A Modest Proposal for Preventing the Children of America Being Massacred in their Schools

The following is a guest essay by the author of our (relatively) popular "A Manifesto for the "Tea" Party (and other Right-thinking people)". Sorry, no prizes for guessing his true identity.

In the wake of the horrific mass murder at an elementary school in Connecticut the other day, I would like to take a leaf from the book of Jonathan Swift and offer a modest proposal for preventing such a tragedy from taking place again. Whenever something like this happens, you hear a lot of people going on about how there are too many guns in America and that’s why these things happen. No, I say! Sure, a person may be 40 times more likely to get shot in America than in Canada, England or Germany, but the real problem is not that there are too many guns, it’s that there aren’t enough! As the wonderful people at the NRA are always telling everyone, guns don’t kill people, people kill people. Some argue that guns make it easier for people to kill people. Well, sure. That’s what’s so wonderful about them. I mean, just squeeze that trigger and bang! …sorry, I got a little carried away there. What I meant to say was, guns make it easier for people to kill the people who want to kill people. I mean, as all gun-lovers know, if you make it hard to buy guns, only the bad guys will have guns. Some might say that if guns were hard to buy, even the bad guys, whoever they might be (and they could be anybody!), would find it more difficult to get guns, but I’m sure they’d find a way to get them, and if we assume that then obviously we’ve got to protect ourselves.

Given the assumption that anyone dangerous will have a gun anyway, and the incontestable fact that gun ownership is sacred therefore the idea of making it hard to own a gun shouldn’t even be discussed, the answer is obviously not less guns, but more guns. Like defenders of gun rights have pointed out repeatedly in the past couple of years after every one of these shooting incidents (and it’s not like they happen all the time – I mean, what’s a few mass shootings a year anyway?), if someone at the scene had had a gun and been able to get off a shot, then the massacre could have been stopped. So what about in this particular case? Obviously, just having one or two armed security guards wouldn’t be enough, because the shooter might have gotten the drop on them or just slipped in through an unguarded door. Some of my fellow gun lovers have suggested that the solution is to arm the teachers. This would be a step in the right direction (and how cool it would be for all our elementary teachers to have guns on them!), but there would be still be a risk that a gunman coming into a classroom might catch the teacher by surprise and shoot the teacher and a lot of kids before another teacher could come to the rescue. Basically, if only one other person has a gun, a massacre might still take place. Ah! But what if the students had had guns too?

The only way to be sure that no shooter is ever in a situation where he’s the only one with a gun is to make sure everyone has a gun. Right now there are only around 88 guns for every 100 people, and since some of us have more than one, there are obviously still a lot of people who don’t have any. More guns will make everyone safer, so we should make sure every single person has a gun. And how can we do that? Simple! Issue a gun at birth to every newborn child! Sure, they won’t be able to use it at first. But as soon as they can be taught to hold it properly, they should take it everywhere they go. So if some nut charges into a kindergarten hoping to get into the news by killing a bunch of kids, they’ll all be able to open fire on him and take him out! There might be a few stray bullets that hit other kids, but at least the overall death toll will probably be lower than if the gunman has the only gun. If we arm the kids, no one will dare pull a stunt like this one again!

Though arming children is the core of my proposal, another thing we have to do is get rid of any and all bans on different types of guns. First of all, when the omniscient, infallible Founders were writing the Second Amendment, they weren’t just talking muskets. They clearly had things like Glock pistols and Bushmaster assault rifles in mind, and we know for sure (because we know they must have thought the same as us about these things; after all, how could anyone we admire like the Founders possibly have thought differently from us?) that they wouldn’t have wanted the government to restrict them in any way. Secondly, we can’t take the chance that some nut, robber or home intruder might have better firepower than us. I mean, a lot of the perpetrators in the more notorious recent incidents have had Glocks and such. Of course these sorts of weapons are absolutely necessary. After all, who knows when you’ll have your home invaded by an army of intruders or you’ll have to fight off the powerful armed forces of the United Nations trying to impose world socialism on us? That’s what their real purpose is, you know. The UN is a sinister…ahem, sorry, got off track there. Anyway, obviously people need to be able to buy guns that can fire off a dozen quick shots without a need to reload. We certainly can’t let a situation arise where some lunatic has a semi-automatic rifle with a high capacity magazine and the people around him only have cheap pistols. Everyone has to be encouraged to get the best guns money can buy, so they’ll never be outgunned by the bad guys. Perhaps the kindergarteners should be restricted to smaller guns…but no, let them learn how to handle the big ones early. They can practice by hunting. Do you know what a semi-automatic assault rifle can do to a duck or a squirrel? You haven’t lived until you’ve blown some small animal to…er, sorry, another little tangent there. But anyway, semi-automatic weapons with high capacity magazines for everyone.

Some anti-gun people will say that guns are more dangerous to their owners and their friends and families than they are to any possible bad guys. They’ll point to statistics that say a gun kept at home is far more likely to shoot someone in the household by accident or in an act of suicide than it is to be used against an intruder. They’ll point to stories like the recent one about a guy who was putting his gun in his truck when it went off and killed his 7-year-old son. Sure, this sort of thing may happen on occasion, just as soldiers get killed by friendly fire. But anyway, like some guy I saw on the comment board for a news article along those lines so nicely put it, if a gun goes off and kills someone’s kid, they can just have another kid. Survival of the fittest and all that. If careless people shoot themselves or their families, that’s too bad for them. And it's not like having a lot of weapons around will make it more likely that someone's mentally disturbed family member is going to get hold of them and run amok. Whatever would make anyone think that? But anyway, if all the sane people have guns, including kids as I have suggested, the occasional loose cannon will get shot down before he kills too many people. In the final analysis, a few more losers committing suicide, some accidental deaths here and there and even the occasional mass shooting are a small price to pay to be able to own such a wonderful, exciting thing as a gun. Remember, guns don’t kill people, people kill people, so get yourself and your children guns and be ready to shoot down the other guy before he does it to you.

