Category Archives: View

View 714 Tuesday, February 21, 2012

I’ve managed to get up the energy to work on the novella LEGEND OF BLACK SHIP ISLAND by Larry Niven, Jerry Pournelle, and Steven Barnes, and get the final off to our agent. This will probably be published by our agent as an eBook. It’s about the size that novels were back in the Laser Books days, but it’s far to short for today’s print market. It still has to be formatted and the formatted copy has to be proof read so it will be a while.

I also used up all my energy. We have the opera tonight and I think we are sufficiently recovered that we can go out in public without endangering everyone although I will be careful to carry lots of handkerchiefs in case of coughing fit, and not to breathe on anyone.

I have several essays to write. The world goes on. I’ll try to be back on schedule tomorrow. We can hope.

The opera was Simone Boccanegra, one of Verdi’s early political operas written during the Risorgimento, but then revised two decades later. I had never seen it before. The soprano, Ana Maria Martinez, was great in some scenes and a bit soft in others. Since she’s sung major romantic leads – Mimi, Violetta among them – in the big and cavernous Los Angeles opera house, she knows what’s needed, and the reviews I’ve seen of this production have mostly praised her, I conclude she probably had an off night. It wasn’t our regular night either: we had to exchange our tickets (for nowhere near as good seats, alas) because we’ve been sick. Pity.

Of course the big star was Placido Domingo, who has been an opera great for more than fifty years. He still has the voice, and the acting ability. He sings baritone now and doesn’t have to reach high notes, which would probably be tough at his age. but in fact the age doesn’t show. It wasn’t difficult to believe him as a young mercenary captain from Pisa in the prologue (the rest of the opera takes place 25 years later). Boccanegra was an historic character, the first elected doge of Genoa. One presumes the Genoese adopted this office from Venice, which had been a Republic for centuries. The opera plot is twisted and complex and not always easy to follow; one presumes that Verdi’s contemporaries were able to follow the allusions to contemporary Italian politics better than we moderns can. Of course Italy was never really united until Mussolini negotiated his Concordat with the Pope. One wonders what Verdi would have made of that.

In any event, we much enjoyed the opera. I confess that I think I could have staged some of the scenes, particularly fight scenes, better, but I often think that. It has actually been many decades since I directed a stage production, and I’ve never directed the action in an opera, where the goal is not so much to emphasize dramatic action as to give the singers a chance to sound off properly.

And now it’s late and well past bed time.

View 714 Sunday, February 19, 2012

I am slowly recovering. Now to try to catch up. I may have some energy for working tomorrow.

I never did get this posted Sunday night, and it’s probably no great loss, but I’ll get it out now so it’s out of the way. I seem to be babbling. It’s hard to think when your head is entirely stopped up.

UN fails to act on Syria. Iranian cargo ship loaded to the gunwales docks in Syrian Mediterranean port along with Iranian frigate. Iran declares that the alliance with Syria is historic and sound. Syrian army continues to assault rebels. Iranian Republican Guard units land in Damascus and many more reported to be on the way.

The first year of Arab Spring has produced – what? We don’t know.

It will soon be Arab Spring year two. We are asked to take part, now in Syria.

Subject: Private Xombie rocket aces NASA landing test

A private suborbital rocket passed a landing test for NASA with flying colors this month in a succesful trial run of technology that could help future spacecraft touch down on other planets or moons.

On Feb. 2, Masten Space Systems <http://www.space.com/12197-commercial-suborbital-spacecraft-science-research.html> ‘ Xombie rocket rose 164 feet (50 meters) off a launch pad in the California desert, moved sideways the same distance, and then landed softly on another pad. The entire flight lasted just 67 seconds

Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/scitech/2012/02/18/private-xombie-rocket-aces-nasa-landing-test/?intcmp=features#ixzz1mqTm1mBN <http://www.foxnews.com/scitech/2012/02/18/private-xombie-rocket-aces-nasa-landing-test/?intcmp=features#ixzz1mqTm1mBN>

Tracy

There is a ferment of activity in space research by private companies. This would be a good time to add some prizes to the mix of incentives.

