Requiem for a Genoan

I'll be the first to admit it; I'm a proud apologist for Columbus. My analysis of his actions as described in Todorov and his own travel journals aside, I can't help but be taken in by the romance of risking everything to explore distant lands.

Last semester, a resolution went through the Undergraduate Senate here at AU that basically sought to condemn Columbus for actions that lead to genocide. I was taken aback by the nature of this resolution, knowing as I did that Columbus would have been aghast at the idea of purposefully obliterating an entire race of people. I argued with several Student Senators, finally bringing some around with examples of Columbus' love of nature, but it was pretty shocking how uninformed the majority of people generally were concerning the facts of Columbus' voyages.

Then again, how much knowledge is enough? What is the magic point when you know enough to condemn someone? If understanding leads to love, then we choose not to understand someone when we judge them. A judgment represents a conscious decision to disregard an individual's defense of his own actions, and to hold him to a separate standard than that which he holds for himself.

Even though I wanted to tell these people that they were wrong about Columbus, I realized it was futile. Their arguments, after all, were basically irrational; they were condemning actions which had been a direct influence on their own existences. I was stunned by the absurdity of individuals wearing American flag pins castigating Columbus, as though the country they love could exist in its present shape without him. Madness.

Affirmative Action in Space

We didn't have time to discuss it in class, but I wanted to raise an important issue that nobody else seemed to consider in staffing their expeditions. Is it important for us to stock our ship with a racially and sexually diverse staff?

It makes sense to me that the team we send isn't only important in its capacity to keep themselves alive and interface with the aliens; they are equally important in the impression they give of us as a species. Are you comfortable, then, with the idea of the aliens imagining us as a bunch of white guys?

Your first instinct is to say "well, whoever is the most skilled at each necessary position." A fair argument, but what if you have two people who would be equally suited to the task, only one is white, and the other black? Do you follow the path of fairness - deciding randomly - or make the choice that better represents our diversity (and out identity) as a species?

Same goes for male-female; in the book, Voelker (eternal scum as he is portrayed) claims that the greatest mistake was in sending women along on the mission. Would you be too worried about the possible relationships that could develop and harm the mission, or the possibility of pregnancy? Or would you rather represent our species properly, as sexually dimorphic but otherwise, ceteris parabus, equals?

Justifying V

I was disappointed that we never reached a conclusion on why Susan's logic for wielding absolute control being because it was necessary was different from V's logic for wielding absolute control being because it was necessary.
I acknowledge that it was noble of V to take more direct responsibility for his dirty work, but it was dirty work nonetheless. We skirted around the issue that perhaps the only important distinctions were the intentions of each character. Is killing justified if the killer has a greater good in mind? The same idea appears (like we discussed) with Mike from The Moon is a Harsh Mistress explaining his crashing of a ship because it seemed necessary for the cause, which is why I found it so odd that V never tries to explain or justify his actions to anyone. It makes V seem that much more inhuman, that a computer showed more typical human behavior than he did. V's character is all the more dangerous simply because he seeks no recourse or justification from anyone, even Evey who practically begs V to clue her in. If we justify V's actions as being better than Susan's because V has a more noble end in mind, aren't we justifying any individual taking our future into their hands simply because they think they know what's best for us? Or that they won't force anything upon us, just make it nearly impossible for us to choose any future but they one they approve of?
On some other points, I appreciated the historical comparisons that we discussed, particularly the similarity to the Nuremberg Trials. It harshly illuminated the scary fact that there really are people who pass judgment on who is guilty to what degree- and who should die. And apparently these characters don't just show up in graphic novels.
As for comparisons to the movie- of course I agree that they are ridiculously different, but that doesn't make me like the movie any less. It might just be that I enjoy the more romanticized version of a revolutionary in comparison to the cold anarchist V Alan Moore created. It might be that "strength through unity" seemed to provide a more practical founding statement for a lemming population than "strength through purity," though not as close to the fascist doctrine. Whatever the case, I enjoyed both on different planes but was glad we discussed the major disparities.

can a cyborg mind be blown? OR one week too late

Picture this:

A man is created in a fashion completely different from that of normal men. Immediately those around him recognize him as something different and new, and great time and energy is invested int his development. He has innate knowledge of his greater capabilities and purpose due to his awareness of the circumstances of his creation. He easily earns loyalty and respect from those who take the time to get to know him as a person, but receives disgust and rejection from those who judge him based on what he represents rather than who he is. He is capable of astonishing feats, with incredible abilities compared to other men, but at the same time his strangeness sets him apart and prevents him from fully integrating with society. He learns of the legends his people have, that in a time of great need a man like him will come to save them. Eventually he is noticed by a great foreign power, and he is given up by someone close to him, taken away by the great power despite the best efforts of his friends to defend him. He accepts his fate and dies under the custody of the great power, in order that he may save the people he has grown to love, his people, the Jews.