An interesting proposal indeed. Well, as at least one Republican congressman (Louie Gohmert of, you guessed it, Texas!) has already suggested that elementary school teachers should be armed, no doubt he or someone like him will consider pushing this idea. For another tongue in cheek look at the gun issue, check out this (and also the original).

Forty Years in Earth’s Gravity Well

On December 14, 1972, Harrison Schmitt and Eugene Cernan climbed into their lunar module and lifted off from the surface of the Moon, rejoining Apollo 17 command module pilot Ron Evans in lunar orbit before embarking on their journey back to Earth. Since that day forty years ago, though many people have gone into space, no human being has left low Earth orbit. This is very unfortunate, and something that I hope will change soon, as I have remarked before. Though the Moon is in orbit around Earth, it is essentially outside Earth’s gravity well, in that a rocket capable of getting to the Moon would also be capable of going to places beyond the Moon. But while we have launched robot probes to various places in the Solar System, we have not launched humans out of Earth’s gravity well since the end of the Apollo program.

As I noted in my post on the death of Neil Armstrong, only a dozen human beings have walked on the Moon, and another dozen who went to the Moon without landing on it. These men (all of them were European-American males, true, but the lack of diversity was not their fault) are the only people to have left low Earth orbit or to have seen the Earth from a distance, as a small object in space (even from the space station it fills half the view). While most people are only familiar with Neil Armstrong, the first man to set foot on the Moon, and maybe his Apollo 11 colleague and second man on the Moon Edwin “Buzz” Aldrin, all of the astronauts who went to the Moon deserve recognition for their achievements and for their unique experience. Other than Apollo 11’s Armstrong and Aldrin and Apollo 17’s Cernan and Schmitt, the other people to walk on the moon were Pete Conrad and Alan Bean of Apollo 12, Alan Shepard and Edgar Mitchell of Apollo 14, David Scott and James Irwin of Apollo 15 and John Young and Charles Duke of Apollo 16. Those who went to the Moon without landing on it include the crew of the missions Apollo 8 (the first humans to go to and orbit the Moon), Apollo 10 (which also orbited the Moon and included later moon-walkers Young and Cernan), the aborted Apollo 13 (which passed around the Moon after the explosion that nearly cost the astronauts their lives) and the command module pilots for the missions that involved landings. In addition to Apollo 17’s Evans, they were Jim Lovell (Apollos 8 and 13), Frank Borman (Apollo 8), Bill Anders (Apollo 8), Tom Stafford (Apollo 10), Michael Collins (Apollo 11), Dick Gordon (Apollo 12), Jack Swigert (Apollo 13), Fred Haise (Apollo 13), Stu Roosa (Apollo 14), Al Worden (Apollo 15), and Ken Mattingly (Apollo 16).

Of course all of these men are quite elderly; those that are still alive, that is. Moon-walkers Armstrong, Conrad, Shepard and Irwin have died, as have Swigert, Roosa and Evans. Of the 17 men still living who have been to the Moon, the youngest are Schmitt and Duke, who are 77. Many of the others are now in their early 80s. Even if many of them end up living unusually long lives, it seems improbable that more than a few, if any, of them will still be alive two decades from now. So unless things change fairly soon, it’s possible that a day will come when there is no one living who has been to the Moon or even out of Earth’s gravity well. Such a sign of stagnation in humankind’s exploration of space would truly be regrettable.

There is still debate about what NASA’s medium-term and long-range goals should be, particularly where it should attempt to go first. One possibility that has been floated recently is building a space station at the Earth-Moon L2 point, the gravitationally-stable Lagrangian point beyond the far side of the Moon, a location from which spacefarers can operate robotic probes on the surface of the Moon and engage in radio astronomy, among other things. This is an intriguing idea, as is the idea of sending humans to an asteroid, back to the Moon, or perhaps best of all to Mars. The problem is that NASA has not received the funding to vigorously pursue any of these goals, and while private space ventures are making great progress, most of the really long-range journeys will probably require government involvement, at least for the next few decades. The exaggerated hysteria over the so-called “fiscal cliff” makes immediate prospects for increased funding for NASA remote. Still, while it is sometimes hard to be optimistic, I hope that by the time the 50th anniversary of Apollo 17’s lift off from the Moon comes around, humans will be preparing to go back there or on to another distant destination like an asteroid or Mars.

What I've Been Reading – July 2012 to October 2012

Salammbô by Gustave Flaubert
Salammbô was Gustave Flaubert’s follow-up to the famous but controversial Madame Bovary. Superficially it is very different, as instead of being set in provincial France and telling of the adulterous affairs of a country doctor’s wife it is set in ancient Carthage and tells of the brutal conflict between the city and its mercenary army. However, both share Flaubert’s carefully thought out prose and a bleak outlook on life.

The mercenary revolt, also called the “Truceless War” by the historian Polybius, writing in the 2nd century BCE, took place immediately after Carthage’s defeat at the hands of Rome in the First Punic War (241 BCE). The city of Carthage, due to financial difficulties as a result of its defeat, attempted to persuade its mercenary army to accept a payment of only a part of what they were owed in overdue pay, and in part due to poor handling of the situation, instead provoked them to revolt. Soon the mercenaries were joined by many of Carthage’s Libyan (non-Phoenician native peoples) subjects in a war that was characterized by great brutality on both sides.

