out of curiosity. As a game it's not that great; the battle scenes in the videos look rather more exciting than they actually are. (I get the impression the designers were pretty keen on rock/paper/scissors; there's even a mini-game derived from it, which is the only part of the game with a two-player mode.) Apparently one popular section was the karaoke, which is a completely non-interactive bonus.

Link to Gallery

<<<   screenshots  >>>

The second screenshot shows the NAVI that returned in Lain, and this game's Alice In Wonderland references – a boss called 'Wocky', etc. – also account for Lain's Cheshire Cat: maybe even the same 'Oyaji Neko' as pictured here. The style's completely different, though: a fairly silly sentai affair. 'Cyberland' itself is portrayed as a sort of 'virtual reality' space, as opposed to Lain's semi-realistic but often symbolically/impressionistically styled Wired. Below one can see Alice (gutsy), Rena (sensible) and Juri (irritating) in combat against, err, nasty flickering status bars: emulator trouble, I think.

Show/hide the videos...

Symbolic Representations of the Inner Workings of Old Shire Hall

Oooh, temptation... (But not at US$45 for 19 minutes.)

‘Warning: Contains Philosophies and Themes of English [sic] Literature’

While I'm procrastinating trawling for underappreciated gems, here's something quite nice: someone's trailer for an imagined film adaptation (appropriately enough) of Borges's The Circular Ruins. I especially like the opening shot.

Borges, then... I just said that I like Yoshitaka Amano's work partly because it releases the mind from the confinements of rigid discipline. Borges stays within them and plays with them—opening up new possibilities from within, if you like. I think the genre of commentaries on imaginary books is one with a lot of still-unexplored potential (probably because another thing I'm fond of is reading translators' introductions, themselves an undeservedly sidelined literary genre).

美天

It was pretty well inevitable that sooner or later my mind would turn to Amano, visionary of dreamily beautiful phantasms, so why not now? (After posting on Cuneo and Roerich, it's only fitting...) He's the perfect antidote to the kind of rigorous argumentation I go in for in the name of not leaving university: a conjuror of whispered yearnings and liberator of the world-weary soul.

Below are some videos (all other people's), including a clip of Amano's appearance in New Rose Hotel.

Show/hide the videos...

Inking a Final Fantasy XII Judge:

In a more comical vein, a moogle:

Finally, his thespian moment:

Legendary Levitation

I wasn't able to upload this in time to contribute it to Debug Room Insanity II, but here it is: a Legend of Mana debug room in which, if you walk around the area where the exit should be, you can walk onto the background and foreground scenery.

Philosophers Motivated to Ponder Philosophers’ Ulterior Motives

It's always good to pick up a book for work-related reasons, then discover that it happens to be a delight to read: and Unpopular Essays is just what one expects from Russell, starting from the Preface:

In the Preface to my Human Knowledge I said that I was writing not only for professional philosophers, and that 'philosophy proper deals with matters of interest to the general educated public'. Reviewers took me to task, saying they found parts of the book difficult, and implying that my words were such as to mislead purchasers. I do not wish to expose myself again to this charge; I will therefore confess that there are several sentences in the present volume which some unusually stupid children of ten might find a little puzzling.

In fact, I worry that the style might be a little too seductive (and then I remember how I picked up the habit of calling persuasive texts 'seductive': it's something I absorbed from Chris Long); luckily there's a sharp reminder of human fallibility in the shape of an essay which predicted that by the end of the 20th Century humans would be extinct, or a new Dark Age would have begun, or there would be a single world government. (A bit like Deus Ex.) On the other hand, the essay 'The Functions of a Teacher' made me think repeatedly of The Subtle Philosopher, and remains blessedly at odds with the conveyor belt model of education. I also found 'The Superior Virtue of the Oppressed' to be an interesting observational piece of sociology—but again, seductive: what about the reliability of its empirical foundations...?

Show/hide my thoughts on the role of ulterior motives in philosophy...

I'm presently working on the role of ulterior motives in philosophy; the topic was originally suggested to me by Nietzsche's 'On the Prejudices of Philosophers' (BGE):

Gradually it has become clear to me what every great philosophy so far has been: namely, the personal confession of its author and a kind of involuntary and unconscious memoir; also that the moral (or immoral) intentions in every philosophy constituted the real germ of life from which the whole plant had grown.

Indeed, if one would explain how the abstrusest metaphysical claims of a philosopher really came about, it is always well (and wise) to ask first: at what morality does all this (does he) aim? Accordingly, I do not believe that a 'drive to knowledge' is the father of philosophy...

