[Star Trek, 2009]

Warning! Spoilers abound!

I can't remember the last time I was in a film that kept you at a sprinting pace for two hours. Star Trek was a great science fiction show, and the beginnings of a new series (more likely a trilogy) of movies.

There is so much right with this film that I can completely ignore anything that is wrong with it. A lot of other reviews will talk about how the engineering set looks cheap, or how there was gratuitous use of lens flare, or how Chekov's accent might be too strong. The great thing about this movie, is that none of that matters, and none of that detracts from the best Star Trek film ever, for fans or non-fans.

Some people have said that this is just making Star Trek a run of the mill action film. I completely disagree. Transformers was just an action film, it was not "about" anything profound. This was different, this was about personal character growth, and learning how and why people can meet their full potential. The two main characters in the film, Kirk and Spock, are both clearly competent but both held back by both the death of a father figure for Kirk, and the death of the mother figure for Spock as well as the absence and coldness of his father. Kirk learns that he can overcome circumstances to be a true leader, and Spock begins to truly balance his Vulcan-Human elements to learn that what he always knew was not a defect truly is his greatest strength.

The supporting characters all shine. We all knew Nichelle Nichols, George Takei, and Walter Koening were class actors, but their characters did always reflect that, sometimes reduced to being cliche stereotypes (which was still progressive for the 1960's.) Here, though, every character is someone who you care about and who you want the future movies to tell you more about. Uhura is confident and brilliant, but also has a clear feminine side which is not submissive. Sulu is more of an action hero here but that is still a huge step up from just piloting the ship. Chekov is a brilliant wunderkind whose services are invaluable. Scotty is humorous (like the original) and a miracle worker, literally. While McCoy did not get top billing the way Kirk and Spock did, he is clearly not only an important part of the "troika" but also has a much stronger relationship to Kirk.

Finally, the Spock-Uhura romance is not only a brilliant new idea, but also a great homage to how it was meant to be Spock who would have the first inter-racial kiss on TV in "Plato's Stepchildren" before it was changed to Kirk. The movie is full of brilliant new ideas and is no longer constrained by canon dictating the look, feel, or plot of the movie. From now on, every consequence matters, and from now on, the directors and writers of the TV show can make the 23rd century look like the future.

This movie may not be overloaded with themes and morals the way "The Wrath of Khan" or "The Undiscovered Country" were, but it still has a Star Trek sensibility about the greatness for human (and alien) achievement and that timeless sense that the Characters really will "boldy go where no man has gone before." This film has been a long time coming, and the franchise is better for it.

[Captain Richard Phillips Rescued!]

I also received an email from someone detailing the American Navy rescue efforts of Captain Phillips. In that email it was claimed that the Navy was told by Obama to not open fire until the FBI arrived to negotiate. However, there is a standing order on the high seas to shoot to kill in instances where a Navy captain thinks lives are in danger, and when the pirates held a gun to the head of Captain Phillips, the US Navy opened fire.

Don't be so quick to believe that, a lot of that sort of news gets started in the same rumor mills that try to peddle the idea that Obama's birth certificate is actually from Kenya.

Little Green Footballs on this, (not exactly a liberal site...)

[GOP tossing aside 'Atlas' in favor of 'Das Kapital']

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/08/opinion/...amp;ref=opinion

Small Isn’t Beautiful

President-elect Barack Obama and a Democratic Congress are about to serve up a supersized helping of big-government liberalism. Conservatives will be inclined to oppose much of what Obama and his party cook up. And, I believe, rightly so.

But conservatives should think twice before charging into battle against Obama under the banner of “small-government conservatism.” It’s a banner many Republicans and conservatives have rediscovered since the election and have been waving around energetically. Jeb Bush, now considering a Senate run in 2010, even went so far as to tell Politico last month, “There should not be such a thing as a big-government Republican.”

Really? Jeb Bush was a successful and popular conservative governor of Florida, with tax cuts, policy reforms and privatizations of government services to show for his time in office. Still, in his two terms state spending increased over 50 percent — a rate faster than inflation plus population growth. It turns out, in the real world of Republican governance, that there aren’t a whole lot of small-government Republicans.

