Just watched "The King of Kong; Fistful of Quarters" today on Netflix. No, not at work. Vacation day, thankfully. Anyhow, if you haven't seen it, it's a fantastic documentary about the world of old school arcade game championships, and the controversial and hotly contested race for highest score in Donkey Kong. It focused on former multi-game title-holder Billy Mitchell and unknown challenger Steve Wiebe. I won't give away any details if you haven't seen it and want to be surprised. Suffice it to say, these two gamers and the community surrounding them make for some seriously compelling and gripping storytelling. Of course, I followed up my viewing of the documentary with looking up their Wikipedia entries (as well as online news items) to see "where they are now".
That said, the most compelling discovery in today's Wikipedia browsing actually came from the disambiguation of "Billy Mitchell's." Because of it, I got to read the story of WWI ace pilot and "father" of the U.S. Air Force, Major General William L. Mitchell. No relation to the video gaming Billy Mitchell (at least none stated in either profile), but the aviator Billy Mitchell was even more of a lightening rod in his own day. His stance on the future dominance of air power in military combat was hugely controversial making him terribly unpopular in the Army and Navy commanding ranks. He was even demoted to Colonel and court-martialed for insubordination when decrying the shortsightedness of commanders in diminishing the need for air power investment. The story of his court martial was in fact made into a feature directed by Otto Preminger.
Finally, today, President Barack Obama received the 2009 Nobel Peace Prize in Oslo, Norway. The announcement by the Nobel committee to award the prize to President Obama in October came with controversy and protest from all quarters, from complaints to his short term in office to his expansion of the war in Afghanistan. Looking at the history of the prize and the list of past recipients gave insights into the Nobel committee's choice of President Obama. According to Alfred Nobel's will the prize was to be awarded to a person who:
during the preceding year [...] shall have done the most or the best work for fraternity between nations, for the abolition or reduction of standing armies and for the holding and promotion of peace congresses
(source: Wikipedia entry for Nobel Peace Prize. see link below)
President Obama's election and the paradigm shift initiated under his administration represents a level of transparency and accountability, and promotion of international co-operation that hasn't been seen since the world was rocked by the attacks on New York and Washington, DC on September 11, 2001. If you look at the list of recipients in the first 70 years of the awarding of the prize, the majority went to individuals and organizations who promoted if not actually brokering international cooperation, arbitration, and accord. Also the recipients were not universally pacifists or completely anti-war in their beliefs. The review of this history helps to put the snippets of opinion reverberating in the daily news echo chamber into clearer perspective.
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