We’ve all heard the story. Here’s the best coverage I have found:

http://christopherdiarmani.com/4544/self-defense-liberty/her-husband-died-on-christmas-day-and-she-had-to-kill-a-home-invader-on-new-years-eve/

View 713 Saturday, February 18, 2012

Well, I did a SKYPE interview for BOSKONE this morning and I am told it went well enough. The connection was fairly good, and I could generally hear what was said to me from the audience, so I am hoping the quality of the projection wasn’t too bad. I didn’t have a lot of energy, and I am glad it didn’t go on for much longer. BOSKONE has asked me back for next year, and this time I intend to get there.

I posted one big mailbag, and I intend to put up another today or tomorrow. There are a number of topics, and I tried to comment appropriately, although some of the topics deserve a lot more discussion; perhaps that will happen. And enough excuses. I really do think I have some of the most interesting mail on the Internet.

Today ends the Winter Pledge Drive. It went well, and my thanks to all those who subscribed, and particularly to those who renewed after a lapse of a year or two – in one case eight years! Welcome back. This place can’t operate without subscriptions. Fortunately it gets them. If you have been thinking you ought to subscribe – or renew— now’s the time!

Apparently I have fallen way behind in what’s going on in the writing business. Many years ago – early 1972 I think – I was asked to write the novelization of the film Escape From The Planet of the Apes. This was while we were writing Mote in God’s Eye but before we sold it so I needed money to live on, and I was offered a couple of thousand dollars to do this as a work assignment – that is, my name would be on the book, but all rights to the novel were owned by the publisher. I did it in a couple of weeks – Alan Dean Foster who had done a number of film novelizations gave me some invaluable tips on how to do it – and shipped it off. I still am asked to sign old used copies of the book several times a year.

I was later asked to write novels in other people’s universes, such as Star Trek and other franchises, but by then Mote had sold well and Hammer was on the best seller list, and I was science editor of Galaxy, so I had no need or interest, and I haven’t paid much attention to that sort of thing.

I gather that it has not only become a fairly large industry, but there are novels based on games now. And we have this

Apparently, fans found so many inconsistencies between the game of MASS EFFECT

and Bill Dietz’s tie-in novel that they’ve raised howls of protest—and Del

Rey has promised to make revisions to future editions:

http://kotaku.com/5882185/bioware-to-patch-error+laden-mass-effect-novel-in-response-to-fan-uproar

One of those links leads here http://social.bioware.com/forum/1/topic/323/index/9150901/1 where I see in the comments some really interesting avatar pictures. I really know nothing of the Bioware game. I’m way behind in computer games, and I have so little time that I don’t dare try to find out more. I tend to turn-based strategy games anyway, and very few of those are published nowadays.

The whole world of fiction is changing before my very eyes. I understand some authors are filming previews of their novels – actors in costume doing scenes from their upcoming books. The technology has got to the point that almost anyone can make a production quality trailer. Production for Internet quality, that it; theater projection quality movies are still pretty costly even in this electronic era, but that too is changing, and anyone can have a camera and editing hardware and software to do good looking films to be broadcast by Internet. They might not look so good on a large screen high definition set, but I am told even that is changing.

It’s a very different world out there.

Space Access ’12 Conference – April 12-14 – Phoenix Arizona

SA ’12 will be the next round of Space Access Society’s long-running annual get-together for people seriously interested in the technology, business, and politics of radically cheaper space transportation.

Conference location is the Grace Inn, 10831 South 51st Street, Phoenix, AZ. (For room reservations, call 800 843-6010 or 480 893-3000, and mention "space access" to get our discount $69/night breakfast-included

rate.)

Conference registration is $120 in advance, $140 at the door, student

rate $40 either way. We’re not set up to accept credit cards in

advance – for advance registration you need to paper-mail us a check or money order. Include your name, the affiliation (if any) you want listed on your badge, and your email address. Make the check out to "Space Access ’12", and mail it to Space Access ’12, PO Box 16034, Phoenix AZ 85011.

Stay tuned to http://www.space-access.org for more

I always enjoy Space Access. I wish I could make it this year, but probably I will not.