Flaubert apparently did a lot of research in preparation for this novel, and made a special effort to be historically accurate. Nevertheless it is obvious to anyone who knows the actual history well that he has taken quite a few liberties. Some of these are to be expected; Polybius’s account is brief and so a lot had to be added to expand it into a novel. Still, Flaubert exaggerates a number of things considerably. The hostility between the mercenaries and the people of the city grew rather more gradually than is the case in the novel; the riotous feast in Hamilcar’s gardens and the slaughter of the company of Balearic Islanders by the Carthaginians seem to have been entirely Flaubert’s invention. He also greatly exaggerates the incompetence of Hamilcar’s rival Hanno, even beyond Polybius’s version (which some modern historians already consider somewhat biased). The romantic attraction between Hamilcar’s daughter Salammbô and the rebel Libyan Matho is of course an invention, as is the theft of the veil of the goddess Tanit by Matho and Spendius, an episode which reminded me of Fritz Leiber’s stories of Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser – though Matho and Spendius were even more amoral than Leiber’s heroes. Salammbô herself is largely an invention, as Polybius merely mentions that Hamilcar promised an unnamed daughter to the Numidian chief Naravas (spelled Narr’ Havas by Flaubert) in return for his help. The grisly episode where the Carthaginians sacrifice children to the god Moloch (now known not to exist – early historians misinterpreted the Punic word mlk to be referring to a god, when it actually meant a type of sacrifice) is also basically fiction; while most historians conclude that the Carthaginians, like some other ancient peoples including on rare occasions the Romans, did practice human sacrifice, it seems to have involved much smaller children (often stillborn infants).

Despite these and other unhistorical elements, such as making Spendius a slave of Hamilcar freed by Matho and the exaggerated account of all the groups of people flocking to take part in the assault on Carthage, Flaubert does capture the viciousness of the Mercenary War and does so with evocative language. The novel is a somewhat disturbing read at times, not only in its depiction of the (unfortunately mostly historical) cruelty and violence that took place in the war but also in its racist attitudes – the Carthaginians are a decadent Oriental people, and on the few occasions black Africans make an appearance, they are portrayed as savages little above the level of (non-human) animals. The ending is not a happy one either; this is something this novel shares with Flaubert’s better-known Madame Bovary. But for those who can overlook its flaws and endure its depressing elements, Salammbô is an interesting historical novel, and one that is regarded as a classic in France.


Maskerade by Terry Pratchett
Maskerade, another entertaining novel by Terry Pratchett, is a parody of Phantom of the Opera featuring the witches Granny Weatherwax and Nanny Ogg, plus Agnes Nitt, an overweight young woman (and prospective witch) with an incredible singing voice. Unlike in many other Discworld novels, the fate of the world is not at stake, though there is still murder and mayhem a-plenty. It shares many basic features with Pratchett’s other novels, such as good, sardonic humor, dramatic action with quite a few plot twists, and occasional ironic reflections on more serious subjects. Basically it is light entertainment, but very well done and not without some deeper, more thought-provoking elements.


The Age of Wonder: How the romantic generation discovered the beauty and terror of Science by Richard Holmes
The Age of Wonder is a non-fiction book by Richard Holmes about science in Britain in the late 18th and early 19th centuries. Each chapter has a different topic, but the whole thing is tied together by the careers of four individuals who serve as Holmes’s chief protagonists: the botanist Joseph Banks, the German-born astronomer William Herschel and his sister Caroline Herschel, and the chemist Humphry Davy. Though it is a work of non-fiction, the book reads as easily as a novel and is quite fascinating. It also has a fair amount of excitement and adventure, especially in the chapters on the first balloonists and on Mungo Park’s travels in Africa.

One particularly intriguing theme running through the book is the relationship between science and poetry in this era. Though nowadays they are seen as having almost nothing in common, Romantic poets had many connections with science and the scientists (or Natural Philosophers, as they were called then) of their day. Keats referred to Herschel’s discovery of Uranus in a poem, Wordsworth wrote about Newton, Byron and Shelley frequently wrote about scientific discoveries, Mary Shelley wrote the science fiction novel Frankenstein, and Coleridge was passionate about science and a good friend of Davy. Davy himself wrote poetry and even published some of it in his youth, and Erasmus Darwin, the grandfather of Charles Darwin, wrote a scientifically-based epic poem called The Botanic Garden.

Mostly set in England, but opening in Tahiti and including episodes in Germany, France, West Africa, and elsewhere, The Age of Wonder is a wide-ranging work that touches in varying degrees of depth on the careers of numerous scientists, poets, and writers of the era. Anyone who has an interest in the Romantic Age, the history of science, or good historical non-fiction in general should check it out.


High Fidelity by Nick Hornby
High Fidelity is a novel by British author Nick Hornby. The narrator, Rob Fleming, is an independent record store owner and former club disc jockey in his mid-thirties. The plot of the novel centers around his relationship problems, not only with his current girlfriend but also with various past girlfriends and an American singer-songwriter who he meets, as well as his interactions with the two guys who work at his record shop. Music, of course, is mentioned a lot, especially as Rob’s life (and even more so the lives of his employees Dick and Barry) revolves almost entirely around music. Since the record store doesn't get a lot of customers, most of Rob, Dick and Barry's time is spent making up top 5 lists, debating the merits or flaws of various bands and singers, and talking about obscure music trivia.

Rob is in many ways quite rather self-centered, and he is tormented by various insecurities as he goes through something of a mid-life crisis due to his relationship troubles.
I have to admit that to some degree I share some of his flaws and can relate to many of his problems, though not all of them (the sort of anxiety he deals with when he goes to Marie's place, for example, is something I've never felt). I would like to think I would have handled some of his more awkward conversations better than he does, but I certainly have had plenty of occasions where I wish I handled things differently, and I suspect this is true of the vast majority of people. His reflections on past relationships, and his discovery that his perception of many of them was distorted, also represent a fairly universal problem.

