Tadahiko Mizuno has had a long career with research that he had to pay for from his own pocket. The reason he had to pay for this research from his own pocket is typically blamed on scientific form. What is scientific form? The ability to replicate results, in this instance. Mizuno then publishes his book with a different kind of branding than the typical “Cold Fusion”. He tries to shift the conversation into a different linguistic domain. Why? Because EVERYONE knows cold fusion is a scientific fraud, right? No. Not exactly.Indeed, what everyone seems to agree on is that something can happen with the right conditions and the right elements. What is not certain is what those elements are, or the scale and outputs of the reaction. What can happen, when conditions are right, is that an excess of heat is generated by significant amounts. Sometimes, other elements or isotopes of elements are formed. At other times, nothing whatsoever happens.
The original discoverers of this interaction between heavy water and the metal Palladium rushed to publish probably for recognition and patents. The essential idea was to bombard Palladium with Deuterium so that the lattice of the Palladium would allow two molecules of Deuterium to bond and produce energy. This was attempted through electrolysis. The initial result was a ton of excess heat and possibly some neutrinos which are tell-tale signs that the interaction might be used instead of the kind of nuclear fission process which requires high temperatures and generates reactive, deadly waste. The excitement of the find created a panic to publish. In doing this, the operational definitions, which are to say in this case, the experimental definitions of amounts and substances along with procedure were not rigorously noted. Martin Fleischmann and Stanley Pons then spoke about their findings prematurely. Replication was difficult in part due to the above lack of documentation, so other scientists were not observing the same outcomes. Then, the press got involved and ran with the story and splashed it all over the place before science had really had a chance to do science. What follows are scientists that get some of the same results, some that get none, and a general consensus, weirdly, that the whole thing is made up. It is obvious, though, that SOMETHING is happening, and Mizuno devotes his life and his own money trying to figure out the conditions of what this is. He states that his held scientific bias kept him from understanding things along the way and making certain kinds of measurements and observations. When he did have verifiable outcomes the data was not documented in a way that the scientific community would accept. He could, for instance, document the evaporation of water in a bucket over a period of time required to cool off a cell used in a experiment that was generating, in his words, “heat after death” meaning that there was no longer any electrolysis being applied but heat was still occurring. This was not, however, a spreadsheet of data through something like spectral analysis. No one wanted to pay him any attention, and especially not after the press got done with it.
In our current era of fake news and fake publications, we have a different perspective than we did in 1989. It is easy to imagine, for instance, a world in which cold fusion is a verifiable, replicable phenomenon. The implication would be that nuclear fission plants would not need to be built and steel drums to store waste would be irrelevant. All the industry around those facilities and money spent toward them would be gone in an instant. Furthermore, the petroleum industry might die overnight. How many research grants come from developing these established technologies? What would true energy independence mean for society and the world at large?
From a scientific perspective, if we imagine that this boundary case does indeed happen as Mizuno and many other qualified scientists have observed, then should not the inquiry become under what conditions the effect does occur and not that it is not a real thing because of lack of understanding what is doing it and how? With the claims advanced in Mizuno’s book, that’s not what happens. Instead career suicide and professional ridicule and ostracism are the results. That strikes this reviewer as singularly odd.
It is little wonder that Mizuno tries to pivot the conversation into a more Alchemical avenue. Alchemy, “the previous to science, science”, that inspired and captivated minds like Newton, was often also sometimes difficult to understand. Not everyone would receive the same results since, in Alchemy, not everyone is at the same place with the same understanding. Location and intention matter to the experiment within Alchemy, as well as timing.
It is amusing, then, toward the end of the book when Mizuno gives us the more modern science explanation for what he thinks is happening in the reactions. For this, he relies on the wave function equation which is the scientific way of saying, according to some anyway, that intention and observation MIGHT indeed matter to experimental outcomes. Mizuno succeeds then in showing where modern physics is more like Alchemy than it might care to admit. The potential outcomes of the reaction can be statistically linked to the waveform which offers explanation through probability with no commentary as to mechanism as the wave function eschews the idea that a person can know why an outcome is doing what it is. One can only be “probably certain” about results.
The rest of the book tells of Mizuno’s experimental refinements and struggles with understanding what is happening. To be sure, he is rigorous and precise and ultimately he is undefeated or undeterred by the response from his academic community. He instead doubles down and tries to find a way to continue doing the research that he has observed himself and understands perhaps better than many. He may well be, in the field of research, one of the few, true, remaining scientists. He proceeds not out of recognition or reward, but to understand and document. It is a shame that he happened on the field at an inauspicious moment. Had things worked out a trifle differently, everyone in the world might have known his name along with Pons and Fleischmann. That world also might not know what nuclear waste or meltdowns are–except as a historical footnote. Maybe the world will anyway. If it does, it will have Mizuno, and others like him, to thank.