$6 Trillion in Fake Bonds

It makes me wonder what other scams are going on; six trillion in bonds? That’s a big transaction.

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/g/a/2012/02/17/bloomberg_articlesLZJARS6JTSE901-LZJMW.DTL

—–

Most Respectfully,

Joshua Jordan, KSC

Percussa Resurgo

There was a picture of a $1 Billion (in Gold!) printed US Treasury bond with coupons in today’s papers. Astonishing. The US no longer issues printed Treasury bonds, and has certainly never issued a piece of paper worth anything like that – as I understand it we no longer have $10,000 bills. More and more we rely on electronics for large sum transfers. In Asia gold and currency is still transported about for big transactions, but in the West it’s all electronic – and of course vulnerable to hackers, who have become the new counterfeiters.

The counterfeit bonds were marketed largely in foreign countries to be sold at a big discount. I doubt any of our readers would have been tempted…

I find that I get tired easily: I did the BOSKONE interview, a mail bag, and this rather simple writeup, and I am exhausted. Whatever this infection is – and I hear of more and more of my friends who have it – it may not deserve national attention the way swine flu did, but it’s sure affecting a lot of people. I have no idea of how you can avoid it. In my case I am fairly certain I got it from my granddaughter. For her it was a severe case of sniffles, not the debilitating wracking that I have had, thank heaven.

Anyway I am having a mild relapse. This will have to do.

View 713 Friday, February 17, 2012

The web is abuzz. Rick Santorum has a friend who thinks Bayer Aspirin is a contraceptive pill! The horror!

It is an illustration of a generation gap. Recall that in 1953 Arthur Clarke’s Childhood’s End, in keeping with the various theories derived from the voodoo sciences of Freud and Jung about sexual repression, postulated that technology would someday develop a reliable contraceptive pill, and that, together with an infallible means of identifying paternity, would bring about a sexual revolution in which sex would be decoupled from marriage and families. No one would be repressed or suffer from psychological disorders due to sexual frustrations. The human race would enter an new era, and the childhood of the race would end. This was all incorporated into a story with benevolent aliens and flying saucers. A thoroughly New Age story.

In those times, there were two means for contraception: condoms and abstinence, and the only 100% reliable one was abstinence. Condoms were advocated widely but mostly for prevention of sexually transmitted disorders, and they didn’t always work, either for that or for contraception – particularly since it was fairly common to forget the condom in the heat of the moment. The best way for a girl to avoid pregnancy was to keep her knees together. Using an aspirin pill as a reminder to do that was optional. Foster Friess, a wealthy supporter of Rick Santorum, was astonished when he had to explain that joke. It’s another illustration of the generation gap.

In a startling outburst Thursday, the multimillionaire who’s given most to a super PAC supporting former Senator Rick Santorum (R-PA) for president remarked that universal contraception coverage for women shouldn’t be needed because, “Back in my day, they used Bayer aspirin for contraceptives.”

“The gals put it between their knees and it wasn’t that costly,” he told MSNBC host Andrea Mitchell.

The comment comes by way of Foster Friess, the 71-year-old multi-millionaire former investment manager who’s become the largest donor to the Red, White and Blue fund, which supports the Pennsylvania Republican.

Aspirin is a painkiller, not a contraceptive. It’s not clear exactly what Friess meant, but the seeming implication is that women should just keep their legs closed to avoid pregnancy, instead of using modern contraceptives.

After which the press calls for Santorum, who wasn’t part of the interview and certainly said nothing of the sort, to apologize to women, because Friess used a high school joke about abstinence. What he is to apologize for is not clear.

One presumes the horror is over the notion that getting pregnant or not getting pregnant is a matter of individual responsibility and choice. Or perhaps the implication of a double standard – that chastity is the responsibility of women, not men.

Perhaps the apology ought to be demanded from the universe, or evolution, or from the Almighty for having made men and women different? Men don’t get pregnant and thus have far less to lose from indulgence in random acts of sex. This has been known to nearly everyone on Earth for several thousand years. This may be unfair, but whether by design or by evolution it is built into the structure of the human race. Changing this ‘unfairness’ is likely to be expensive, and it is difficult to discern the source of any moral imperative to do so: why is it the responsibility of the successful to pay for contraception.