Is this the story of Yod? Or is it the story of the Messiah?! Madness! But you can't deny that Yod is a savior. I doubt the similarities are coincidental.

Piercy had cats

The most amazing thing I learned was Prof. Jackson's mention of there having been no internet when Piercy wrote He, She, and It. Her creation of nets and bases must have been as difficult as me now imagining life without the internet, a feat I really don't even want to try. Our society would be completely different. I'm amazed at how Piercy somewhat foresaw and created that.
During our discussion of why Piercy made her charactres Jewish, I found it curious that none of us raised the simple question, "Was Piercy Jewish?" And voila, not only was she raised Jewish, but her grandmother's name was Hannah-a tidbit that just caused me to...giggle. In fact, Piercy's critiques on a male dominated society and her seeming bias of the benefits of females make more sense after reading her biography. As for the Jewish focus of the novel, I do feel she hit on an excellent cultural example. Which other religion contains myths of creating people from nonliving material, in so similar a process as the science fiction notion of a cyborg? And have any other religions been so extremely forced to live in secluded towns, but still served a function in society? Multiple details made the Jews the perfect medium for paralleling the futuristic portion of Piercy's tale. Did I mention she loved cats in her childhood? Or that she had three husbands?
Aside from how much more understandable her motives are when you look into her personal history, we looked at some interesting arguments in class, including, "Two guys a girl and a pizza place, except the pizza place is one of the charactres." (I'm not sure who to credit with that idea).
We never really came to a resolution on whether you have to be able to physically inflict yourself on your environment in order to be granted personhood. Personally, I don't feel the physical aspect has anything to do with personhood, and we were much closer to an answer with Jack's idea of being able to impose your choices on the world. Both Yod and Joseph certainly "imposed" themselves on the world, but beyond a certain point Joseph couldn't make his own choices, and Yod was certainly closer because he not only was capable of affecting the world physically, but of affecting the lives, emotions, and choices of those around him as well. He fits into the human structure and uses human terms to impose himself on the human world. If I had been on the council, after exhausting my allotted 3 minutes of oratory, I would have voted to give Yod personhood. :)

Step One

How to be a messianic figure in 3 easy steps:
1. Don't die.
2. Don't profess to be any sort of messiah.
3. Fulfill prophecies.
Or so seemed to be the general sort of conclusionary-ish idea we reached. I think essentially that under some definitions Paul could be a messiah, but not under others. Paul is the messiah equivalent of the tomato. A mere religious/political leader by some definitions, a prophesized super human being by others. It all depends on how you look at it. Considering we were looking at it according to a historically and partially religiously based perspective, I think we can conclude that by those standards Paul was a messiah of one breed or another.
The fact that the word play used by Weber crosses the language barrier delighted me. Those are rare occasions, and fortunately this allowed us non-German speaking students to appreciate the intelligence Weber displayed in how he approached his assignment.
As for our note-taking experiment in student labour...no, I jest. As I already stated in class, I take those sort of notes for every class, and I would personally enjoy seeing the diverse interpretations each person pulled from our discussions.

Which Paul?

The entire cyclical aspect of Herbert's writing style was discussed at length and in my opinion was our most important clue to every other aspect of this book. As the reader's we are told nearly every aspect of the plot in advance, yet we continue to read and even enjoy this book through nearly five hundred pages. Any ordinary novel would be tossed aside early on if the author tried this, but in Dune the basic developments in the plot (that we of course know will happen long before they actually occur) are not the entire story. Reading the last page of the book before the rest wouldn't change how you read the book at all. Instead of the plot, an intricate web of the secret agendas of individuals and organizations must be slowly unfolded for us to see the twisted relationships and alliances that guide political, religious, and personal agendas. It was these relationships and agendas that I enjoyed discovering in class. Everyone seemed to have a different opinion.

For instance- personal preference seemed to dictate how people perceived Paul. Or Muad'dib. Or the Duke Paul Altreides. Or the Lisan al-Gaib. Or the Kwisatz Haderach. Which I think may have been intentional on Herbert's part. The central character in the story is multi-faceted, and everyone supported the Paul they liked or identified with most. We don't have one main character, but several rolled into one so that everyone can get what they want from him.

Herbert causes us to see Paul just as the Fremen, Bene Gesserit, and Alreides clan all seem to: getting a bit of what they want from Paul, though their purposes vary.

