Not Reality, Actuality

Prison documentaries happen all the time in America. Like, all the time. MSNBC is notorious for knocking off for the weekend and just airing prison documentaries every week, refusing to come back to work for anything less than the death of a major celebrity. But typically the documentaries boil down to general life inside prison- the gang culture, the constant edginess, the efforts by the cops to keep control, etc.

Death row, however, is a pretty lightly-visited topic. You don't see too many death row documentaries. When you do, you're likely to hear about the build-up to the moment of execution, the goodbyes, any efforts at pardons or stays of execution, any nearby protests against the death penalty, and pretty much everything about the process except footage of the actual execution. It is invariably a one-time thing; a Very Special prison documentary.

(Contrast to TruTV, formerly CourtTV, which now, instead of the legal process, primarily concerns itself with stupid people, Wipeout, and reality shows consisting of re-enactments of things you'd see if there were an actual reality show going on.)

Then there's China, where the Henan Legal Channel- a regional channel- just wrapped up a five year run of the show 'Interviews Before Execution'. This is exactly what it sounds like. The host, Ding Yu, will take a condemned prisoner about to face execution- sometimes literally just about to face execution, as in they will go straight from the interview to the execution itself- and she will conduct an interview about it. The interviews go about as you'd expect them to go when the subject is always someone staring down the barrel of execution: pretty intensely emotional. (On occasion, one of the subjects would get a pardon and have their sentence commuted to what amounts to a life sentence.)

It was put on the air for the same reason you see bait-car videos here: as a deterrent. At least, that's the line from China. But it seems not to have stood up to very much international scrutiny. Once the BBC and PBS came out with a documentary about the show entitled "Dead Men Talking"- which has actually yet to air- and once the show picked up notice as a result by news organizations outside Chinese borders, all of a sudden Interviews Before Execution ran into "internal problems" and was abruptly cancelled.

Knowledge of the show has also spurred something of a guessing game in trying to determine how many people are executed in China every year. They're the only country, North Korea included, that doesn't release their numbers or at least try to claim a certain count. All anyone is sure of is that the number ranges in the thousands, miles ahead of anyone else. What happened was, people calculated the number of interviews (226), the tenure of the show (five years), and the region involved (Henan Province), and started trying to figure out how many executions that works out to nationwide (even taking into account that not all prisoners on death row were likely to have been interviewed). Which, and this is pure speculation, might have been one of those "internal problems". They aren't releasing the numbers, but the show gave outsiders an opportunity to start counting.

And that might be a little more reality television than China was counting on.

This Used To Be A Funhouse, But Now It's Full Of Evil Clowns

Pink.

Is it really a color? I mean, really? When you get right down to it?

According to one Robert Krulwich of the public-radio program Radiolab, pink does not exist. We've just made it up. He cites this edition of something called Minute Physics:



So, no pink. Just a red/violet combination that doesn't actually exist in the rainbow.

I might not have seen this save for the fact that Time picked it up and it is currently the most popular item on their site. In Time's article, the dissenting voice comes from Michael Moyer of Scientific American, who they note that all color, rainbow or not, is merely a product of our brains.

They do not note that he also says that you don't get any color whatsoever by attaching the two ends of the wavelength spectrum to each other. You don't get a mix of red and violet. You get a mix of infrared and ultraviolet, both of which are invisible. Not that you can do such a thing as attach the two ends of a wavelength spectrum in the first place.

Let me try to attack this there-is-no-pink thing from a different angle.

THAT'S NOT PINK, YOU DOLT, THAT'S MAGENTA!

That's your 'minus green'. That's why your printer uses 'cyan' and 'magenta' and not red and blue. Magenta absorbs green light; yellow (or at least a specific shade of light yellow) absorbs blue light; cyan absorbs red light.

Pink is technically between red and violet. That part is fine. But it's also between red and magenta. Or, if one chooses, between red and white, as any kid with crayons could tell you. Or between all three.

Oh, and by the way, even if it were in fact pink that was just the leftovers of white light when you take out the green.... YOU JUST ADMITTED THAT PINK EXISTS, YOU DOLT!