Another argument is economic: it is in the interest of the productive and the successful to limit the number of people born to the irresponsible. Population control is important. The rich and successful are capable of personal responsibility, but the masses are not. Their numbers must be controlled or we are all lost. The stupids are outbreeding us, and we must do what we can to limit their numbers. Contraception is a useful and effective means for doing this. Those of a less cynical bent will go further and say that we must all limit the numbers of our offspring. Overpopulation threatens everyone’s quality of life.

Carried far enough this leads to policies like China’s “One Child” regulations. Larry Niven postulates something of the sort in his Known Space stories, in which the militia periodically engage in “mother hunts” for unlicensed pregnancies. In China enforcement is largely in the hands of local Party cadres, who are reported forcibly to have aborted mothers who got pregnant while raising a living child. There are also the usual stories of how high party officials and the rich evade those restrictions, and no one is surprised by that. The rich and powerful will always find ways around such policies. They always have. Eugenicists can even take heart: those smart enough to get away with having multiple children are probably the ones who ought to have them.

Incidentally, the early eugenicists such as Sir Francis Galton did not discourage the lower classes from having children: instead they founded organizations to encourage bright people to marry early and paid young married couples stipends to allow them to continue their education. They wanted the smart and educated to multiply. Galton’s Eugenics Society still exists, now under the name of The Galton Institute.

There were others concerned with the twin problems of overpopulation among the ‘unfit’ and over time eugenics societies transmogrified to the point at which some encouraged and carried out sterilizations of the unfit, the notion being to cull the human herd and remove defective genes from the gene pool. No one admits to such sentiments now, but in 1927 the Supreme Court decreed:

This is a writ of error to review a judgment of the Supreme Court of Appeals of the State of Virginia, affirming a judgment of the Circuit Court of Amherst County, by which the defendant in error, the superintendent of the State Colony for Epileptics and Feeble Minded, was ordered to perform the operation of salpingectomy upon Carrie Buck, the plaintiff in error, for the purpose of making her sterile. 143 Va. 310, 130 S. E. 516. The case comes here upon the contention that the statute authorizing the judgment is void under the Fourteenth Amendment as denying to the plaintiff in error due process of law and the equal protection of the laws.

Carrie Buck is a feeble-minded white woman who was committed to the State Colony above mentioned in due form. She is the daughter of a feeble- minded mother in the same institution, and the mother of an illegitimate feeble-minded child. She was eighteen years old at the time of the trial of her case in the Circuit Court in the latter part of 1924. An Act of Virginia approved March 20, 1924 (Laws 1924, c. 394) recites that the health of the patient and the welfare of society may be promoted in certain cases by the sterilization of mental defectives, under careful safeguard, etc.; that the sterilization may be effected in males by vasectomy and in females by salpingectomy, without serious pain or substantial danger to life; that the Commonwealth is supporting in various institutions many defective persons who if now discharged would become [274 U.S. 200, 206] a menace but if incapable of procreating might be discharged with safety and become self-supporting with benefit to themselves and to society; and that experience has shown that heredity plays an important part in the transmission of insanity, imbecility, etc. The statute then enacts that whenever the superintendent of certain institutions including the abovenamed State Colony shall be of opinion that it is for the best interest of the patients and of society that an inmate under his care should be sexually sterilized, he may have the operation performed upon any patient afflicted with hereditary forms of insanity, imbecility, etc., on complying with the very careful provisions by which the act protects the patients from possible abuse.