Minds, Prepare to be Blown

I sincerely hope that you're sitting down as you read this. If not, grab a seat and buckle up.

Picture this: a powerful woman, never treated by her man as society expects a man to treat a wife. She emerges from the shadow of his influence and finds herself struggling to control the ideological future of a people. She represents an established political organization, and hopes to return to a time of paradise and splendor. However, her peculiar femininity causes many to distrust her.

She competes for that ideological control with a young man known to the people as an outsider, who speaks in terms of destiny and claims to have a vision of the future. He seizes the imagination of the people by promising them a fabulous new future. Although she disapproves of his leveraging his popularity into political control, he gradually brings one group of followers after another around to his point of view. There are concerns because he grew up in a far-off place, but he easily integrates himself into their society.

Both of them have nearly identical goals, to throw off the yoke of domination laid on them for years by what they see as a harsh, authoritarian leader. This unpopular leader generally responds to threats either by denying that they exist or attempting to obliterate them entirely with a display of overwhelming force. Eventually he finds it necessary to relinquish direct control, and so props up one of his faction's most loyal supporters to square off against the new threats.

As to how the story ends, I'm not too sure. "What do you mean," you ask, "isn't this the plot of Dune?" I can see why you might think that, my friends. But this is actually the plot...of ELECTION 2008!!!

To tie things together, a selection from the glossary:
BARAKA - A living holy man of magical powers.

Frank Herbert planned this.

The etymology of constitutionality

After seeing the comments on the free exercise clause, I thought I'd take this opportunity to present my somewhat unconventional take on the Constitution's religion clauses. I wrote this as part of the final for a class I took last semester, "Religion & American Public Policy." Normally I wouldn't reuse something, but it's a lot easier than retyping it, and I think it's an interesting point. Let me know what you think.

The religion clauses of the First Amendment leave much to the imagination in terms of how they should be applied. Divided into two parts, the Establishment Clause and the Free Exercise Clause, they theoretically describe the whole of possible religious interaction in which the federal government may take part. In practice, they are often misinterpreted due to their confusing word choice. The Establishment Clause, for instance, is regularly read as prohibiting Congress from passing laws having to do with religion in general. This is a gross misreading of the Clause as it was intended; take as evidence the etymology of the word establishment. Its root, establish, comes from the Latin stabilire (to make stable). There is a clear difference between 1) a stable, enduring religious body and 2) assorted religious principles (which so often find protection under this clause). As early as 1731, there is evidence of the use of the phrase established Church as a common principle; although that connection has vanished today, even as late as 1923 the term’s meaning had only changed to “ruling people and institutions”.[1] Establish has always carried the connotation of a permanent institution; based on this logic, it is ridiculous to conclude that the Establishment Clause extends to preventing Congress from addressing religious activity in general. Only legitimate churches or similarly situated religious organizations, which are well established and permanent, are illegal targets of legislation. The Free Exercise Clause falls victim to another linguistic confusion; Congress is only prohibited from making laws which explicitly hinder the free exercise of those religious establishments. While the common understanding of this clause is, “Congress shall make no law prohibiting the right of the people to freely exercise their religions,” a more critical reading proves this is incorrect. The proper interpretation is, “Congress shall make no law prohibiting religious establishments from freely exercising.” Exercise, in this case, means “the condition of being in active operation."[2] In other words, the power of Congress to legislate with regards to religion is explicitly limited to everything that happens outside of establish religious institutions, but within that one restriction, Congress may pass any law it wishes! With this evidence, it is apparent that laws banning OR requiring forms of religious expression in public are completely constitutional: the clauses refer to churches, not their members. Religious expression that occurs outside of a building owned by permanent religious organization or an event sponsored by one of those organizations has no protection whatsoever. While the definition of “permanent religious organization” is harder to pin down, it can be understood that cults and newer religions, which have not proven themselves to be historically viable (established), do not enjoy the same protection as churches which have been around for hundreds of years. Similarly, the government may endorse any religious activity so long as it endorses no established religious institution. Therefore, under the terms of this argument, Christianity may be the subject of legislation, but the Presbyterian Church may not.

---

[1] Establish, Online Etymology Dictionary. 2001. http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?search=establishment&searchmode=none

[2] Exercise, Online Etymology Dictionary. 2001. http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?search=exercise&searchmode=none

Also, I figured I'd jump on the bandwagon of hating on Apple, so here's a poem I wrote:

My Trip to the Apple Store

The story I tell here,
Entirely true,
Could easily happen
to any of you.

When my PC failed me,
its hard drive ascreech,
I went to the store
of which hipper men preach.

With turtleneck black,
and eyes oh so cold,
The Apple man bought me
'fore I knew I'd been sold.

