The rain showers moving through the area nixed our plans, but the sweetie-wife and I still had a nice, relaxed and pleasant day.
A few games of Dominion played on line.
A nice lunch out at Oggi’s Pizza and Brewery.
A little shopping.
And an evening home with episode 10 of season three Game of Thrones.
Tomorrow back to the grind and the waiting to see what transpires from my interview.
Thanks to the Guardian of The Galaxy trailer,
It is well known that literature possesses the ability to transform the reader. The list if powerful works that often have deep and lasting effect upon people is nearly endless. 1984 has awoken many a person to the dangers of an all powerful state, To Kill a Mockingbird has opened hearts to the evils of racism, Atlas Shrugged has inspired countless people and scores of politicians.
However what I am talking about today is an effect I discovered and is less spoken about, the effect the act of writing can have upon the author.
We tend to think of the writing process in a manner that more closely resembles dictation than the groping in the dark process of discovery I have found it to be. In my experience author do not sit down and just put the words on paper their themes and intention perfectly thought-out and clear. Rather from author I have know and have spoken with there is often a process of figuring out what it was about the subject that fascinated them and in the discovery they uncover truths and insights previously unknown to them.
I know I personally went through a transformation from a single element in one of my unpublished novels.
IN the book the United States has fallen into not a dystopia, but it has strangled itself on a political philosophy that is obsessive on matters of categories for people versus individuals. There is a movement to ‘restore’ the previous system of government and it funds itself with piracy and theft. This militia movement sees the government that, while elected and not a dictatorship, is illegitimate because it fails to reflect their voice. They see themselves as oppressed.
In form the universe and the story I myself felt a sympathy for this militia movement, and a principle character is a devote supporter. In the course of the story an agent from a truly dictatorial power is introduced, working with the militia for a common goal. To writ scenes from this agent’s POV I had to crawl into the agent’s , understand the world from his perspective, including his feeling about the militia. Stepping into his shoes I saw these pirates as spoiled children. Yeah their cause was losing at the ballot box, but they had a ballot box. They’re response to losing was to throw a tantrum because they weren’t getting their way.
Fine enough I wrote that out and it deepened the agent’s character, however I found that my own view of some political movements in the real world had changed.
Here in the United States we have tremendous freedoms, and despite this there are those that the moment they lose a contest start throwing about the charges of tyranny and despotism. Now I can see so clearly the spoiled children that they are. If you have the freedom to, in utter safety, call the President a despot and a tyrant, then his really isn’t one. All around the world people are dying for the freedoms people here treat so lightly. I have never gone back to a restricted view and it is because the act of writing has changed me and it will continue to change me.
As the title informs you I will only be speaking about the Klingons as they appeared in the original Star Trek series, not he later retconed aliens that were introduced in the Motion Picture and later elements of the franchise.
Star Trek arrived during an interesting period in entertainment history, by being produced in the later 60’s the series was influenced by and could be seen as a metaphor for both World War II and The Cold War. The writers, directors and producers of the series 
counted among their number several World War II veterans while the Cold War, now well under way, underpinned everyday life and provided an atmosphere of dread under the treat of global nuclear war. It is natural for people to look on the Klingons of the original series as a metaphor for either the NAZIs or the Communists, but which is a better fit?
Now first I am not putting forth a proposition as to what was in the creators heads when they crafted Star Trek’s original bad guys, but rather just an exercise about which brutal ideology best matches what we know of the Klingons.
There are of course a number of areas of overlap between the deadly forces of Communism and National Socialism. Both were brutal dictatorships, both murdered on a 
vast scale, both were ruthlessly expansionistic, both were extremely militaristic, both engaged in suppression of dissidents, both crushed the individual under the power of the state.
All of these elements would seem to apply to the Klingon Empire, both this complicates the issues. However it is important to recognize that National Socialism and Communism however similar in many area are not the same thing, so perhaps by finding key differences between the two and apply them to what we know or can extrapolate from the Klingons we can determine the best match.
