Never mind the Federation’s code of non-interference or whatever it’s called. The fact is that the Federation starships zoom around the galaxy armed to teeth. Of course the enemy fires on them first; that’s the standard justification for militarism, an external threat that must be defeated. This is not unusual in Hollywood, but something like Star Trek, that has at least pretensions to belonging to the canon of speculative fiction, it is not unreasonable to hold it to a higher standard. Kirk’s father drives his starship into the enemy: he ends his life as a suicide bomber. You can’t get much more militaristic than that.
Entries by Josh
On a strictly deontological basis, none of them deserve our vote. But this is the real world, and we have to make decisions based on the best outcome possible…
What a fine piece of software is Scrivener. You can write any number of scraps of text, organise them as you see fit, re-order them, combine them in ad hoc ways, and take “snapshots” (named versions) of a manuscript. The full-screen mode is brilliant for clearing away the clutter and concentrating on your work:
It gets out of the way, and lets you concentrate on the text. Thoroughly recommended.
There is something seriously wrong-headed about the sentiments expressed in today’s Guardian by Salam Pax, Baghdad blogger and darling of the Western liberal media, regarding the shoe thrown at Bush by Muntazer al-Zaidi. His arguments about the responsibilities of a journalist vis-a-vis the feelings of a private citizen are those of a jobsworth, and utterly inadequate in the face of the transparent criminality, imperial arrogance and naked evil exhibited by the political and military face of the United States over the last six years, from Bush down.
“He was there, while many others were not, to ask the questions we needed answered.”
Sure; but he was also there, while I was not, to throw shoes, express the contempt and outrage of the vast majority of humanity against this despicable man. What good is it to pose questions that will not be answered? What are these burning questions in any case?
“He should have asked president Bush how he feels about having tens of thousands killed and millions displaced as a direct result of his actions.”
What does it matter how Bush feels? He may feel regret; more likely he feels justified. It is a pointless and trivial exercise. Likewise Pax’s wish for Bush to “say sorry, just once”. Do we expect Radovan Karadžić to “say sorry” – to tell us how he feels? No. It is to put the criminal on a pedestal he does not deserve to inquire after his feelings. We expect him to face justice, to live behind bars in dishonour and ignominy for the rest of his life, where he cannot cause further mischief – this justice is not retribution (revenge is impossible for thousands of deaths, since a single person can only be killed once) but it demonstrates that we do not permit mass murderers and thugs to go unpunished–that we do not tolerate these acts.
It is all very well to preach journalistic pieties; but when the politician in question has flouted all norms and morality himself, the press conference itself becomes a kind of exercise in or demonstration of his legitimacy. Muntazer al-Zaidi’s shoe, however much of a stunt, deconstructed this sham with far greater eloquence than all Salam Pax’s lukewarm platitudes about journalistic integrity.
Let’s not pretend it is a God-given right to digitally encode music and profit from its distribution. It was simply an accident of technology and economics. Mass production, in the days of vinyl, was well out of reach of the general public. Scarcity was therefore a given; of course people want to buy records, so demand was there: thus the record industry flourished. The humble cassette tape was a warning that this scenario would not last forever; file sharing on a large scale is upending the game…