Though the parts about relationships and life choices give the book depth, the thing that most clearly sets it apart is the music. I won't go into that in depth here, though perhaps on my music blog I'll someday write an essay about musical snobbery, something Rob, Dick and Barry are definitely guilty of. Having said that, their knowledge of music – and by extension Nick Hornby's – is quite impressive. I should mention that many years ago I saw the critically acclaimed film adaptation of this novel, and my recollection is that it was pretty good, even though I don't remember it very well now and tend to confuse it with Say Anything, perhaps because both feature a lot of music and both star John Cusack. One thing I do remember about the film version of High Fidelity is Jack Black's excellent portrayal of Barry, who is the ultimate musical snob (and something of a jerk as well). In addition to the film version, there is apparently a Broadway musical based on the book. In any case, the novel is a good piece of modern fiction with particular appeal to music fans.


Carthage Must Be Destroyed: The Rise and Fall of an Ancient Civilization by Richard Miles
Carthage Must Be Destroyed: The Rise and Fall of an Ancient Civilization is a good, recent overview of the history of the ancient city of Carthage by Richard Miles. I know quite a bit about this subject myself, having become fascinated with Carthage and its most famous citizen, the brilliant military leader Hannibal, when I was still in elementary school, but nevertheless there was a fair amount here that was new to me. Much of the newer information is based on a combination of more recent archeological discoveries and new interpretations of both older discoveries and the ancient sources. Miles does a good job of explaining the current views about early Carthage and particularly the relationship between the Carthaginians and other Phoenician settlers in the Western Mediterranean on the one hand and other peoples, particularly the Greeks, on the other.

The part of the book on the Punic Wars between Rome and Carthage had less that was new to me, but even here the idea that there may have been a deliberate effort by Hannibal and his staff, particularly the Greek historian Silenus, to foment the idea that Hannibal was associated with Heracles-Melqart, a syncretistic amalgamation of the Phoenician god Melqart and the Greek hero-god Heracles (known to the Romans as Hercules), who had come to unite the older peoples of the Western Mediterranean against the upstart Romans was something I hadn’t read about before, though I knew that the Barcids (Hannibal and his predecessors, his father Hamilcar and brother-in-law Hasdrubal) had used Heracles-Melqart on their coins. While it is now difficult to be certain how extensive Hannibal’s use of such propaganda was, especially since the pro-Carthaginian histories of Silenus, Sosylus and others no longer exist except in isolated fragments, Miles makes a plausible case for the idea.

As for the rest of his account of the Punic Wars, I was somewhat disappointed that Miles seems to simply accept the traditional views regarding Roman leaders like Flaminius and Varro, despite the obvious bias of the main ancient sources. Also, he states that the river Hasdrubal had promised the Romans he would not cross bearing arms was “the river Hiberus [now generally thought to be the river Júcar]”. However, in the past most historians have believed the river in question to be the Ebro, including the modern histories I have (Lazenby discusses the theory that it might be a river further south but discounts it). This is significant because the Júcar is south of Saguntum, the Spanish city whose capture by Hannibal sparked the Second Punic War, whereas the Ebro is to the north. Miles, however, doesn’t even mention this traditional view, let alone discuss arguments favoring the interpretation he uses, even in the footnotes, in contrast to the way he deals with most other controversial points. But these are the only significant flaws I noticed, and in any case there are many other accounts of the Punic Wars around. For anyone looking for a comprehensive, readable survey of the history of Punic Carthage, Carthage Must Be Destroyed is probably the best choice available.


A Doll's House and Ghosts by Henrik Ibsen
A Doll's House and Ghosts, two famous plays by Norwegian playwright Henrik Ibsen dating back to the late 19th century, attack social conventions of the time, particularly with respect to the role of women. While Torvald Helmer's condescension toward his wife Nora seems almost unbelievable today (though at the time, unfortunately, it may not have seemed so) and Nora's sudden enlightenment about the nature of her status a tad unrealistic, especially given her naivety early in the play, these seemingly exaggerated elements ensure that the point is made all the more clearly. Ghosts shows the tragic results of a woman's efforts to keep up appearances while living in a completely dysfunctional family. While they may not seem so revolutionary today, both of these plays were extremely controversial in the very conservative period in which they first appeared. They were both attacked in very strong language by conventionally-minded critics, and banned in many places. But they also attracted a following among more liberal people, and helped to change people's attitude toward marriage and the status of women.


The Book of the Short Sun by Gene Wolfe
The Book of the Short Sun is a "science fantasy" trilogy by Gene Wolfe consisting of On Blue's Waters, In Green's Jungles and Return to the Whorl. It is a sequel of sorts to The Book of the Long Sun, which unfortunately I have not read (though I intend to look for a copy. There are frequent references to characters and events in The Book of the Long Sun, but it is not essential to have read it to understand The Book of the Short Sun, though the latter is not always so easy to follow for other reasons, as I'll explain. The second and third books tie in to a more limited degree with Wolfe's The Book of the New Sun, with the three sets making up Wolfe's "Solar Cycle". The Book of the Short Sun is set on three worlds, the planets Blue and Green and the interstellar colony ship The Whorl of the Long Sun, which was also the setting of the The Book of the Long Sun.