Five Republicans have won the presidency since 1932: Dwight Eisenhower, Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan and the two George Bushes. Only Reagan was even close to being a small-government conservative. And he campaigned in 1980 more as a tax-cutter and national-defense-builder-upper, and less as a small-government enthusiast in the mold of the man he had supported — and who had lost — in 1964, Barry Goldwater. And Reagan’s record as governor and president wasn’t a particularly government-slashing one.

Even the G.O.P.’s 1994 Contract With America made only vague promises to eliminate the budget deficit, and proposed no specific cuts in government programs. It focused far more on crime, taxes, welfare reform and government reform. Indeed, the “Republican Revolution” of 1995 imploded primarily because of the Republican Congress’s one major small-government-type initiative — the attempt to “cut” (i.e., restrain the growth of) Medicare. George W. Bush seemed to learn the lesson. Prior to his re-election, he proposed and signed into law popular (and, it turned out, successful) legislation, opposed by small-government conservatives, adding a prescription drug benefit to Medicare.

So talk of small government may be music to conservative ears, but it’s not to the public as a whole. This isn’t to say the public is fond of big-government liberalism. It’s just that what’s politically vulnerable about big-government liberalism is more the liberalism than the big government. (Besides, the public knows that government’s not going to shrink much no matter who’s in power.)

Now it’s true that the size of the government and the modern liberal agenda are connected. It’s also true that modern conservatism has to include a strong commitment to limited (though energetic) government and to constitutional (though not necessarily small or weak) government. Still, there’s a difference between a conservatism that is concerned with limited and constitutional government and one that focuses on simply opposing big government.

So: If you’re a small-government conservative, you’ll tend to oppose the bailouts, period. If you more or less accept big government, you’ll be open to the government’s stepping in to save the financial system, or the auto industry. But you’ll tend to favor those policies — universal tax cuts, offering everyone a chance to refinance his mortgage, relieving auto makers of burdensome regulations — that, consistent with conservative principles, don’t reward irresponsible behavior and don’t politicize markets.

Similarly, if you’re against big government, you’ll oppose a huge public works stimulus package. If you think some government action is inevitable, you might instead point out that the most unambiguous public good is national defense. You might then suggest spending a good chunk of the stimulus on national security — directing dollars to much-needed and underfunded defense procurement rather than to fanciful green technologies, making sure funds are available for the needed expansion of the Army and Marines before rushing to create make-work civilian jobs. Obama wants to spend much of the stimulus on transportation infrastructure and schools. Fine, but lots of schools and airports seem to me to have been refurbished more recently and more generously than military bases I’ve visited.

I can’t help but admire some of my fellow conservatives’ loyalty to the small-government cause. It reminds me of the nobility of Tennyson’s Light Brigade, as it charges into battle: “Theirs but to do and die.” Maybe it would be better, though, first to reason why.

Ahhh... no small government conservatives any more! As they say, straight from the horses mouth!

[Ron Paul's supporters.]

The guy is truly a Paleo-Conservative. Not a Libertarian, and certainly not an Objectivist.

Hence, his followers are also nuts:

http://wonkette.com/348081/internal-paulta...aut-endorsement

[I have been proved wrong]

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/07/12/national...amp;oref=slogin

A report sent to the Air Force in late April by Americans United for Separation of Church and State, an advocacy group based in Washington, said that academy officers and staff members opened mandatory events at the academy with prayer, sent e-mail academy-wide with religious taglines, and published advertisements in the academy newspaper asking cadets to contact them to "discuss Jesus." The report is based on interviews with current and former academy staff and faculty members and cadets.

...

Captain Morton said, "People at the academy were making cadets feel an obligation that they are serving the will of God if they are engaging in evangelical activities, and telling them that this is harmonious and co-extensive with military service."

...

.

One staff member who spoke on condition of anonymity said on Wednesday: "There's certainly an impression that evangelicals here have that the leadership is kind of on their side. And there's a feeling among people who are atheists or people who are other varieties of Christian that the leadership does not really accept them."

Captain Morton said she had decided to step forward without authorization from the public affairs office because: "It's the Constitution, not just a nice rule we can follow or not follow. We all raised our hands and said we'd follow it, and that includes the First Amendment, that includes not using your power to advance your religious agenda."