It interests me that he specifies every great philosophy. (He actually goes on to distinguish disinterested scholars from philosophers, in whom 'there is nothing whatever that is impersonal'; and Kaufmann adds a footnote to explain that this has to do with the days before the expansion of academic philosophy.) Maybe that has to do with his remark elsewhere that the errors of great men are more fruitful than the truths of little men; leaving aside what counted as fructiferosity for Nietzsche, it's probably arguable that what might be called ulterior motives can have philosophical pros and cons. Russell, in 'Philosophy's Ulterior Motives', tends to play up the risk of slipshod arguments being accepted, but he seems to say of Berkeley that whilst his theological aims encouraged him to enter dubious territory, without those aims he probably wouldn't have published the better parts of his work either.

Philosophy has been defined as 'an unusually obstinate attempt to think clearly'; I should define it rather as 'an unusually ingenious attempt to think fallaciously'. The philosopher's temperament is rare, because it has to combine two somewhat conflicting characteristics: on the one hand a strong desire to believe some general proposition about the universe or human life; on the other hand, inability to believe contentedly except on what appear to be intellectual grounds. The more profound the philosopher, the more intricate and subtle must his fallacies be in order to produce in him the desired state of intellectual acquiescence. That is why philosophy is obscure.

For both of them the psychology of the ulterior motive has an explanatory role. For Russell it explains how philosophers could fall into the path of obscurity and silly logical errors. (On Descartes: 'His system, psychologically, was as follows: No God, no geometry; but geometry is delicious; therefore God exists.') For Nietzsche, on the other hand, I'm not sure whether there's anywhere to fall from (but I don't want to turn this into a study of perspectivism and the Will to Power...). Russell explains philosophical habits in terms of mental characteristics allegedly common among philosophers...

Philosophers, for the most part, are constitutionally timid, and dislike the unexpected. Few of them would be genuinely happy as pirates or burglars. Accordingly they invent systems which make the future calculable, at least in its main outlines. The supreme practitioner in this art was Hegel...

...whereas Nietzsche, in commenting on the psychological character of certain philosophers (notably Kant – 'the instinct which errs without fail, anti-nature as instinct, German decadence as philosophy' – and Spinoza), is perhaps less interested in explanation; or maybe he sees the role of explanation not as part of understanding the risk of temptation but as more historical/biographical (and hermeneutic...?), so that the criticism isn't exactly of 'getting it wrong', as in Russell, but of mistaken pretensions to universal validity.

Anyway, let's move away from textual analysis and look at ulterior motives directly. Basically my question is, are they something we ought to worry about?

One suggestion might be that an ulterior motive can keep one from publishing: Leibniz springs to mind here, Panglossian in public and keeping his deep philosophical worries to himself. (Okay, a bit of a simplification, but still...) Well, one can say in response to that that a lot of publication relies on incentives other than a desire to inform: the need for payment, in turn driven by the need to eat. Or a desire for fame and adulation. So maybe the problem there (if indeed there is one) should be said to be not with whether a motive might be called ulterior but with one's priorities.

There is, however, the related possibility that, of those contributions which have made it into the marketplace of ideas, one might be promoted over another more than is warranted by their perceptible philosophical merits—for reasons of political expediency, for example. Though I do wonder whether that worry might reflect an arguably idealised vision of philosophy as following wherever the argument leads, when possibly a messier approach could be at least as efficient at generating fruiful philosophical ideas. Still, there does seem to be a possibility of unjustified marginalisation, a risk of what it might not be improper to call an 'injustice'. (My tutor loaned me a book which suggests that we should draw our undertanding of rational inquiry from the practice of 'hearing the other side' in public discussion and debate.) Which raises the possibility of the practices of philosophical inquiry's being subject to ethical requirements...

I think I'm assuming a view of philosophy as a social/public practice of generating ideas here: not necessarily a full-on 'handmaiden of science' view, but very much a practice of putting ideas into the public domain. Maybe that should be contrasted with views which put more emphasis on personal predicament: I have in mind especially Buddhism, in which the point is purification (and thereby escape from Samsara), so if you don't have the right motive it just won't work until you acquire it. So if we shift the emphasis from the ideas to the person (which maybe we can also do under Nietzsche's account, given all that Solomon claimed about the legitimacy of his ad hominem approach), maybe we can say that it's possible to do 'philosophical' work in a philosophically 'wrong' way: a performance that resembles philosophy, if you like. (Courting Sophia without really loving her.)

Then there's still the possibility that motivation can have a distorting influence on the content of ideas, which is where Russell and Nietzsche come in. Or maybe the problem (if there is one) is a universal misapprehension of what's going on—making philosophy self-undermining because it doesn't really proceed as, if it isn't to reduce to sociology, it should. Or perhaps there's a problem for any foundational understanding of philosophical method: instead of a nice, clean Cogito you get a murky set of submerged motivations...

(I think this post is long enough by now... but I still haven't defined 'ulterior'...)