Geoff Shepard was there for Watergate. In The Nixon Conspiracy Shepard goes all in. He describes how at first he was disgusted by Nixon’s resignation and thought that Nixon had betrayed everyone–including Shepard who was, at that point, a lawyer on Nixon’s staff. Shepard even characterized the evidence against Nixon in a specific way familiar to everyone who remembers the case–he coined the neologism “the smoking gun”. The phrase referred to a recorded conversation where Nixon formulates a plan with Haldeman to have the CIA ask the FBI to “stay the hell out of this” (this referring to the investigation). The idea was to suggest that the FBI had blundered into some covert matters entangled with the CIA. This, most everyone concluded, was Nixon trying to obstruct justice.
Shepard, however, makes a different case. He finds, after investigating some records that were unsealed only in 2018, that there was a coordinated deep state effort to remove Nixon from the Whitehouse in part because Nixon had plans to reorganize the federal government. Why Watergate was broken in to is still not necessarily firmly addressed by this work but the thesis would appear to suggest that Gordon Liddy might have gone a little crazy in trying to shut down leaks. It might also have been the leak issue combined with the actual CIA being involved in some “sex for blackmail” types of operations that directly concerned John Dean. Really, it bluntly seems to be a lot of corruption that did not want any kind of reform which Nixon was poised to address. It did not help anything that there were Kennedy’s out there in the wings using the whole ordeal to try to get a Kennedy elected to the Oval Office.
Shepard goes above and beyond in addressing this case–especially over at his website where you can find an entire chronology of the events. The scholarship is first-rate. It is rare to see a website as helpful as this one is. Clearly, Shepard is very motivated to tell this story. He does this by going through each piece and provides certain insights only he was privy to by having been there.
The most startling thing, however, that Shepard finds, is a record unsealed in 2018 that is called the “Road Map”. This document was secretly transmitted to the House Judiciary Committee through arranged meetings with the judge involved in the case and prosecuting attorneys. It contained skewed events with evidence and footnotes of what happened and when. The problem was that these events were often inferred, or made to fit a narrative timeline. This timeline said that Nixon was guilty of ordering the break-in, and the roadmap simply pointed to how.
The facts as Shepard presents them are that Nixon had no inkling about the break-in. Indeed, his position was that the whole thing was stupid. The asking of the CIA to tell the FBI to stay out of the situation concerned keeping the confidentiality of a couple of Democratic donors to Nixon’s campaign private. The smoking gun in this interpretation of what occurred, is little more than a campfire sending smoke signals. Problem is, the natives are not sure how to interpret what the chief is saying, and more than a few of them have their minds set on being chief some day themselves of some tribe, somewhere.
The rest of the thesis, though interesting, basically reads like a Who’s Who of the 70’s corrupted political landscape. Power is removed from the DOJ and special prosecutors are brought in that use special definitions of certain things in order to make their charges stick. Prosecutorial task forces are formed with the sole purpose of making sure their targets go down. Everyone in the Nixon administration begins eating everyone else, so that they minimize the damage done to their own reputation. At the top of the heap of this corrupt is one Leon Jarworski, who, coming from Texas, had all ready succeeded in bringing about some creative litigation–the kind that the Nixon prosecutorial task forces needed. The checks and balances of the legal system go out the door, and most of the rest of the event becomes a bargaining session for the tapes which Nixon had made of the presidency so that he could, later, refer to them to tell his own stories through memoirs and biographies. Ironically, Nixon thought that the truth would come out and the tapes would be mostly harmless. Sure, there might be some unflattering things said on them, but nothing criminal. He was wrong, since everyone twisted them to say just exactly what they wanted them to say. Jarwoski went as far as withholding exculpatory evidence which he had done before in his “creative litigation” phase.
If nothing else, Shepard’s work is an indictment of judicial procedure that was implemented in Watergate. There are enough problems here for the conclusions to be thrown out in any case, let alone one concerning the President of the United States. Shepard concludes everyone owes Nixon an apology, especially in light of the Trump era where the same kinds of things were attempted. He might be right.
Nixon, in his own words, said that he was guilty of asking the CIA to stop the investigation. Of course, he asked them to do this because the entire thing had spun out of control. The tapes serve as a kind of plot line as to what happened to Nixon himself. “Don t lie to them,” said Nixon, “to the extent to say there’s no involvement (on the part of the president) but just say this is sort of a comedy of errors, bizarre, without getting into it.” That is exactly what happened to Nixon. It was a comedy of errors, and it was bizarre, and the first person to take a real crack at clearing it up in a comprehensible way has to be Geoff Shepherd.
Scott Miller was a guy at the right place at the right time for the Shareware time period. His Twitter account happened to post something about a new book about the Shareware Era of gaming:
scottmiller
Not long after that, bookshop.org featured an anti-Amazon free shipment on books day, and happened to have Shareware Heroes as a featured book. “Fine,” says thebooklight reviewer. “The reviewing shall commence.”