While Wolfe has not had the commercial success of the biggest scifi authors, he is a critical favorite who has won a number of awards. Most of the books in his "Solar Cycle" have placed in polls for the best science fiction books of all time. Some critics have even claimed Wolfe is the greatest living American writer. While this is a somewhat subjective judgment, he is certainly a good writer, though his books are not the easiest to read. In certain ways, The Book of the Short Sun is somewhat easier to read than The Book of the New Sun, as there is less of the unusual vocabulary found in the latter book (though there are a few examples, such as "whorl" for world, "augur" for priest, and "manteion" for church or temple). However, as the narrator Horn himself observes at one point, he has "written whatever crossed [his] mind" and so his narrative skips back and forth in time, telling both the story of his earlier journey and what is happening at the time he is writing, and neither strand of the story is told in a completely linear fashion. He often refers in passing to events and characters that are not properly introduced until much later (in the respect it reminded me a little of Rushdie's Midnight's Children), as well as to events and characters in The Book of the Long Sun. None of this makes the book impossible to follow, but it does tend to encourage flipping back and forth to keep track of what is happening. Some parts of the story are told in detail, while others are merely summarized, and some are never explained properly at all. This sort of non-linear storytelling style also reminded me a little of Infinite Jest, though The Book of the Short Sun is not quite so complex and it does have an ending, even if it is one that doesn't resolve everything clearly, unlike David Foster Wallace's book, which doesn't have a proper ending at all. In any case, while it may occasionally make for frustrating reading, this narrative structure is fascinating and also adds an extra element of realism, as the book does read much like a disorganized account scribbled down in spare moments by a person who is in the middle of fast moving events – and is himself changing as the narrative progresses.

The narrator is the key character in the book, though as the story evolves, it becomes clear that his identity is somewhat ambiguous. It is apparent early on that something has happened to him in the course of his travels to change his physical appearance, but it is gradually revealed that it may have changed more than that. Horn originally departed his home to search for Silk, the protagonist of The Book of the Long Sun, which was ostensibly written by Horn and his wife Nettle. Horn views Silk as a saint-like character and a great leader who he tries to emulate, though he is generally self-deprecating about his efforts. Nevertheless, Horn seems to take on many of Silk's qualities. He is frequently taken for Silk himself and is looked to as a leader and a source of wisdom by many of those he meets. Indeed, in certain ways he is a Christ-like figure, as was Severian from The Book of the New Sun (who appears near the end of this book as well, though he is not named). The manner in which the man calling himself Horn can be seen as a symbolic representation of Jesus is reminiscent of the way both Gandalf and Frodo in Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings are also in certain respects (particularly in terms of nobility and self-sacrifice) Christ-like. Another similarity between Wolfe and Tolkien is theology. While the people of Horn's worlds have a pantheon of gods, Horn concludes that only the one known as the Outsider is a true god. The Outsider is similar to Tolkien's Eru or Illuvitar, who is likewise a somewhat mysterious god that stands above and beyond the Valar, who act as the gods of Middle Earth. Of course both the Outsider and Eru clearly represent the Christian God. These similarities between Wolfe and Tolkien (who corresponded briefly back when Wolfe was just starting his career) may be explained in part by their religion, as I have read that Wolfe is Catholic, like Tolkien was. While I don't necessarily agree with their theology, both of them did a good job incorporating it into their stories in a way that benefited them rather than detracting from them.

There are many aspects of this book that could be discussed in greater detail. For instance, the inhumi as they are first described seem reminiscent of the Thread in Anne McCaffery's Pern books, as they are said to be able to launch themselves from their home planet of Green through space to Blue. This obviously doesn't seem very realistic from a scientific point of view, but later in the story there are suggestions that this explanation may not be the true one, merely a myth believed by the humans on Blue (and perhaps perpetuated by the inhumi themselves). Indeed things in Wolfe's books are very often not quite what they seem. Even questions that I might have had in the course of reading, such as why Horn believes his son Sinew hates him, the nature of the Neighbors/Vanished People and exactly how their civilization collapsed, or how the spirit travel that Horn and others engage in actually works, may at best be answered in an ambiguous manner, like the question of Horn's identity is, but this may well be intentional on Wolfe's part, as in real life things are often no clearer. So while this book may not be the best choice for simple light reading, it challenges the reader like good literature should, and yet remains engrossing throughout. Overall, while saying Wolfe is the greatest living writer in the English language is probably an overstatement, The Book of the Short Sun, like The Book of the New Sun, shows that he is one of the most interesting writers out there, and certainly is one worth reading.

Secession and Other Silliness

In my recent election recap, I neglected to mention one of the widely reported absurd reactions to the results. It seems that almost as soon as President Obama won reelection, people in a number of different states started petitions on the White House petition website calling for the US to permit their states to secede from the country. The petition which got the most signatures (at least 75,000, three time the number required to elicit an official response from the White House) was from Texas, the state I grew up in. Presumably the signers were motivated chiefly by dismay at the election results, though pro-secession sentiment is not new in Texas, which was briefly an independent nation and also a member of the Confederacy at the time of the US Civil War. But secession is a bad idea for a number of reasons.

Now I am not by any means opposed in principal to regions in a country declaring independence. I am a firm believer in the right to self-determination, and I support the right of occupied territories around the world (such as Tibet, West Papua, Western Sahara, East Turkestan, Chechnya and Kurdistan) to claim independence from their occupiers if that is the will of the majority of their people (though this becomes more tricky when the occupier settles large numbers of outsiders – who presumably will not support independence – in the territory, as has been done by empires since at least the Assyrians and is still being done by countries like China). But not all struggles for independence are equally worthy. While there is a lot to be said for the idea of breaking up the largest and most dangerously powerful countries in the world, including the United States, China and Russia, to name the most obvious ones, this particular effort, even if it were truly serious, would not be one I’d support, for a number of reasons.

First of all, it should be pointed out that it is unlikely that the signers of these petitions represent a significant segment of the population of the states in question. While 75,000 people may sound like a lot, Texas has a population of over 25 million, so only a very tiny proportion of Texans have signed, and the same is true of the petitions by residents of other states. But even if the petitions really represented the sentiments of a substantial group, there remains the question of their reasons for wanting to secede, and the consequences should they get what they wish.