Very Unnecessary Surgery

The ongoing major conflict in Egypt right now is, of course, the ongoing political instability stemming from the military's continued control of the country. A soccer riot coming from a match between Al-Masry and Al-Ahly on February 1st fed into larger general protests; the rest of the season has been cancelled. In its place, a friendly tournament will take place; Al-Masry will not participate. A 40-day mourning period marking the deaths of 74 people in the riot has just concluded. A presidential election has been called for May; however, fears have arisen that the military will play a heavy hand in determining the winner.

The military is not, however, the only group Egyptians need to worry about. There are also Bedouin gangs who are out for not only people's money, but their organs as well.

Fouad Hady of SBS in Australia (and found via Journeyman Pictures) explains. (Heads-up; there's going to be some graphic content.)

In Which Basketball Proves Some Schools Are Better

It is the day after Selection Sunday. So you get my bracket today. That simple. (NOTE: I've barely watched any college basketball this season and am relying largely on the Yahoo Sports scouting reports to tell my Xaviers from my Gonzagas.)

PLAY-IN ROUND THAT NOBODY EVER LETS ME PREDICT
Western Kentucky over Mississippi Valley St.
BYU over Iona
Vermont over Lamar
Cal over South Florida

ROUND OF 64

SOUTH
(1) Kentucky over (16) Western Kentucky
(8) Iowa St. over (9) Connecticut
(5) Wichita St. over (12) Virginia Commonwealth
(4) Indiana over (13) New Mexico St.
(6) UNLV over (11) Colorado
(14) South Dakota St. over (3) Baylor
(10) Xavier over (7) Notre Dame
(2) Duke over (15) Lehigh

WEST
(1) Michigan St. over (16) LIU-Brooklyn
(9) St. Louis over (8) Memphis
(12) Long Beach St. over (5) New Mexico
(4) Louisville over (13) Davidson
(6) Murray St. over (11) Colorado St.
(3) Marquette over (14) BYU (don't complain about the draw, BYU; you made the Selection Committee put you here because of you being, like, the very last significant sports organization in America to not play sports on Sunday)
(7) Florida over (10) Virginia
(2) Missouri over (15) Norfolk St.

EAST
(1) Syracuse over (16) North Carolina-Asheville
(8) Kansas St. over (9) Southern Miss
(12) Harvard over (5) Vanderbilt
(4) Wisconsin over (13) Montana
(6) Cincinnati over (11) Texas
(3) Florida St. over (14) St. Bonaventure
(7) Gonzaga over (10) West Virginia
(2) Ohio St. over (15) Loyola (MD)

MIDWEST
(1) North Carolina over (16) Vermont
(8) Creighton over (9) Alabama
(5) Temple over (12) Cal
(4) Michigan over (13) Ohio
(11) North Carolina St. over (6) San Diego St.
(3) Georgetown over (14) Belmont
(10) Purdue over (7) St. Mary's
(2) Kansas over (15) Detroit

ROUND OF 32

SOUTH
(1) Kentucky over (8) Iowa St.
(5) Wichita St. over (4) Indiana
(6) UNLV over (14) South Dakota St.
(2) Duke over (10) Xavier

WEST
(1) Michigan St. over (9) St. Louis
(4) Louisville over (12) Long Beach St.
(6) Murray St. over (3) Marquette
(2) Missouri over (7) Florida

EAST
(1) Syracuse over (8) Kansas St.
(4) Wisconsin over (12) Harvard
(3) Florida St. over (6) Cincinnati
(2) Ohio St. over (7) Gonzaga

MIDWEST
(1) North Carolina over (8) Creighton
(5) Temple over (4) Michigan
(11) North Carolina St. over (3) Georgetown
(2) Kansas over (10) Purdue

SWEET 16
(1) Kentucky over (5) Wichita St.
(2) Duke over (5) UNLV
(1) Michigan St. over (4) Louisville
(6) Murray St. over (2) Missouri
(4) Wisconsin over (1) Syracuse
(2) Ohio St. over (3) Florida St.
(1) North Carolina over (5) Temple
(2) Kansas over (11) North Carolina St.