Lost Text of Final Fantasy VII

I hadn't looked into the dummied text in Final Fantasy VII before, because I'd basically assumed that if there was anything as interesting as the travelling salesman's dialogue I'd have heard about it from similar sources. Not so. As I discovered when firing up the Loveless utility to see whether there might be any light to shed on the outtake scenes, there are fascinating relics of the development process. [Update: here's someone else's investigation... I didn't include the 'homemade potion' text below.]

This isn't exhaustive, partly because this is hardly a FAQ and partly because I can't perfectly remember all the text that is used in the game and haven't time to check thoroughly.

Show/hide the rest of this decidedly lengthy post...

Some of the dummied lines are the sort of placeholder text and odd snippets you'd expect. So we have fragments like these:

Received "     " Materia!

Received "     "!

DEBUG MODE

NOJIMA

Temporary stopper
October 7”

doing it

Thudthudthud!!
That ???? is supposed to come in.

"Morph Menu"

"This is the end of the Test Play.

There's some extra text apparently associated with the debug rooms too: presumably at one time Kato's room was even weirder...

We're working hard making the deep {BLUE}.
Wait a little longer.

nyuk‚nyuk‚nyuk…
Welcome to Kato's room.

That doesn't really matter all that much‚babushika.
{NEW PAGE}
Get ready‚caped crusader‚Nya-ha‚ha……
Don't think you'll get away so easy.

Now on to a fascinating new world…
Let's go!!
You won't regret it.

Another couple of debug room fragments are 'Aho' ('retard') and 'Baka' ('idiot'): charming. Oh, and there's a reason Cloud can end up being called 'ster': it's what looks like a failed/aborted attempt to modify name variables, so 'Cloud' was supposed to become 'Cloudster', or if you call him 'Tim', 'Timster', etc. (The Japanese Chrono Trigger does something similar to form the name of Marle's ancestor; in English we just get the fixed 'Nadia'.)

{CLOUD}ster
{BARRET}alator
{TIFA}lonia
Princess {AERIS}
Little {YUFFIE}
Cait Sithers
Ol' {CID}
{VINCENT}

There's text left over from the demo disc, in which Cloud had to help Biggs as well as Jessie during the first mission:

Biggs
“I just let my guard down for a minute…
And someone got behind me…”

I hoped to find some dummied text in the freight carriage that might help explain the Cargo outtake; there is a bit... After "It's not ready yet... Whoa!" there's a blank, then 'Shut-off the switch in this position.' (No idea...) Finally, there's what looks like debug/placeholder text:

We can escape from the train event…
Did it!!
4th failure
3rd failure
2nd failure
1st failure
Escaped

What turns out to be of greater interest is some extra dialogue with Jessie. In the final version, after thanking Cloud for helping her at the reactor she leaves; this is how things might have gone:

Jessie
“Say‚thanks for helping me
back there at the reactor!”

{CLOUD}
“Yeah…”
{CHOICE}That's OK
{CHOICE}Quit thanking me

{CLOUD}
“Don't mention it.

{CLOUD}
“It bugs me when you thank me.
It's just a part of my job.”

Jessie
“But‚I…
I was just glad…”

Jessie
“{CLOUD}……”
{NEW PAGE}
“You're right.
We're just partners.”

I get the impression Square was intending a more developed relationship with Jessie: there's a lot of blanked-out text associated with the railway map, and I don't recall all this from the finished game:

{BARRET}
“Yo! What're ya doin' now?”

Biggs
“uh‚{BARRET}…
We‚uh…”

Wedge
“We can't do it.
We just can't do it.”

Jessie
“Don't worry!
Don't get all worried!”

Jessie
“{CLOUD}!
Let's make the mission work!”

Jessie
“{CLOUD}?
When this mission's over…”
{NEW PAGE}
“Why don't all of us take a long vacation.
Maybe we could go to a hot springs somewhere?
Yeah…
I don't know…

{CLOUD}
Yeah…
If I feel like it.

Jessie
Alrighty then!
It's a date!

{CLOUD}
You never know what lies ahead.

Jessie
…how lovely.
I might just have to tempt you‚then.

{BARRET}
Yo‚you all done flappin' your gums!?
Go!
Get on that train!

{TIFA}
{CLOUD}…
Don't be so distant.
Everyone wants to be your friend.
I'm sure…

{BARRET}
Damn‚man!!
I'm here to fight!
Don't care 'bout bein' nobody's friend.

{BARRET}
Let's go!
Don't be late!

There are some places where dialogue has been sliced apart and familiar lines lead into unfamiliar ones:

{CLOUD}
“So let {BARRET} and his buddies
do something about it.”
{NEW PAGE}
“It's got nothin' to do with me.”

{BARRET}
“You damn right we'll do something about it.
N' you stay outta this {TIFA}!”

Again, on the train during the second mission; this leads into Barret's “Yo‚ Mr. Know-it-all‚ big time SOLDIER! You oughta know the area 'round the No. 5 Reactor‚ right! So let's hear YOUR explanation!”