Communism did not recognize the right to own property. All property belonged to the state, while Nazism recognized private property in a fairly recognizable state, corporations, 
and the like. From the original series we have no data about the Klingon economic models and systems, so we can’t use this as a point of differentiation.
Communism believed in an inevitable march of history; that peoples and cultures inexorably moved through certain developmental stages, in the same sequence, and that the end results would be the stateless commune. Nazism believed in the survival of the fittest on both a racial and a cultural, which were really one and the same for them, stage. They thought that it was the natural order for the strongest culture to dominate and subjugate the ‘weaker.’
Ah here we have a bit of a match with the original series Klingons. They clearly believed that if they were stronger is was natural and right for they to rule. They did not argue their dominance from destiny, but from ability.
Communism was a very delusion and distorted view of mass teamwork. That everyone person, if given an equal share would pull equally hard for the greater good and that want and greed would die away. It was group oriented, but in a fanciful belief that people would become happy and prosperous in a share and share-alike fantasy. Nazism saw the individual as only a cog in a machine to support the state, and the race which defined the state. Every man and woman had a duty to the state and that duty overrode all individual consideration. There was no utopian fantasy of universal brotherhood, only the importance of the state over the individual. This matches up quite nicely with Commander Kor’s speech to Kirk in ‘Mission of Mercy’ just before his men burst in to, once again, arrest the Captain.
The final point of divergence is the spread of ideology.
The communists could be though of a evangelicals. It was not enough to conquer territory, to claim resources, to amass power, they also had a burning need to convert. They desires that not only did subjugate peoples bend knees to their power, but adopted their view and 
vision of the future. Like the Inquisition before them the Communists could brook no heretics. The Nazis weren’t interested in that at all. Because of the racial components of their belief system, they saw the world as a conflict between themselves and everyone else. They never expressed an argument that their system was better for everyone, they never tried to convince Kirk or the Organians that they should convert, but rather brute force to take was enough and all they required was subservience.
To me this makes it clear, for the Original Series Star Trek, the Klingons were much more like Nazis than communists.
I don’t mean arguments that intent or by accident become terribly humorous, but rather arguments that are expressed in terms of hysteria, usually by overt and terribly applied hyperbole.
I get a lot of political discussions with my friends and family. (Almost never with anyone else because it’s too volatile a subject to broach with people I don’t know well.) It doesn’t matter if it comes from the left or from the right, I am often treated to some wildly over the top hyperbole about the evils of the enemy.
Bush is a fascist.
Obama is a communist.
You know the drill. These arguments can really bug me because they show such an utter disregard for the truth and for the language. In the early 90’s Rush Limbaugh used to say quite a bit on his show that ‘words mean things.’ Oh that is something I can get behind very strongly. The first casualty in any heated political argument seem to be the English language. (I assume it true for other languages, but as I speak and read no other, I’ll stick with English.)
Something else that has occurred to me recently is that the more hyperbole that is used, the more it strikes me that someone is panicking about their position. That this feels like the rearguard action of a collapsing front. It not only is unpersuasive it makes your argument feel weaker, no matter the truth that may lay under your position.
This little rant by myself won’t change a thing. No one I know uses the hyperbole as a conscious tactic, and as such they will continue to lob them like errant grenades, but I wanted to get my thoughts out there.
Well even though I have ignored my blog way too much last year, things are looking up for 2014.
The great desert produced by my sudden lack of a day job became lush when I was employed again, and even working 50 hours or more a week I am producing a lot of words for my novel-in-progress.
The Latest version of this military SF adventure story is now north of 96 thousand words and it’s looking to land in the area of 115 to 120. Then there will be revision, edits, and the beta read. the last two books have not survived their beat readers, we will see about this one.
After that I plan two novels as self-publishing experiments.