He spoke of its features,
He spoke of its price
Assured me that nothing
was nearly this nice.

The plastic, fantastic;
And firewire, too?
It also holds pictures
and clips from the zoo!

Sound editing, easy.
Photo touch-ups, a snap!
To use this computer
takes no thinking cap.

"But hold on," I asked him,
"What makes this so good?
These are all functions
That a PC could-"

"Blasphemy!" yelled he,
"It's got such ease of use!"
To prove it he made up
A widget-shaped goose.

His fingers were flying,
Slowed only by need
To press that strange button.
I missed right-click's speed.

"Now wait up," I begged,
"Can't I change or adjust?"
The interface seemed stagnant,
and I despise rust.

"Absurd!" was his charge,
"What change could you need?
It's a perfect design
for all people, indeed!"

He told me, "No viruses!
Macs will prevail!"
I asked about hard drives,
heard "Oh, those still fail."

"Now slow down," said I,
"This all seems quite fine.
But can't I go outside
your neatly drawn lines?"

He straightened and frowned,
Then gave me my hat.
Said, "Sorry, sir-
thought you were cooler than that."

Yes, it's biased.

America&Tiffany

First, I say without reservation that I do enjoy being a guinea pig- to an extent of course. I honestly do enjoy experimentation in the classroom, whether it works out as planned or not. Either way it's new, different, and at least holds potential for improvement (not that I have any qualms with the class now or think it necessarily needs improvement). Though the TiffanyScreens software was not overly cooperative (despite it's perky title) there was one aspect of it that I really enjoyed. It allowed us the opportunity to see how the different groups approached the same question from radically different angles and have a more diversified approach to discussion. For example, I enjoyed both the group who presented similar themes found in much older writings and the group who presented the banned cartoons illustrating those same ideas. Not that I wasn't a fan of the Wikipedia page and medical manifest destiny too.
As for the actual course of our discussion and Manifest Destiny itself, I feel we focused to much on particulars to get to what really deserved clarification. Yes, we established that the United States is and always has been a very religious state, despite popular belief to the contrary, which Stephanson did an excellent job of narrating. I felt that the specifics of which particular religions were involved got in the way of discussion on the idea as a whole. It was important that the Protestants were so involved in the formation of American ideals, but in the spread of Stephanson's work, "Protestant," could have been replaced with nearly any branch of Catholicism or bible-following religion and history would have followed the same flow. Stephanson's point that the idea of a religious mandate for a "manifest destiny" sprouted from biblical teachings and not any teaching peculiar to the Protestant following.
I think what best sums up my thoughts on this entire work are the things that went through my head upon viewing that tasteless Looney Toons depiction of Japanese culture:
Are there really people in positions of such power (yes, Looney Toons is a position power) that are so close minded and willing to misdirect our society's perceptions? Well, I suppose it's nothing new, this has been happening ever since those religious fanatics came to this continent with their ideas of superiority and a manifest destiny...

Population Issues on the Moon

I made a pretty big claim in class today -- that a society consisting of 90% women would quickly reach the equilibrium point of approximately 50% males and 50% females. I was able to find some research backing that up in the work of the primary sex-ratio scholars Fisher, Bodmer and Edwards (who argue that species will always lean towards 1:1 ratios of males to females as it offers the highest return on their energy investment in terms of reproduction). Feel free to look up their work on JSTOR. In the meantime, I decided to use arithmetic to help explain my principles.

To do so, we will first demonstrate how Luna likely functions in terms of population growth and sex ratios. Let's start with some basics. We know that, at the time of the narrative, Luna (or at least Luna City) is 90% male. To simplify things, we'll use population figures of 10 men for every 1 women, with a starting population of 100 men and 10 women. We'll assume that in Loony society, each woman takes at least two husbands, and each woman has at least two children. We'll also assume a 1:1 ratio of male to female births, and we won't take into account old age (meaning a member of any generation can marry a member of any other generation), but we will allow marriages to only occur once. Finally, we'll add 10 men and one woman to each generation to simulate the introduction of new convicts into the environment. It won't seem like much after a few generations, but I think a 10% increase in population at first is reasonable, and there's no reason to think it will increase any more over time. This will, theoretically, give us quite a long time before the population is brought to 50/50 male/female. Let's calculate a few generations....