From their timing, it is clear that the main motivation for most of the signers of these petitions is unhappiness at the reelection of Barack Obama. While I can understand this to some degree (had Mitt Romney been elected, I’d have been even less inclined than I am now to consider returning to the US on a permanent basis), dissatisfaction with an election result is a rather weak reason for seceding. It is rather ironic that the Obama haters who no doubt make up a substantial proportion of the petitioners are, by calling for their states to secede, making Obama look like Abraham Lincoln – after all, it was Lincoln’s election as US President that prompted the southern states to secede in 1860-1. Using Obama’s victory as an excuse to secede is particularly ridiculous given that, despite the shrill claims of some, he is a fairly moderate leader who has shown little inclination to push for dramatic changes, and it is improbable that he will be able to do anything revolutionary in his second term even if he wanted to.

Speaking of poor reasons to secede, the Confederate states that seceded in the wake of Lincoln’s election victory are a very good example, and one that relates closely to why secession by states like Texas would also be a bad thing today. While Confederate sympathizers now try to claim the South was fighting for states’ rights, anyone who knows the actual history is aware that the only states’ right which really concerned the southern states was the right to retain slavery. Slavery had been the big issue dividing the nation for decades, and it was the election of a pro-abolition President and the perception that the balance of power was permanently tilting toward the “free” states that led the South to secede. All the talk about fighting for “states’ rights” and “the Southern way of life” is just another way of saying they were fighting for slavery, and no independence fight is justified if its main purpose is to allow the seceding region to oppress or enslave others. Now let’s look at some of the things that those who would like Texas to secede dislike about the way things are going in the US under Obama (I know they claim budget issues as their key motivation, but I don’t buy that for a minute). Legalization of same sex marriage, making contraceptives easily available to women, allowing young undocumented immigrants to attend college without fear of deportation, making it easier for people to vote, taking a scientific approach to the issue of climate change, allowing Muslims to worship freely, teaching evolution in schools rather than theories with no scientific basis…these are the kinds of things that bother many of these people, and these are almost certainly among the first things that would be targeted in an independent Texas (or Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, etc.).

The above issues are why I would not like to see states like Texas secede from the US; even as it is, membership in the Union only partly restrains the negative impulses of many in the more conservative states (President Rick Perry, anyone?). If they were independent, I hate to think what would happen. While they might not try to bring back segregation or other blatantly discriminatory practices, I am sure the rights of ethnic minorities, women, homosexuals and Muslims would take a huge step backwards, and schools would be teaching all sorts of absurd nonsense. If I could feel sure that an independent Texas would uphold the principles of equality and fairness and would educate its children on the basis of rationality and science, then I could very willingly support a movement to separate from the US. As it is, I’m happy that these petitioners represent only a tiny fringe movement.

Another silly issue that dominated the post-election news in the US even more than these petitions to secede was the story that CIA Director and former general David Petraeus was resigning due to an extramarital affair, and another top general was being investigated for potentially “inappropriate” email exchanges. As a few commentators pointed out, good leaders are not so readily available that the US can afford to lose them for so inconsequential a reason as having an affair. While I am not in position to judge Petraeus’s effectiveness as either a general or the head of the CIA, I certainly don’t think he should have had to resign just for having an affair. America needs to stop being so obsessed with people’s sex lives and start getting its priorities straight.

2012 US Election Recap

Though it's sort of old news by now, I can't let the US elections pass without commenting on them briefly. In an earlier post, I talked about my own choices on the ballot I had received. Unfortunately, since I was voting in very conservative, overwhelmingly Republican Texas, not a single candidate I voted for won. On the national level, however, the results were considerably more gratifying. Though I voted for Jill Stein myself, I definitely wanted Barack Obama to win reelection over Mitt Romney, and as I noted in my other post, assuming my vote swap partner followed through, I helped ensure he got an extra vote in Florida, where it was much more useful than my vote in Texas would have been (for that matter, I even contributed a few dollars to his campaign). So I was very pleased to see him win quite convincingly over Romney. I was also very happy to see some good Democratic candidates for Senate like Elizabeth Warren, Tammy Baldwin, and Heidi Heitkamp win, and some truly awful Republican candidates defeated. Though the House results were not as good, some of the worst extremists on the Republican side were defeated. Also, there were many positive state referendum results, including three states approving same sex marriage, two states legalizing recreational use of marijuana, and one voting to allow the children of undocumented immigrants to pay in-state tuition.

Though overall the results of the election were about as good as I could reasonably have hoped for, being the cynic that I am I can't help but note the downsides as well. As mentioned earlier, the Republicans held onto the House and while some of the very worst extremists were defeated, there are still a lot of awful right-wing congresspeople left. A perfectly reasonable measure to require labeling of GMO foods was defeated in California thanks to heavy spending by Monsanto and similar dangerously powerful groups. While the Green Party's Jill Stein came in fourth overall and received close to three times the number of votes that the Green Party candidate got in 2008 and four times the votes of their 2004 candidate (she also got the most votes that any female presidential candidate has ever received in the general election), she still got far fewer votes than she deserved to get (less than half of 1%), and the party's Texas candidates didn't get all that many votes either, though the ones in races without Democrats did get enough to guarantee ballot access for the party next time around (5% was required and I believe two of them got 8%). The extremist Ted Cruz easily won election as a US Senator from Texas. And I still find it disturbing that people like Romney, Ryan, Akin, McMahon, etc. could even come close to winning big races. Finally, the fact that House Republican leaders like John Boehner and Pete Sessions both made the ridiculous assertion that the elections showed that the American people opposed tax increases, when not only did Obama and most of the Senate Democrats (the vast majority of whom have called for the wealthy to pay higher taxes) win but the Democrats even won more of the popular vote in House elections than the Republicans (who kept their majority mainly due to gerrymandering of Congressional districts) does not bode well for reasonable compromises on budget issues.