First up will be Vulcan’s Forge, a science-fiction noir in the tradition of The Maltese Falcon and Double Indemnity. It’s destined for self publishing because I expect it to be quite small as books go, around 50 to 60 thousand words. Unless you are an established star, publishers are generally not interested in such slim volumes.
Then will be my ‘screw you I writing it anyway book,’ currently titled The Illusion. It will be my foray into dystopic fiction. I looking at self-pub on this one because it will be, by far, my bleakest story. It would make an excellent French film from the 70s. It is unlikely to go to beat read as I am very sure that many of my usual beta readers would hate the book on political grounds. This will be a political book, but that doesn’t mean you should read too much of my personal views from the text. I can tell you this though it will never ever win a Prometheus award.
With the furor in the new and on the net over Arizona’s SB 1062, ‘Turn away the gay’ bill, there has been a lot of talk, discussion, argument, and name calling over the issue of people who run businesses and want to have those business conform to their personal moral standards. So, here I am wading into the minefield with my own idiosyncratic ideas.
First off, let’s take as a given that forcing someone to act in a manner directly opposed to their deeply held moral map is a touchy proposition and one that should be handled with deft care and an eye to personal freedom. Few among us would consent if the government forced up to kill a puppy to get out tax returns.
That said I do think there is a qualitative difference between your personal actions and the actions of a business, even if it is a business that you own. Your business is not you. A business does not have a deeply held moral map, it is an artificial construction not a person.
So how would I cleave this knot?
Let’s look at businesses and their owners in terms of how the assets are different in terms of protection.
Subject A as a private person decides to host a free carnival for the neighborhood. There is a spill of a slick oily mess, and though warned about it, Subject A does nothing. When a person slips, falls, and breaks their neck from this danger, Subject A is in danger from a civil suit, a civil suit that take everything Subject A owns, cash, stocks, their home, in restitution for the damages to the person with the broken neck. Subject A and their assets are fully at risk for their action and fully responsible for their actions.
Subject B form a business, an LLC or some other artificial construction for the purpose of throwing their neighborhood carnival. They too have a slippery oily mess, they too are warned, and they too do nothing. The person falls, breaks their necks and the business is at rick of lawsuit. The lawsuit can take everything the business owns as part of a damages award, but the business owner has their personal assets protected, but the shield that is the artificial construct the ‘business.’
Any lawyers among you will see that this is a gross simplification by a layman, but the concept is clear, Subject A was operating entirely from the personal sphere, while Subject B was operating from the public one. Subject B utilized laws passed to protect and shield business owners, putting distance between their business and their personal property.
In my opinion, and what I think should be legal opinion as well, any business that utilizes the public sphere, LLC laws, incorporation, and so on are ineligible to claim personal moral codes and restrictions. They are not their owners and by taking advantage of public laws in their benefits they surrender any claim for discriminatory practices.
Last night I took out the very first DVD I ever purchased as my Sunday Night Movie feature, Robocop. Clearly I am talking about the 1987 Paul Verhoeven R-rated extremely violent comic book movie. Yes, while there was no comic book that served as the course material 
the producers, writers, and director all felt that this was a comic superhero film. (Hence the appeared of several issues of ROM space knight, a forgettable Marvel book from the 80’s.)
Of the Verhoeven film I have seen, I consider Robocop to be the best. (With Total Recall next up, after that we descend into garbage with the speed of a politician taking a donation.) It is the story of Alex Murphy, family man and cop who is slain and then reborn as the Robocop. It is a social satire with a biting left edge slant to it. (Note the killing of two us presidents for ironic effect on one of the short news breaks during the feature. It doesn’t take much to work out that the presidents are Reagan and Nixon.) However this film transcends its political nature, I know several conservatives who like the film, and it truly a powerful piece on the nature of identity and the importance of having self.
I was disappointed when I cued the DVD and found that it was not an anamorphic presentation. The frame was full frame, but not enhanced for the 16X9 televisions that are common today. I adjusted and on my 42: screen it wasn’t tiny, but it was noticeable.