Generation 1
Available Men: 100
Available Women: 10

Unmarried Men: 80
Male children: 10
Female children: 10
Male convicts added: 10
Female convicts added: 1

Results:
Total Men: 120
Total Women: 21
Percentage Women: 15%

Generation 2
Available Men: 100
Available Women: 11

Unmarried Men: 78
Male children: 11
Female children: 11
Male convicts: 10
Female convicts: 1

Results:
Total Men: 141
Total Women: 33
Percentage Women: 19%

Generation 3
Available Men: 99
Available Women: 12

Unmarried Men: 75
Male children: 12
Female children: 12
Male convicts: 10
Female convicts: 1

Results:
Total Men: 163
Total Women: 46
Percentage Women: 22%

Generation 4
Available Men: 97
Available Women: 13

Unmarried Men: 71
Male children: 13
Female children: 13
Male convicts: 10
Female convicts: 1

Results:
Total Men: 186
Total Women: 60
Percentage Women: 24%

And so on. I'll save you the tedium of the rest of the operations, but suffice to say that it takes 25 generations before hitting 40% women, and a full 200 generations before hitting 48% (by which point our total population is around 56,000, and equilibrium has already been well enough achieved -- trust me). Clearly, Heinlein's depiction of Luna City has it bad, but not so bad as he makes it seem...using my model, they go from 10 to 1 all the way down to 4 to 1 in just a few generations, and that's using very conservative estimates. My model also didn't include any individual woman having more than two children (which made the count take longer) or any men or women dying of old age (which shouldn't have effected the statistics anyway, since there was always a surplus of men in the gene pool). In other words, in a society without these limitations (like Heinlein's), there would be a lot more children, and therefore things would get corrected much faster. So while 10 to 1 males to females is pretty bad, it self-corrects relatively quickly.

My argument, however, was that a society of 10 to 1 females to males would reproduce and self-correct so quickly as to hardly matter. So let's flip my system on its head; 100 women and only 10 men. Each man takes 2 wives, each woman has 2 children. Every generation we'll add an extra 10 females and 1 male. Let's see how this goes down.


Generation 1
Available Men: 10
Available Women: 100

Unmarried Women: 80
Male children: 20
Female children: 20
Male convicts: 1
Female convicts: 10

Results:
Total Men: 31
Total Women: 130
Percentage Men: 19%

Generation 2
Available Men: 21
Available Women: 110

Unmarried Women: 68
Male children: 42
Female children: 42
Male convicts: 1
Female convicts: 10

Results:
Total Men: 74
Total Women: 182
Percentage Men: 28%

Unbelievable! I'll spare you the calculation...suffice to say that this model reaches equilibrium in just 7 generations, interestingly with a total population of about 7,000. In fact, this model reaches perfect equilibrium (exactly 50/50) in only 10 generations...which would have taken the first model over 50,000, more than all of human history has taken already! And that's assuming that each man takes no more than two wives, and each woman has no more than two children. If men take as many as 4 wives, you can reach equilibrium in 3 generations, or even 40% in only 2. And you'll STILL have a huge surplus of women. I think it's safe to say that equilibrium comes plenty fast in a society like that; men wouldn't be treasured articles of value for very long.

* These operations were performed using a program I wrote in QBASIC. If you'd like to see the code, please let me know and I could post it here. It's a very short program.

The Purpose of The Time Machine

Other than the obvious purpose of the time machine -to travel in time- we looked at several different possible purposes of The Time Machine in class. Possibilities such as it being a warning against abandoning the grindstone of progress struck me as being the most probable motivation for Wells, given the historical context it was written during. This line of thought, that people actually thought everything of importance had been discovered and there wasn't really anywhere else to discover led me to wonder if this had a link we missed in Wells' writing. Space travel had been brought up, such as in Jules Vernes works, but in 19th Century London, space wasn't considered. Everything major had been accomplished, right? Just as we remarked that in The Time Machine the Time Traveler didn't find that people had traveled into space or any progress in an outward direction, they had remained at home just like the good old British of Wells' time were expecting to. I think it only stands to reason that the Time Traveler never found evidence of space travel or progress, because that was part of the point Wells' may have been making about people already being on a path to atrophy unless they continued with discovery and exploration.
However, I think Wells was given far too little credit as an author. Granted, this doesn't make for the best novel, but I tend to look more at the literary aspect of things, and as we mentioned, Wells didn't intend this to be a novel. Perhaps we viewed it as lacking literary drama because we didn't view it in an episodic manner, but a span. Even as a novel though, the premise it presents has still drawn a reading audience for decades, whatever else its shortcomings. I also appreciated how insignificant characters such as the Editor -he edits- didn't merit names the reader wouldn't have recalled anyhow. If Wells' had done this without distinction, we would have known the Morlocks merely as "ground dwellers" and the Eloi as "the dancing flower people" or something of the sort. The fact that Wells' gives them creative titles leads me to believe we missed something significant here. Then again, I could just be creating what I want to be there from what an author added on a whim.