The superintendent first presents a petition to the special board of directors of his hospital or colony, stating the facts and the grounds for his opinion, verified by affidavit. Notice of the petition and of the time and place of the hearing in the institution is to be served upon the inmate, and also upon his guardian, and if there is no guardian the superintendent is to apply to the Circuit Court of the County to appoint one. If the inmate is a minor notice also is to be given to his parents, if any, with a copy of the petition. The board is to see to it that the inmate may attend the hearings if desired by him or his guardian. The evidence is all to be reduced to writing, and after the board has made its order for or against the operation, the superintendent, or the inmate, or his guardian, may appeal to the Circuit Court of the County. The Circuit Court may consider the record of the board and the evidence before it and such other admissible evidence as may be offered, and may affirm, revise, or reverse the order of the board and enter such order as it deems just. Finally any party may apply to the Supreme Court of Appeals, which, if it grants the appeal, is to hear the case upon the record of the trial [274 U.S. 200, 207] in the Circuit Court and may enter such order as it thinks the Circuit Court should have entered. There can be no doubt that so far as procedure is concerned the rights of the patient are most carefully considered, and as every step in this case was taken in scrupulous compliance with the statute and after months of observation, there is no doubt that in that respect the plaintiff in error has had due process at law.

The attack is not upon the procedure but upon the substantive law. It seems to be contended that in no circumstances could such an order be justified. It certainly is contended that the order cannot be justified upon the existing grounds. The judgment finds the facts that have been recited and that Carrie Buck ‘is the probable potential parent of socially inadequate offspring, likewise afflicted, that she may be sexually sterilized without detriment to her general health and that her welfare and that of society will be promoted by her sterilization,’ and thereupon makes the order. In view of the general declarations of the Legislature and the specific findings of the Court obviously we cannot say as matter of law that the grounds do not exist, and if they exist they justify the result. We have seen more than once that the public welfare may call upon the best citizens for their lives. It would be strange if it could not call upon those who already sap the strength of the State for these lesser sacrifices, often not felt to be such by those concerned, in order to prevent our being swamped with incompetence. It is better for all the world, if instead of waiting to execute degenerate offspring for crime, or to let them starve for their imbecility, society can prevent those who are manifestly unfit from continuing their kind. The principle that sustains compulsory vaccination is broad enough to cover cutting the Fallopian tubes. Jacobson v. Massachusetts, 197 U.S. 11 , 25 S. Ct. 358, 3 Ann. Cas. 765. Three generations of imbeciles are enough. [274 U.S. 200, 208] [snip] [ emphasis added]

The opinion was given by Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, one of the most respected justices of all time, and one of the liberal justices who helped change our notion of the Constitution. Holmes greatly expanded the power of legislatures and the powers of government. This particular opinion was widely applauded at the time it was delivered. Note that it does not expand the power of the Federal government; this is purely a state matter.

It is no surprise that the offhand remark about a Bayer Aspirin tablet being an effective contraceptive has sparked such wide attention. It reminds us of a time when people were considered to be responsible for their actions, and for the consequences of their actions; of a time when the power of government to insert itself into people’s lives was quite different from what it is now, and seen to be quite different.

It challenges the notion that it is the responsibility of the state to provide the means for contraception. What Foster Friess did not ask but might have is whether, given that it is the responsibility of the state to provide the means of contraception and those paying for it should not quibble because it is in the interests of society that people not have unwanted children, why not take the next step and make use of contraceptives compulsory for all those who have not shown themselves worthy of having descendents? It would certainly make for lower taxes, and for that matter, for a larger treasury to be distributed as largesse to the voters.

I am not fully recovered from my weeks of this virus infection, but I am able to do a bit more work. I regret having to miss BOSKONE (a Boston science fiction convention) where I was supposed to be an honored guest this weekend, but it is clear that I made the right decision in not going. I’m still coughing, and I’d still be far more a burden than an asset – as well as contagious.

My thanks to those who have chosen to subscribe or renew subscriptions during this week’s Pledge Drive. This place operates on the Public Radio model – it’s free, but it needs subscribers in order to stay open. I do periodic subscription drives rather than continuously bugging people about it. I do my pledge drives when KUSC does theirs. That’s this week.

For those alarmed by an announcement that cell phone numbers are about to be released to telemarketers, before you decide to register with the national DO Not Call Federal Trade Commission number 888-457-8378 you might want to check the story. I am no great fan of Snopes (Snopes has agendas I do not share) but they can be useful. It does no harm to register with the FTC Do Not Call number, but it may not do much good, and there seems to be no urgency in the matter. http://www.snopes.com/politics/business/cell411.asp

I bring this up because recently I have been getting emails warning me that I am about to be spammed on my cell phone. You probably have too.