She added, "I realize this is the end of my Air Force career."

This is no different then if we were subtly discourage people from a working environment because they are not communist enough. What that sort of ridiculousness can be legally tolerated in an university (if it is a private institution) the idea that our government pays lip service to this sort of weakening of our defense, I feel, is representative of the kinds of dangers that come with letting evangelicals get leadership roles.

[I have been proved wrong]

After 6 years of Bush, most of it with a republican congress, I didnt see any lurch toward the dreaded theocracy. Can anyone here say with a straight face that 6 years of Hillary and a democratic congress will not produce dramatic movement toward socialism? Socialized medicine would be a virtual certainty. Tax increases would be a lock, as would greater regulation of business, and Kyoto would be back in play. Am I leaving anything out?

The fact that there is even discussion about changing the constitution to define marriage. The establishment of "faith based initiatives". More importantly, there is the informal level of power which has been given to the religious right which manifests itself in destructive ways. For example, the Defense Department's contract with Blackwater did not come because Backwater proved they would be best for the job in Iraq, but because their CEO is an evangelical and that was good enough for them. It has also meant that our Air Force academy is full of evangelical preachers who are trying to associate military success with religious devotion.

[I have been proved wrong]

I have always felt that in an un-ideal situation where you have to chose between either living under economic constraints (Socialism, Keynsianism, Communism, etc.) or social constraints (Theocracy) that living with the economic constraints would be better.

Living with high taxes is bad, but at least it might be possible to find loopholes in the system and unless its gone so far gone that it is collapsing, for a while I could at least live and at least what I do beyond my paycheck is not being regulated

Under a Christian theocracy, or a government friendly to Christianity, my private life, how I conduct my business with other people without involving finance, whether a hypothetical wife of mine would want an abortion, whether I would not want my hypothetical child to attend a school that is not using religious imagery, will all come under scrutiny. Having what I do in the privacy of my own home, what to chose to believe and what ideas I want to spread, having that be regulated or prevented is worse then just having a smaller pay check.

Both are bad, but at least in the American situation, one seems worse then the other.

[The Writers Guild Strike]

How can this not be a philosophical issue? It would seem that this is a dramatization of many of the conflicts present in Atlas Shrugged (members of society wishing to illegitimately profit from the creative and productive energies of others). I would normally expect Objectivists to blog in support of those ideas. So I am curious if the reason that they don't is because of how this is being done by a union, or if there is some other reason that prevents them from rushing to the defense of the writers as productive and creative members of the industry.

[The Writers Guild Strike]

I am a bit surprised that no one in the Objectivists blogosphere seems to have provided any commentary on the current strike being undertaken by the Writers Guild of America (I make this statement based on the meta blog on this forum's frontpage) I am also surprised that no ARI editorial or letter to the editor has been posted yet explaining their view.

There is only one article on Capmag.com which even approaches the issue (which itself has a disclaimer explaining that this is an older article from 2001). It argues that the issue is not the terms of the strikers, but government protection provided to unions and guilds and how this prevents individuals who are not members of unions to be able to enter into contract with the producers and directors of television shows and movies:

http://capmag.com/article.asp?ID=5040

While I agree with that legal point, I am reminded of what Thomas Sowell has said in some of his other articles, that there is nothing fundamentally wrong if workers decide to picket and present demands for changes in employment terms as a unified group (whether such action makes economic sense is another argument.) Additionally, I find myself sympathetic to the demands of the strikers.

As I understand it, the current rules regarding royalties that writers get for their work does not take into account the sales from DVDs or from content being posted online. For example, if a TV show is broadcasted to a traditional TV set, the network would have to pay the writers some sort of royalty. However, if the network decides to put the show up online instead, they have no obligation to either credit the writers or pay them.

An example of this are the recent Battlestar Galactica "webisodes", short two-minute episodes which were put online. The writers wanted credit for their work but the network deemed it was simply "promotional material" and so did not need to be credited. To understand why getting credit is important, it is my understanding that if they are not credited the writers can not put the work they did on their resumes, after all, how can they claim it if they were not credited?