Of course it bears mention that currently in theaters is the remake of this film. The rating has gone from R to PG-13, and the make-up effects look less convincing to me, or the producers did not want the horrific image of a man made into a machine.
Look at this first image from the film 27 years ago. A make-up effect designed and executed by the incredibly talented Rob Bottin. Even though we know it is a man in a suit 
with latex to make him look merged with the machine, the image is disturbing. We can emotionally feel Murphy’s loss of humanity. When he says he can feel his lost family but he can not remember them, it strikes home as true.
Now look at this image from the remake. This has none of the horror, none of the shock that exists in Rob Bottin’s design. It, to me, literally looks like a man IN a suit, not that the man has become 
the suit.
I have not seen the remake, though I may if I can find the time and for a bargain price, but I hold out very little hope that it is worth the time.
No politics, no film this posting but just my life and a generally decent day I have experienced.
After a couple of enjoyable D&D games on Friday and Saturday nights, I awoke on Sunday feeling down right good. As we had planned my sweetie-wife and I instead of our usual walk in Balboa Park or alone the shore, went to Morley Field and played a half round of disc golf.
For those of you not in the know, Disc Golf is like regular golf, but played with specialized throwing discs. The distance to the holes is measure in hundreds of feet not yard, but the basics are the same. Each hole has a par rating and the person with the lowest score, i.e. the fewest number of tossed to place their disc in the target basket, wins.
A couple of friends of mine had introduced me to the game years and years ago. We used to play on weekday afternoons, when the days were long and I could get to the field after work with a reasonable amount of time for play. When I started working in La Jolla until 5 in the afternoon, the games stopped. My bag of discs (because you have driver and putters, not the kind of disc you would play catch with at the beach) has sat in my closet for 5 or 6 years now.
Last weekend my sweetie-wife and I took our Sunday walk near the Morley Field course and I noticed that Sunday mornings seemed to have a low turnout. That’s when we made the decision to come back this weekend and again play the field.
This morning was not as lightly attended as last Sunday, but I think if we had been just twenty minutes earlier it would have made a large difference in the speed of our play. That said, I had a fun time. My muscle memory seemed to return fairly quickly, and after 9 holes I was just 3 over par. (Though this is not truly fair. At the Morley Field Course it is not uncommon to have decent scores on the front nine utterly destroyed by the terror that is the back nine.)
Afterwards we went to lunch at our favorite lunch spot, Tioli’s Crazy Burger, and then window shopped a bit at the military surplus store. (I will admit to eyeing military trench-coats such as the ones worn by Cpt. Jack Harkness.
The rest fot he day was spent at home and feeling in general that life is good.
Tomorrow it is back to the day job, back to the novel, and back to little sleep, but until then I plan to watch a film (1987’s Robocop), enjoy a little popcorn, and let my relaxation continue.
I am a nut for documentaries. Last year when I was home recovering from sudden surgery I watched a ton on Netflix, Amazon and Hulu. A week ago i discovered one on Hulu that has simply blown my mind.
Warlords is a study of the mental games played by four of the leaders in the lead up to World War II. It delves into aspects that, for me, have previously been skipped over in the retelling.
For example, it’s well known that Stalin ignore the warnings that Hitler was going to invade the USSR. The intel was solid and it came at him again and again. It made no sense to me that Stalin, the murderous paranoid dictator, somehow had a blind spot when it came to Hitler and just couldn’t believe he would attack. This series shows that he did know Hitler wanted to destroy the USSR, he did know that Hitler could not be trusted, but also explains the reasoning going on in Stalin’s head as to why he thought the intel was part of an elaborate ruse, one he was determined not to fall for.
The second episode has dealt with Churchill and Roosevelt. Wow. Roosevelt does not come off looking good in this one and Churchill comes off a bit like a battered spouse willing to believe the lies just one more time.
I cant’ recommend this series enough.