ELITE EIGHT
(1) Kentucky over (2) Duke
(1) Michigan St. over (6) Murray St.
(4) Wisconsin over (2) Ohio St.
(2) Kansas over (1) North Carolina

FINAL FOUR
(1) Michigan St. over (1) Kentucky
(2) Kansas over (4) Wisconsin

FINAL
(1) Michigan St. 76, Kansas 61

Bonanza Farms

98% of all farms in America are classified as family farms, most of them small things. The other 2% is a big 2%, making up 14% of agribusiness in the country, but... 2%. They do have something in common: in order to remain in operation, when possible, both types of farms try to diversify their crops. They divide their fields into multiple sections, each handling a different crop, so that if the weather doesn't cooperate for one, they're not totally screwed. They rotate the crops from year to year so as not to deplete the nutrients in the soil.

So what would happen if someone with a larger farm- say, one of the factory farms in the 2%- decided to just throw all that in the garbage?

You'd get a bonanza farm.

When the railroads arrived in North Dakota in the 1860's (so as to dodge anything even resembling the South; this was the decade of the Civil War, remember), people suddenly took interest in the fact that North Dakota has quite a bit of flat land, as does neighboring Minnesota. And because North Dakota is... well, North Dakota, and was still wild frontier at the time, land came cheap. But, of course, it first went to the railroad itself, that being the Northern Pacific Railroad. They in turn sold off land in the Red River Valley- that's eastern North Dakota and northwest Minnesota, centered on Fargo-Moorehead- in order to keep themselves afloat. (Didn't work, by the way. They went bust in 1870. And then went bust a couple additional times for good measure.)

A homesteader could only take 160 acres of land, and they had to live on the land for five years to be able to get it. However, if you were buying land from someone who already owned land- a railroad, perhaps- you could gobble up as much as you wanted. And so some entrepreneurs decided to buy in bulk.

These people were not, by and large, farmers. But they could hire people who were. Thousands of people. Migrant workers, probably. What they were after was, of course, money. Lots of money. Hand over fist. And in order to do so, there was to be none of this diversification silliness. After all, 1873 had a bumper crop of wheat! Time is money! Plant the money crop and stuff the farm with it! And so the bonanza farm was born. Hundreds, sometimes thousands of people would work a gigantic farm devoted to one single crop- again, usually wheat. In the process, they'd be utilizing all the latest developments in large-scale farming, alongside new techniques on wheat milling once it got to market in Minneapolis.

And as long as the weather cooperated and the soil held out, all was well. The bonanza farm would live up to its name. You'd get thousands and thousands of acres of wheat (the record was 63,000 acres, though on average it was more like 3,000-7,000) and obscene amounts of profits. Throughout the 1880's, there existed what was known as the Dakota Boom.

As long as everything held up, that is. Sooner or later, though, something wouldn't. If the weather got you, and your crops failed, you'd take a huge financial bath and there was a good chance you were done. It was like a poker game where you went all-in on every single hand. If the wheat market was down, you were completely screwed. And eventually, the soil just can't take any more wheat production; that took about 25 years to happen. If not for the fact that American midwestern soil is some of the most fertile on the planet, it would have happened much sooner. And once the wheat crops weren't coming in anymore, it was game over. The investors got out, and the farms were busted up into family farms. A couple farms held on past 1900, but those few hardy survivors who somehow made it to the 1920's got stopped dead in their tracks by the Great Depression.

Save for one, sort of. In 2005, the Frederick A. and Sophia Bagg Bonanza Farm in Mooreton, North Dakota was placed on the National Register of Historic Places. 9,000 acres at its peak and started in 1915, after the bust came for all but those few survivors, it is no longer an actual bonanza farm; it's dipped to its original size of 15 acres. It's supposed to be representative of all bonanza farms.

Dead, gone and broken up.

What's One Less Island Chain, Right?

The nation of Kiribati is eyeing a plan to purchase 6,000 acres of land on Fiji's primary island, Viti Levu. Why? Because their population of 103,000 people may have to end up living there. Rising sea levels have gotten to the point where Kiribati, which lies very close to sea level, is seeing its freshwater reserves being increasingly contaminated by seawater coming inland. Or at least what passes for inland in Kiribati.