Now as the lines between "TV" and "Internet Content" become more and more blurred, the likely hood that more of more material will be distributed online through digital means (Youtube etc) becomes greater, so it makes sense that if the existing writer's guild contract with the networks is not able to deal with this accordingly, then a change must be made, and if negotiations to come to an agreement that deal with this reality fail, then a strike to demonstrate the problems that will come if the writers can not write (and thus fill the networks with badly conceived reality TV shows) does not seem completely unreasonable.

At this point I feel tempted to make a comparison between the writer's strike on their creative output and the Atlas Shrugged "Strike of the Mind" but I feel that the similarities are obvious enough.

With this in mind, why have not more Objectivists come to the defense of the writers for trying to get the necessary economic and contractual credit that the writers deserve for their creative work? Is it because the defense of the need to reward the creative energies of the writers is being taken up by a union? And so there is just an implicit (and possibly legitimate) guarded bias against taking the same side as a union? Is it because this does not resolve the underlying tensions about the powers that unions have under the current laws? Or is it because they don't think that there is a case to be made in getting all worked up about new forms of media distribution?

[Is Blackwater Proper?]

While I support what it would mean for Blackwater to be contracted to do work for the government in theory, in practice, I am not sure that the experiment has been a good one.

For a start, the CEO of Blackwater is a fundamentalist Christian who has given a lot of a money to Republican candidates to advance their socially conservative agenda. As I understand it, in return for his loyalty to the cause, Blackwater won many no-bid contracts. In a perfect world, I would expect the contracts to at least require different companies to prove their capabilities, the same way in which Airbus and Boeing had to compete when presenting potential designs for the Joint Strike Fighter.

In addition, as many people have pointed out earlier, since this sort of contracting is fairly new, the legalese has not been brought up to standard yet, so while the regular US Military has a system set up in order to properly maintain discipline and in order to make sure the soldiers are doing what their mission requires, it is unclear whether or not Blackwater is being held to similar standards.

So while I expect the government to get smarter at how it deals with contractors in the future, for now at least, they seem to have some work to do.

[Star Trek]

I grew up likeing "The Next Generation" and really liked that show at the time, generally for it's positive vision of the future. However as I got a little older the moral relativism and socialist communist stuff *really* started to great on me, but in addition to that, you can see a clear progression in TNG from real plots to "technobabble pseudo plots" where problems arose with mysterious psuedoscientific causes and solutions, instead of real conflicts and challenges that were overcome, until eventually the plot became = to technobabble, see the episode where Wesley defeats the energy thing guarding the water by clacking away on the tricorder. It's lazy writing, but fans started to love the technobabble so it became a cornerstone of the show.

Gene Roddenbury was less of a Communist and more of a atheist humanist. So while his vision of the future downplays property and currency, he certainly does not take the Communist rhetoric to back up his ideas. I would agree with the sentiment that while in general very good, TNG did get occasionally too politically correct and technobabble filled. The characters were also more boring and it was after Gene died that all of a sudden the characters were actually allowed to be interesting as opposed to boy scouts.

The final nail in the coffin for Star Trek was Babylon 5, which I think is arguable the best Sci Fi show ever concienved. The author wrote all five seasons out before filming any of the show, and the plot questions revolve around deep philosophical questions, leading up to a great galactic war. The future depicted in B5 isnt a communist utopia but it is clearly progressive, rational, and heroic, and definately not communist. But more than that, the charachters undergo significant growth and change throughout the course of the series, some you start out hating but end up really liking, some go through grand epiphanies, some see their people enslaved. Things that happen in one episode remain relevant to all other episodes, yet each episode is self contained as well. Unlike star trek where soething that happens in one episode is completely disconnected from every other Episode. In B5, JMS (the writer) had a story and a message he wanted to tell, in Star Trek liberal english socialist writers merely sat around tables thinking "ok what are we going to have happen this week?!"

Hmmm.... I would think that Objectivists would be much more averse to B5. (I am not an O'ist.) The series tends to have a very positive portrayal of religion, especially with the quote "Faith and Reason are like the shoes on your feet, you go further with both then just one."