This is not a book that probably just anyone from any period can pick up and enjoy. There are many moments of “you kinda had to be on that scene” to really understand why a given moment was exciting. There are many developments in modern gaming that we take for granted. Something that has been relegated to the wayside, however, is the kind of distribution Shareware had originally. The condensed version of this model was simply that it was possible for a lone programmer to pump something out and have his or her work distributed to people who might be willing to support future work. All that was necessary was to ask for a donation if someone enjoyed the game or utility. Usually, the amount asked for was around $10. The way the software was distributed was through BBS’s or Bulletin Board Systems which were sites people with phone lines and modems and sometimes though rarely T1 or T3 lines could host from their home if they wished. One could argue that in many ways, this was a less centralized time other than having the money for the hardware which was the bigger limiting factor.
Originally, as the book discusses, the entire game was given away for free while the aforementioned $10 was asked if someone enjoyed the game. These models were refined by companies like Miller’s Apogee, or another biggie, Id. All of these companies were trying to find the right level of giving things away for free versus reaching new customers who wanted to pay for the innovation. The result, of course, famously produced two huge titles which feature, perhaps not surprisingly, Nazis, and Demons from Hell, in that order. “Wolfenstein”, and “Doom” is another way of designating those titles. Turned another way, it was a little like the gaming hits of that era were memories of WWII being presented at a certain kind of angle. Maybe it was similar to a gaming purgatory where the games were a place to work out some stuff not entirely possible in reality. The quote “War is Hell,” though, were visibly borne out in the creation of the titles. Lest you think this is fanciful, let us also recall another huge title roughly in that sequence called “Duke Nuke’Em.”
Shareware Heroes does a great job of filling in a million little blanks that probably a casual reader did not even know existed. ID studios, for example, was an acronym at first. The book tells you what it stood for. Apogee, at a certain point, needed a new gaming engine. The surprising answer to where it was found and how it was made and what happened is in the book.
It might be better to say this book as at its best when it tells the story of Apogee and Id. It uses a format where it flashes to other game designers, but the timeline continuity of the narrative format suffers somewhat for this approach. The reader has to “remember back to that chapter on Apogee” which breaks the momentum. It does allow for telling the story of some other interesting characters, however, like Dave Snyder and his company MVP which is probably no longer a common thing to know about.
There are also screen captures from the games, and plenty of 90’s style pictures of the developers in the middle of peak geekdom. These definitely add flavor and a sense of humanity to the otherwise long churn of business models along with hits and misses that are occupying the bulk of the work.
What one cannot escape, however, is the sense that one is reading a eulogy of something that was and not something that still is or is going to be. Indeed, the last story concerning the game “Tread Marks” about a certain tank game developer is the epitome of moribund reminiscing. The story is certainly relevant–but it is also morose which one wonders if somehow all the gaming began to take a wrong turn at this juncture.
One tale about a game called “Escape Velocity” might be a kind of indicator as to why things shifted. Originally, gaming was the exception. Computers were a new thing, and if you had an hour or two as a kid between everything else going on in your life, you’d play. The maker of the game “Escape Velocity” picked up a copy of “Elite” when he was ten, but he lost the key to the copyright protection and so he could not play it. Instead, he had to imagine how awesome the game was, and “Escape Velocity” was his answer to those imaginings. In other words, it is great to imagine something, but then there is also the work of doing something to bring the imagined thing here. This is what is termed “art” and the wide variety of the early history of gaming has plenty of art. Later, that art starts turning more into crack. No longer was it about dealing with stuff or coming up with newer game mechanics but instead the desire is to “hook” the gamer on gameplay or escapism. Since the games were originally given away for free, the total escapism ability was low in the early days. Now everything is rigged for it. Even back then, though, there is at least one story of a developer who put everything on the line for his dream and lost his house and his sanity trying to sell and market a game–another interesting story in the book.
So what’s the verdict? Shareware Hereos is a great read if you are willing to admit that the days of the shareware publishing are essentially over and are now rolled into “freemiums” and “indy” types of scenarios. Shareware was indy, but it was also a little cooler than that. You could shove your code or your work up, never talk to a living soul directly, and make enough money to buy a house or raise a family. I’m not sure “Indy” has that same meaning, or “freemiums”. While the 90’s had a lot of problems, there was an aura of optimism around the ability to share and publish information that is now missing. This reviewer does not accept a euologized version of that era as the final word. Instead, the counsel is direct–rage, rage against the dying of the publishing model light! Do not go gently into that good night. Buttress your open sources, and fly high the flag of free press and distribution!
978-1892925008
ISBN:978-1642937152
ISBN:978-1800181748