Despite these caveats, I have to consider myself generally happy with the results of this election. If this election actually forces the Republicans to reverse course and move back toward the center a little, rather than going further and further to the right as they have been doing, then it will prove even better. But for now, it has to be considered just one victory in a long war.

2012 US Elections

As many people around the world and everyone in the US who is not an infant, senile or in a coma are surely aware, the United States is holding elections for President and a vast number of other offices, not to mention various referendums and propositions, next week. In fact, the election has already started, as early voting has been underway for some time, with Barack Obama already having become the first sitting US President to take advantage of early voting. While at this point there is still reason to hope that the extremists will not take over completely, it could still go either way. There is still a distinct possibility that Mitt Romney could edge out Obama for the presidency, and given the number of extremely close Senate races, the majority of them for seats currently held by Democrats, it is also quite possible that the Republicans will win a Senate majority. If the American electorate was both sensible and well-informed, neither of those things would be even a remote possibility. Unfortunately, much of the electorate can’t be bothered to look at the issues in any depth, so they end up relying on the flood of bullshit coming out of their televisions – and their various personal biases and uninformed ideas about reality – to make their decisions. Of course both of the major parties are guilty of using distorted and downright false attack ads, but the Republicans have a lot more of them, paid for by the giant corporations and right-wing billionaires who love them so much, and their candidates by and large have positions on most issues that would be laughable if there wasn’t a very substantial danger that they’ll soon be in a position to carry them out.

As I am voting in Texas, there is little chance that any of my preferred candidates will win (Obama may win nationally, but he’s not going to win in Texas). Nevertheless, I intend to fill out my ballot at least as far as the major races are concerned, though I will probably not vote on local races where I know nothing about the candidates. I have done a bit of research on the bigger races on my ballot and will note my conclusions below. Some of my major sources are candidate questionnaires prepared by the Dallas News and Vote 411, though the latter is much shorter and so less useful. I’ve found conflicting information about whether I’m in US Congressional District 24 or 32, so I have included my thoughts on both races. As a general note, I should mention that the Green Party, the third party that I like the best, seems to have a somewhat mixed set of candidates in that some, like presidential candidate Jill Stein and US Senate candidate David Collins are making a real effort, while others don’t seem to be campaigning much or at all (at least they have failed to fill out candidate questionnaires or set up websites or even blogs – actual websites would probably be cost prohibitive). In the latter cases, if there is another halfway decent candidate (usually a Democrat), they'll get my vote over the Green. Annoyingly, the best Green candidates are in races where the Democrat is not too bad (e.g. the Presidential race), and some of the least active ones seem to be races where there are no other good choices.

US President
Barack Obama (Dem)
Jill Stein (Green)
Rocky Anderson (Justice)
Gary Johnson (Lib)
Mitt Romney (Rep)
Virgil Goode (Constitution)

This, of course, is the big race this year. Though there are quite a few candidates running for the office, only incumbent President Barack Obama and his Republican challenger Mitt Romney have a realistic chance of winning. Romney’s positions on almost every issue of importance – including the environment, budget policy (including tax policy), corporate influence, banking reform, immigration and gay marriage – are terrible, so it would be an unmitigated disaster for the US and the world if he wins. If I was voting in a swing state (of course there shouldn’t be such things, but that’s another issue), there’s no question I’d be voting for Obama. Since I’m not (Romney is unfortunately sure to win in Texas), I have given some thought to other candidates. One interesting way for voters to check out the views of a wider variety of candidates and compare them to their own is through various candidate match quizzes online. These are not always completely reliable, as in some cases their methods of determining a candidate’s stance are a bit debatable. Also, there are some issues where I have not made up my mind, or my position is too nuanced to fit the options given. With those caveats in mind, here are my results from a few such sites, with the first striking me as the most accurate:

http://www.isidewith.com/presidential-election-quiz
Jill Stein 95%
Rocky Anderson 82%
Barack Obama 81%
Mitt Romney 17%

http://2012election.procon.org/view.resource.php?resourceID=004491
Jill Stein 100%
Barack Obama 84%
Gary Johnson 53%
Virgil Goode 23%
Mitt Romney 13%

http://www.ontheissues.org/Quiz/Quiz2012.asp?quiz=Pres2012
Rocky Anderson 75%
Jill Stein 73%
Barack Obama 58%
Gary Johnson 35%
Mitt Romney 8%
Virgil Goode 5%

Of more significant third party candidates, Virgil Goode of the Constitution Party is a right-winger little better than Romney. Gary Johnson, the Libertarian nominee, seems to emphasize the individual freedom, anti-war side of libertarianism, but like most libertarians he would do little or nothing good on important issues like climate change and restraining corporate power. Jill Stein of the Green Party and Rocky Anderson of the Justice Party, on the other hand, have good stances on a majority of issues and are worthy options for those in safe (or hopeless) states who want to send Obama a message.

I like a lot of what Obama has done in his first term, and I recognize that on many issues his hands were tied by an uncooperative Congress or other circumstances. But I do think he should have been a lot firmer on many issues, and I have major disagreements with some things that have been done by those under him, such as the DEA’s handling of marijuana issues, the deportation of undocumented immigrants (though his recent executive order helps partly make up for this), or the treatment of Bradley Manning. His record on the environment has been mixed: the improved fuel efficiency standards are great and there has been some effort to encourage alternative energy, but his record on Keystone is mixed and I think he could have made a green economy a much bigger priority. I have also been annoyed by some of his campaign’s efforts to portray him as friendly to fossil fuels.