I agree that B5 was helped by its intricate plot but its not a perfect show. A lot of Season 1 is simply unwatchable and there are a lot of episodes which need to be watched for the plot but are just not that good, like "Walkabout."

There are some very boring characters as well like Sinclair. Even Sheridan is not that engaging. The best three characters were probably Ivanova, G'kar, and Londo. Garibaldi is alright but spends a lot of time just being grumpy. Lennier and Delen are cool though I have always felt that her courtship with Sheridan was rather bland.

Also, although I do love the general over-arching ark in B5 (which has since been a model used very well in Battlestar Galactica) I do think that there is a benefit to having an episodic series. The entire original Star Trek was entirely episodic but that did not make it less of a good show.

[Capitalism comes to Sudan, Social Constraints remain.]

Where did Thomas Sowell write about Sudan?

[Capitalism comes to Sudan, Social Constraints remain.]

It is interesting that while the "ideal" world would see economic freedom coupled with social freedom and limited government, that it seems that businesses these days are alright with being politically and socially oppressed as long as they get greater economic freedom.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/6573527.stm

Khartoum booms as Darfur burns

As middle-class Sudanese couples wipe off the dust to inspect new bathroom suites for sale by the roadside in central Khartoum, they can see a new vision of the city's future rising in the distance.

A massive Libyan-financed five-star hotel, shaped like a boat's sail, has already changed the city's low-rise skyline and work is well underway to transform parts of the sleepy city centre into a bustling, gleaming 24-hour metropolis.

The oil-fuelled construction boom may also lead to social changes, although the government shows less sign of loosening its grip here than the economy.

Under Islamic Sharia law, alcohol is banned and unlike most African cities, hardly any music can be heard on the streets, or even in the markets.

But businessmen are revelling in the new opportunities opening up, now that there is peace in the oilfields after the end of the 21-year conflict between north and south.

"This is the best situation we have had for 20 years," one Sudanese businessman told the BBC News website.

Less than a decade after the oil came online, Sudan is already the third largest producer in Africa.

Even better for business, the government, which used to tightly control all economic activity, has passed a host of reforms to make international trade much easier.

"I used to have to queue for ages to buy a packet of breakfast cereal," a hotel owner says.

"Now I have a choice of 20 brands".

The big question, however is whether ordinary Sudanese will benefit from the oil wealth, or whether it will be kept by a small elite, as in countries such as Nigeria and Angola.

Taxi-drivers like Omar, however, prefer home-grown beans and lentils to imported cornflakes.

"Oil, what oil? I haven't seen any oil," he complains, as he drives his battered old yellow cab.

"Ask the government, they've got the oil."

Nevertheless, the International Monetary Fund has praised Sudan's reforms and expects the economy to grow by 11% this year - one of the highest rates in Africa.

And a massive project is taking shape in the heart of the capital, where the Blue Nile meets the White Nile.

Some are calling it Africa's Dubai, as the al-Mogran development is hoping to mop up some of the billions of petrodollars being generated both domestically and across the Middle East.

It is still a vast building site but developers say $4bn will be invested over the next few years, generating 40,000 permanent jobs directly and many more indirectly.

The impressive plans show gleaming new shops, huge office blocks, 10 top-class hotels and a huge residential hinterland of 1,100 villas and 6,700 flats.

Amir Diglal, from the al-Sunut company behind the project, says the first of several international banks is due to open its doors later this year, with the entire project to be completed by 2014.

The United States is threatening to impose sanctions on Sudan because it has blocked UN attempts to boost the numbers of peacekeepers in Darfur, where at least 200,000 people have died in four years of conflict.

But Mr Diglal is not concerned.

"The Americans will miss a great opportunity in Sudan," he says.

Sudan is already under US sanctions, because of previous ties to Osama Bin Laden.

Sudanese companies cannot use the US dollar - a huge obstacle to international trade.

One German businessman complained that his goods destined for Sudan from South America had been impounded when the ship carrying them made a brief stop in the US.

But this does not seem to have prevented the al-Mogran development.

Companies from China and Malaysia, which are closely involved in pumping Sudan's oil, are among the biggest investors.

Mr Diglal hopes the project will do more than just provide an economic boost.