They're hoping it doesn't come to that. Nobody's hoping it comes to that. But it's looking increasingly likely that it will.

Coming This Fall On Fox

On March 23, The Hunger Games will hit theaters. It would be surprising if it didn't do well at the box office. It's the new young-adult-book-crossover juggernaut-to-be, a status Harry Potter recently enjoyed and that Twilight still does. By now, we should all be familiar with the basic plotline even if we haven't read the books (and no, I have not or else I'd have said something here about it).

Once a year, a post-apocalyptic society set sometime in the future holds the Hunger Games, an event put together by an oppressive government. Teenage kids from various parts of the world volunteer (or, more to the point, get volunteered) to be 'tributes' to the Hunger Games. This involves being thrown into an arena and made to fight to the death while the world watches on TV, and May The Odds Be Ever In Your Favor. Last one standing gets all famous and stuff, but also gets seriously messed up in the head from the experience.

Again, I haven't read any of the Hunger Games books, though I'm sure they're perfectly fine. I've never been that big of a fiction reader; note how rarely fiction shows up in the Rapid-Fire Book Club. However, even if I was, there's little chance that The Hunger Games would have ended up on my shelf anyway.

Why? Because I have seen this plot before. Several times.

The first thing likely coming to your mind is The Running Man, where an oppressive government has Richard Dawson send Arnold Schwarzenegger into an arena to fight to the death for television. But not me. First off, it's a country mile away from the plot of the Stephen King novel it was based on. In King's version, the contestant has the free run of the country, but must elude capture for 30 days from bounty hunters and ordinary citizens who get a cash prize if they off him or provide information leading to same. They also have to send in videos regularly which will keep the studio and viewers updated on his whereabouts. Prize: a billion dollars. With a B. Show record, leading into the events of the book: nine days.

But second, the movie's version is too far away from the format of the Hunger Games. It's one guy (okay, eventually four) against a series of 'stalkers', recurring opponents employed by the show. It's not one entire cast fighting to be the last one standing.

We can do better.

There is. at this time, one fiction novel on my shelf. Just the one. But its concept just happens to be a reality-show-to-the-death as well. It's called 24/7, by Jim Brown, written in 2002. This game's premise is as follows:

Your standard set of 12 reality-show types are placed on an island with your standard hammy awful punchable reality show host. The TV and audience votes them out, one by one, but the players can thwart the audience through the use of 'Safety Stones', which is 24/7's immunity mechanic. You win Safety Stones either through challenges or by finding them strewn around the island- including one 'personal challenge' per contestant, tailored to each contestant's personal fear; that one's worth five stones if you come across it and beat it. Each Safety Stone allows you to remove 10% of the audience vote against you in a given round (obviously, you use them before you know the vote totals). Use ten and you're immune. The contestant with the most votes after Safety Stones used are taken into account is eliminated. Prize for the last one standing: two million bucks, plus "your heart's desire", a personal prize that each contestant would individually be playing for. Name something you want that a TV network could feasibly arrange. You're playing for that.

Personally, I'm actually pretty surprised nobody has used the Safety Stone concept in an actual reality show; it's a very neat mechanic. Ten used stones makes you immune, but then, that's a lot of stones you just used up; could you have gotten the job done with fewer? How many is it going to take? Will the guy next to you use enough to push you into elimination territory? How do you respond to that? Or not respond? And how much do you budget for later on? Someone, get on that.

But that aside, cut to the season premiere when the hammy punchable host is explaining the rules while being hammy and punchable, and one of the contestants is being annoying, and all of a sudden the hammy punchable host dies horribly from some sort of virus I'll spare you the description of because ick. That's right: a terrorist has taken over the show. He goes by the name 'Control', and he announces that the game is still on, but the stakes are kicked up a bit. For starters, the challenges have been made a tad more terribly deadly. Also, more to the point, the cast is infected with the same virus the host died from, and will die from it if they don't get an inoculation every 24 hours. Luckily, Control has some for everyone... except the person who gets eliminated each day. Along with the announced prizes- which Control will still honor- the winner gets cured. Good luck.