{CLOUD}
“What do we do until then?”

{BARRET}
“The hell do I care whatcha do?
Just siddown an' shu'up.”

{CLOUD}
“Sorry‚but I have a thing against
sitting down in trains.”

{BARRET}
“@#$%! Do whatever you want!”

{CLOUD}
“What do we do after we jump?”

Now this is striking. In this version President Shinra's broadcast gets a bit more attention...

President Shinra
“The terrorist group called AVALANCHE
has claimed responsibility for today's bombing
of the No. 1 Mako Reactor.”

“It is also predicted
that they will continue with similar terrorist
activities in the future.”

“But I want the citizens of Midgar to be assured.”
{NEW PAGE}
“Shinra‚Inc. has mobilized SOLDIER to protect
you from any violence and thereby…”

{TIFA}
“Will you please come back?
Ah‚wait. Please wait.”
{NEW PAGE}
“The president of Shinra
is going to read a statement.”

{TIFA}
“The next time we'll be up against…SOLDIER.”

{TIFA}
“{CLOUD}‚then you'll help us?”
{CHOICE}A promise is a promise
{CHOICE}But I still hate {BARRET}

{TIFA}
“I hate {BARRET}.”

{TIFA}
“You came to tell me that?”

{TIFA}
“He's not a bad person.”

{TIFA}
“Don't worry.
I'll talk to him.”

It looks as though things were going to get pretty fraught:

{TIFA}
“{CLOUD}…
I can't believe this is goodbye.”

{BARRET}
“There's your money.
Now get the hell out!!”

Maybe this is where 'From pinball' would have gone:

Biggs
“You know‚{CLOUD}.
{BARRET} says those things‚but…”
{NEW PAGE}
“We're really unstable right now.
If SOLDIER were to show up‚they'd whoop us.”

Wedge
“{CLOUD}‚ya gotta help us.
I'm really scared.”

Jessie
“{CLOUD}….
It's painful.”
{NEW PAGE}
“Why is that?”

{CLOUD}
“What's goin' on?
It's really shakin' a lot…”

{CLOUD}
“{TIFA}?
{TIFA}?
Where?

{CLOUD}
…I'm going out…

Here's something else I don't recognise:

Please change the disc.

Save your game?
Yes
No

Please insert disc two.

You still haven't saved your game.
Continue playing?

…over…

It's all over…
…everything…

Everyone…everything…
all finished…

Now everything
will begin anew…with me!!

Besides this (and some other material I haven't included), there are an awful lot of blanked-out text lines, which of course raises the tantalising prospect that they might still have dialogue in the Japanese version of the game—and I've just checked, and some do, but the text viewer I'm using (FF7TV-3) can't display the Japanese text; all I can see are PCs' names... Square really went in for buried treasure back then.

At the Mountains of Sanity

If the exec.'s hopes for prettification ever make progress, maybe we shall yet have Nicholas Roerich art prints on the MCR walls. Lovecraft gives him more mentions in At the Mountains of Madness than is strictly necessary, but I can see why. It was his painting that made me curious about him, but from an examination of the New York Nicholas Roerich Museum's site it seems there's another reason for me to like him: the 'Roerich Pact', which somehow I'd failed to hear of before.

Nicholas Roerich was involved throughout his career with the problems of cultural preservation. From an early age, when, as a teenage amateur archeologist in the north of Russia, he unearthed rare and beautiful ancient artifacts, he realized that the best products of humanity's creative genius were almost always neglected, or even destroyed, by humanity itself...

He came to realize that the cultural heritage of each nation is in essence a world treasure. And his idea of cultural heritage broadened to include more than just the physical remains of earlier cultures – the buildings and art, for example – but also the creative activities, the universities, the libraries, the hospitals, the concert halls and theaters. All must be protected from the ravages of war and neglect, for without them life would be nothing but a rude and ignorant time on earth.

It became clear to Roerich that an international effort was required. During the nineteen-twenties, he composed a treaty with the assistance of international legal experts. This treaty came to be known as The Roerich Pact.

The Roerich Pact and Banner of Peace movement grew rapidly during the early nineteen-thirties...The Pact itself declared the necessity for protection of the cultural product and activity of the world... and prescribed the method by which all sites of cultural value would be declared neutral and protected, just as the Red Cross does with hospitals. Indeed, the Roerich Pact was often called The Red Cross of Culture.

It's just a shade unfortunate that the Banner of Peace looks vaguely similar to the radioactivity warning symbol.

Early Pixel Art Will Never Truly Die...

This was going to be about game hoaxes, but while looking for the Final Fantasy [VIII] Gaiden and Super Mario's Universe videos below I came across something more striking.

Expand/contract this post...

The texture replacement makes the whole thing look even more stylised. It's incongruous, but somehow it works in a nostalgic way.