"The challenge is not money or engineering but changing the culture."

He paints a picture of, no-doubt wealthy, Sudanese people strolling along the banks of the Nile from a top class restaurant to a cinema showing the latest releases.

Sudan's first 18-hole golf course is also planned, along with at least two marinas, for yachts stopping off on their Nile tours.

Some go even further.

"One day, we might even have nightclubs," says one of those involved in the project.

But that looks like being a distant dream - the man who suggested this insisted that his name was not used in case it led to problems with the authorities.

Khartoum residents believe that state security agents recently paid a warning visit to a cafe serving ice cream and patisseries, where young Sudanese men and women were mingling a bit too freely.

Signs have now been put up warning patrons to "observe respectable behaviour and appearance".

[Scientific Validity of Discovery's "Planet Earth" Series]

Although I have not seen the show, as far as I can tell, only one episode in the series is explicitly focused on Global Warming.

[Modern Art]

Most are recognizable human figures deliberately made grotesque, primitive, and deformed, as is characteristic of the lower forms of naturalism.

Interestingly , the last one in that list (the deformed one) is actually of a real artist who was born without arms.

[How to become sober]

Do you have any idea as to why that person became an alcoholic? And has he broken the habit?

From my (limited) understanding, he was perfectly content with his life and that his body has a response to the alcochol which created a positive feedback loop. That he was always "thirsty" for something to drink even when he was perfectly fine.

He has stayed sober due to AA meetings.

[How to become sober]

Is getting drunk going to help me achieve my goals or would studying books help(or whatever). If you lack a meaning to your life and you just drift from day-to-day, then there really isnt much incentive to staying sober. They dont have any goals, nothing to strive for. People get drunk because they are trying to escape the reality of their life. Do you agree with this?

As someone who knows a recovering alcocholic quite personally, I find the above statement incorrect. While it may be true in the case of some, this I don't feel that that alone accounts for why all people become alcholics. Many people who are productive and have real goals become alcocholics.

[Wal-Mart didn't really need Chicago anyway]

The Daleys are corrupt. I moved here from Louisiana... hardly a model for clean government. But I find the amount of corruption in Chicago and Illinois government shocking. Not a month goes by without a new scandal (our last governor, Ryan, is currently in jail) but no one seems to care.

Chicago is called "The City That Works" for good reason. Because while there is corruption, the up sides have been great. With Millenium Park alone, business has been booming in the loop with people moving in for the first time in ages.

And the current Daley is the lesser evil compared to his father anyway.

[Wal-Mart didn't really need Chicago anyway]

Didn't Mayor Daley veto this law?

This why I love Chicago, the Daley's know how to run the city and keep it from making decisions like this.

[The Death of Science Fiction]

I few points:

Lately I’ve been reading two books of science fiction short stories from the 1950’s, In the Beginning by Robert Silverberg and The Masque of Manana by Robert Sheckley. I’ve been struck by how unrealistic the science is. In every other story characters hop on a spaceship and zip off to Fomalhaut IV or Betelgeuse III (as if people would give a planet a number according to its order from the star instead of a name). Really, the science is sheer fantasy.

This is a very grand and incorrect generalization we are making here for an entire decade. The 50's also included Isaac Asimov's "Foundation" series which is nothing like the novels you describe. I am not familier with those works but they sound like they are more or less inspired by Buck Rodgers type sci-fi.

Three of the most common tropes from Golden Age science fiction are fantasy: faster than light travel, time travel (going back in time) and telepathy. If you took away those three ideas, you would wipe out most 20th century science fiction

You forgot robots. And even then, there is some science fiction that does not utilize any of these things.

and all three are impossible

For now.

What we think of as classic science fiction is for the most part as fantastic as elves, magic and unicorns, but because it uses scientific concepts it has a veneer of plausibility – until you think about the science.

I think this is something very different from talking about unicorns. I think that a key idea is that unlike fantasy, science fiction almost always talks about the future, something that fantasy can not. This adds an element of to the story telling that is just not possible with a story about dragons. Usually, this comprises of the science fiction novel acting as a warning or a prediction about a development within society.