Spoiler alert: the annoying guy immediately transforms into the 'we're all gonna die' guy. He's the very first one out the door. Or turned into a screaming puddle of bones on the floor. Either way.

I have some experience with this game concept. Like I said, I liked the concept, and way back in the days of Yahoo Groups and Geocities, I decided to use it myself, in an online reality game based on the book. I, of course, took the role of Control, as some of my readers will actually recall, because a couple of you were my former contestants. It lasted three seasons.

But the 24/7 plotline also veers too far from the Hunger Games plotline. The cast applied for the show; none of them were forced onto the island or the game. They were only forced into the final format the game ultimately took. Also, it was in fact a game, not a straight-up battle to the death.

We can do better.

There's another online reality game- a roleplaying one, yet- titled Survival of the Fittest. It's looking to be gearing up for Season 5. What we have here as a concept is, the contents of a high school class- and I don't mean 'classroom', I mean as in 'class of 2008'- gets kidnapped during an end-of-year trip by another terrorist organization, this one led by one Victor Danya. He hits them with knockout gas, they wake up on an otherwise-deserted island and are told to kill each other until only one is left standing.

For television, of course. Cameras all over the island, as usual. Some people even think it's not actually people actually killing each other.

To aid in this task, each of them is given a randomly-assigned weapon. Perhaps you're given a hatchet. Perhaps you're given an AK-47. Perhaps you're given a cookie. Whatever you get, you take that weapon and bash someone's brains in with it. In addition, each student (never mind the faculty; they all get unceremoniously offed in the pregame) is fitted with a collar around their neck. Do not remove this collar. If you try, collar goes boom. Boom might rip your head clean off your shoulders. Also, do not destroy a camera, or collar goes boom. Do not piss off Danya, or collar goes boom. Do not attempt to escape the island, or collar goes boom. And also, every so often, Danya will announce the presence of 'danger zones' around the island in order to keep things moving. If you're in a danger zone, get out of it pronto, or collar goes boom.

Needless to say, most of any given class sees their grip on sanity and basic decency go out the window right quick, to say nothing of the student that gets to the end alive (on the knowledge that the winner of an unaired test season was actually brought back by Danya for Season 1 because he didn't directly kill anyone). Which is all good TV, after all.

We're getting pretty close to the Hunger Games now, but there is one little improvement we can make: how did we get to terrorists running the game? The Hunger Games are run by the government. Can we return to that?

Yes. We can do better.

Survival of the Fittest is based off a movie from 2000 called Battle Royale, which in turn was based off a 1999 book by Koushun Takami; this one's Japanese in origin. The game format of Battle Royale is, naturally, pretty much the same as Survival of the Fittest, right down to the randomly-assigned weapons. However, instead of a terrorist, it's the military of an alternate-history fascist Japan, who began what they call "The Program". Every six months since 1947, the military swipes a high school class, sticks them on the island, and tells them to get to work.

I see nothing to suggest that this is televised; even if it were in the Battle Royale universe, it likely wouldn't get high ratings, as nobody's under any illusion that this is for entertainment purposes. The only reason nobody does anything is that it's gone on for so long that apathy and the sense of being used to it have taken hold.

Obviously, the lack of TV makes for a difference, but otherwise, you've now got things really close to The Hunger Games. In fact, it's actually a little more dramatic than The Hunger Games- while The Hunger Games (and 24/7) use a group of people from various disparate parts of the world, Battle Royale (and Survival of the Fittest) use a single group of high schoolers that know each other already. It's a coincidence, but it was close enough to where when Suzanne Collins was made aware of Battle Royale during her writing of The Hunger Games, her editor told her not to read or see Battle Royale, because "I don't want that world in your head." As of April 2011, Collins had yet to see the movie or read the book.

While a Japanese movie was created, things bogged down when it came time to think about importing Battle Royale to America. When it was created, it was a little too soon after the Columbine school shooting to be able to send it to America right away. Now, though, with The Hunger Games taking center stage, you'll probably never see Battle Royale in America at all.

After all, what a ripoff of The Hunger Games that would be.