Science fiction today is much more believable. Serious SF does not glibly zip characters off to Aldebaran V, unless the author is making some self-conscious, postmodern homage to the old stuff. The purest expression of the contemporary naturalism in science fiction is a movement called Mundane SF. If the science is far-fetched, then it’s out.

Much of today’s SF is believable and naturalistic. It is also bad. It is often mind-numbingly boring, anti-heroic and plotless. It has all the traits of mainstream modern literature that intellectuals love, or pretend to love, and readers hate.

In such magazines as Fantasy and Science Fiction and Asimov’s we are watching the slow suicide of SF by naturalism. The process started in the 1960’s with the New Wave and the wave continues to this day. The New Wave brought modern literature to science fiction, making it naturalistic and conscious of style. Since then it has been increasingly difficult to take the tropes of Golden Age SF seriously.

Can you please give some examples about the titles you are refering to? The genre is so large that its possible for me to think up a few counter examples unless I have a more specefic idea of what you are talking about. For example, some very recently written and good Sci-fi could include Ender's Game or Hyperion, or the many Ian M. Banks novels.

Also, I believe the movement you are refering to is the self described "Hard Sci-fi" genre, is that what you are thinking of?

This suicide by naturalism is ironic as SF has taken over movies, TV and video games. Visual media love whooshing spaceships, ray guns, aliens and all those giddy concepts from the Golden Age. The science in Star Wars is comparable to 1930’s written SF.

You treat Star Wars far to simply if you imply that it only draws from the 1930's. In addition to being self described "Science Fantasy", George Lucas also set out to make his vision of the future less "clean" and more "gritty" and even more "real." The whole point was to make his vision plausible and realistic within common frames of reference that his viewers can understand. The focus of the science if not just the implausible woooshing spaceships, but also the fact that they have age on them, and look worn and used. In contrast, most 1930's Buck Rodgers type ships looked clean and impecable.

Since the late 1970’s readers have been abandoning science fiction for what used to be its neglected little sister, fantasy. Readers don’t want plotless non-stories about a neurotic scientist suffering a mid-life crisis as he discovers some form of pollution that will destroy mankind. They don’t care if the science is realistic, they want an interesting story about heroes who are fascinating to contemplate. They want romanticism. Today they know they’re more likely to find it in a paperback with a sorcerer on the cover than one with a spaceship or a cover with some modern smears of color on it.

1. Plots about mad scientists are very much a cold-war era type story. They just don't get told anymore.

2. Fantasy has been struggling as a genre because so much of it is a knock-off of Tolkien. The reason Harry Potter, His Dark Materials, and Neil Gaimen's "American Gods" stand out is because they are not the same old story about Lords of Darkness and Armies of Light and the smashing together of Elf and Orc armies. I see no evidence that Fantasy in the conventional sense is popular.

With regard to TV, I am only going to say that although Objectivists hate on Battlestar Galactica, that the show is one of the most intriguing, exciting, and that it brings a very welcomed dose of "realism" into the genre. It's existence has been a generally positive development for the genre as the whole because it shows TV executives that the audience want complex plots, interesting characters, and well written dialogue. The more seriously they think their views are, the more likely we are to get better programming.

I love the original Star Trek and its romantic view of humanity, but one of the failings of the series (more often in TNG then my personal favourite, DS9) was that none of the characters were interesting or worth being invested in because they were all boringly perfect. They did not even develop in any sort of direciton. Geordi stayed as Geordi, Riker stayed as Riker, and Troi only real change was that everntually she stopped making the obvious comments such as "I sense that those people shooting at us are angry."

In fact, I would go further and say that having a series with realistic characters with problems (such as Adama or Roslyn) makes the series better for those moments when they achieve victories beacause you know that they had to work to achieve it and you are impressed when they achieve it well.

[300]

For the man to discard that option as "beneath him" means that he is the whim worshiper. Sort of reminded me of James Taggart.

Given the facts in the movie at the time, Leonidas made the rational choice, and the man made the irrational choice.

If we were talking about any society except Sparta, I would agree.

I worry that Sparta as portrayed in the movie would probably treat Ephialtes with an unjust plebian status/lower class status if he had survived. The fact that ephialtes is expected to become a warrior in the first place is a major problem and there is no way he can be expected to meet that irratioanl requirement of the society anyway.

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If you can come up with some acceptable Spartan career paths for someone who avoided the customary infanticide I would sure be interested in hearing them. As far as I can tell, there is no choice except "military service."

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It would have been unjust, undermining what it ment to be a Spartan warrior, for Leonidas, to grant the hunchback his whim. He has not earned this privilege.

He could not have earned this priviledge because he skipped the customary infanticide. Spartan society requires that all men are in the military for some time and in some capacity, yet this one clearly would not have been allowed in. His only crime was not being killed.

It would be like this, imagine that all the Gay US Army Arabic translators we have fired decided to go work for another country because they were promised that they would not be removed for trivial reasons (ideally a country that is not our enemy, like the UK). Such action may techincally be "treasonous" but it would be hard not to be sympathetic to a decision like that.

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The movie is very entertaining but at times a bit silly. I have no issue with the film being historically inaccurate, I do have issues with the Spartans in the movie claiming to be defenders of Reason and Freedom when they clearly don't follow it in their own film.

Ephialtes is a good example of this. By the standards of Spartan life he should not be alive, yet he is. And in the time in which he has been alive he has been working damn hard to make something useful of himself. He proves his willingness to defend a civilization which would want him dead and warns the Spartans about a path that they need to be worried about being outflanked from. Yet Leonidas does not even attempt to incorporate someone who is clearly a Patriot into the defense of "Reason and Freedom". Ephialtes may have been unsuited for working the Phalanx but there is no reason why he should not have at least been allowed to fight in some capacity. Instead he is told just to clear bodies. Ephialtes would have probably just have been happy enough to be given a chance to die on the battlefield while attempting to use his spear in whatever capacity he could hope to achieve.

And for some reason, we are meant to be angry at him for his defection. Yet was there a more logical choice for him? The man was a Spartan who was not even allowed to fight to defend his city. He would not have survived in Sparta anyway because over there they can't stand those who skipped the customary infanticide.

If Ephialtes was not depicted as a hunchback and just a Spartan who defected because he was seduced by Xerxes and did not actually care about "Reason and Freedom", then it would make a lot of sense to hate the man. But instead he is someone who wanted to defend a somewhat irrational society only to be chastised by making the rational choice to leave it because it would have been harmful to him.

The film was enjoyable, and fun, "We are defending Reason from Tyranny and Mysticism!" never gets old for me and I can see myself going to see that film several times because it is a powerful experience. However, it still does not stop it from being a bit of a silly flick with the defenders of "Logic" and "Reason" doing a less then perfect job of making clear they are defending it.

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http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/entertainment/6446183.stm

Iran condemns Hollywood war epic

Historical war epic 300 has been criticised as an attack on Iranian culture by government figures.

The Hollywood film, which has broken US box office records, is an effects-laden retelling of a battle in which a small Greek army resisted a Persian invasion.

Javad Shamqadri, a cultural advisor to Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, said it was "plundering Iran's historic past and insulting this civilization".

He branded the film "psychological warfare" against Tehran and its people.

But Iranian culture was strong enough to withstand the assault, Mr Shamqadri said.

"American cultural officials thought they could get mental satisfaction by plundering Iran's historic past and insulting this civilization," he said.

"Following the Islamic Revolution in Iran, Hollywood and cultural authorities in the US initiated studies to figure out how to attack Iranian culture.

"Certainly, the recent movie is a product of such studies."

Daily newspaper Ayandeh-No carried the headline "Hollywood declares war on Iranians".

The paper said: "It seeks to tell people that Iran, which is in the Axis of Evil now, has for long been the source of evil and modern Iranians' ancestors are the ugly murderous dumb savages you see in 300."

Three MPs in the Iranian parliament have also written to the foreign ministry to protest against the production and screening of this "anti-Iranian Hollywood film".

The film has already proved a major box office hit in the US where it earned almost $71m (£36.8m) in its first weekend, making it the best ever March opening in North American cinemas.

This is not the first time Iran has protested over its portrayal in films made in the West.

There was outrage over the 2004 epic Alexander which showed the Macedonian general easily conquering the Persian Empire.