Since I’m not in a swing state, my disagreements with Obama would be more likely to cause me to cast a protest vote against him in favor of a candidate like Jill Stein whose positions more closely match my own if it weren’t for the vitriol and absurd falsehoods with which he has been attacked by the right-wing in America. The more I see of that sort of thing, the more it makes me want to vote for him to express my disagreement with these extremists. Perhaps my best options would be to swap votes with a Stein supporter in a swing state, which I will do if I find someone to swap with. If I can’t, I could still go either way between Obama and Stein, though I'm leaning a bit more toward Obama in order to boost his popular vote total against the inevitable aspersions that the Obama haters will cast on his legitimacy if he should win the electoral vote but lose the popular vote (even without having a questionably close vote in an individual state like Bush in Florida in 2000). [Update: I have reached an agreement with Calla Rowell in Florida to swap votes; she'll vote for Obama and I'll vote for Stein. I should note that this has not only been ruled legal by the courts, I see it as perfectly ethical. After all, I am not voting for anyone who I would not have at least strongly considered voting for anyway, and I am able to indirectly help the other candidate I considered voting for. It's really a win-win option in this sort of situation. Of course, if I had overwhelmingly preferred one of the two, I wouldn't have considered vote swapping in the first place.]

US Senator
Paul Sadler (Dem) – Good on environment, budget, immigration, but a little vague on many issues, seems a bit hawkish, praised Kay Bailey Hutchinson
David Collins (Green) – Serious Green candidate, good on most issues
Ted Cruz (Rep) – Typical right-wing Republican, terrible on virtually every issue
John Jay Myers (Lib) – Typical libertarian, poor on environment (not quite a climate change denier, but close)

For me, this race is much like the presidential one. If I thought Sadler had a good chance to win, I’d definitely be voting for him. Since he probably doesn’t (a scary thought, considering how bad Cruz is), I have to at least consider Collins as a slightly closer match to my own views, and to send a message to the Democratic Party in general that they need to address some issues, particularly environmental ones, more seriously than they often do. At this point, I could go either way on this one.

US Representative District 24
Tim Rusk (Dem) – Good on environment, immigration, taxes, Social Security
Kenny Marchant (Rep) – Typical right-wing Republican, terrible on virtually every issue
John Stathas (Lib) – Typical libertarian, bad on environment (climate change denier); there's a picture of him on one election site wearing a flak jacket and toting some kind of assault weapon, which makes him look like a complete nut job

This is an easy choice; Tim Rusk is by far the best candidate.

US Representative District 32
Katherine Savers McGovern (Dem) – Good on environment, immigration, taxes, women’s issues
Pete Sessions (Rep) – Typical right-wing Republican, terrible on virtually every issue, doesn’t directly deny climate change but effectively not much better than a denier
Seth Hollist (Lib) – Typical libertarian, bad on most issues except drug policy, also doesn’t directly deny climate change but effectively not much better than a denier

Another easy choice; Katherine Savers McGovern is far and away the best candidate.

Railroad Commissioner
Chris Kennedy (Green) – (Only shown on Vote 411) Supporter of alternative energy
Dale Henry (Dem) – Supports wind and solar and calls for measures to ensure energy extraction is done safely but also wants to “drill, drill, drill”, borderline climate change denier
Christi Craddick (Rep) – Climate change denier, though she makes nods to renewable energy and environmental protection, believes campaign contributions to be protected by the First Amendment, admires Margaret Thatcher
Vivekananda Wall (Lib) – Acknowledges climate change but won’t specify any action, other responses vague

I was certain this race would be very close, I’d have to at least consider voting for Dale Henry, as he is better than Craddick. However, it’s been years since a Democrat won a statewide race in Texas. What’s more, I dislike the tendency for Democrats to try to win in Texas by tilting to the right. It’s particularly bad for an office like Railroad Commissioner, where what is needed is someone who will make the environment a priority and not let the fossil fuel industry always get its way. Chris Kennedy doesn’t seem to be doing a lot of campaigning, but I’m probably going to vote for him to show my support for having a Green on the Railroad Commission and send a message to the Democrats to choose candidates with real environmental credentials.

Railroad Commissioner
Josh Wendel (Green) – No response to questionnaire
Barry Smitherman (Rep) – Climate change denier, extremely pro-fossil fuels
Jaime Perez (Lib) – Not a climate change denier, wants oil and gas industry to encourage alternative energy, favors eliminating subsidies, but also wants to “aggressively” exploit traditional energy (oil and coal)

Given that there are no Democrats running and there is a Green candidate, this would normally be an easy choice. However, Jamie Perez seems better than most Libertarian candidates, and Josh Wendel doesn’t seem to be campaigning at all (at least the other Green running for Railroad Commissioner responded to the Vote 411 questionnaire). I’m still more likely to vote Green because I support the principles the party stands for and I’d like to see them get 5% on at least one statewide race to ensure future ballot access. However, I’m not too happy that they don’t seem to be trying in this race, while Perez seems to be making at least some effort to attract support from environmentalists. I will probably have to do a bit more research on this one. If I can find some evidence that Wendel is actually campaigning, I’ll vote for him. If I find something new about Perez I don’t like so much or even if I find nothing more at all, I’ll also vote for the Green. But if I don’t find any sign that Wendel is campaigning, and I find more reasons to support Perez, it’s possible I may end up voting for Perez instead. [Update (Oct. 31, 2012): Having taken a look at Perez's website, he seems a bit wacky with his railing against the "Monetarchy". While his wackiness seems a lot better than that of many other Libertarians (see John Stathas above), a faceless Green still seems like a better choice.]

Justice, Supreme Court, Place 2
RS Roberto Koeisch (Lib) – Responses brief and vague
Don Willett (Rep) – Somewhat more reasonable sounding than most Republicans (e.g., arguing that the perception of pro-business tilt on the court is due to business-friendly Legislature), but a self-professed conservative who quotes Scalia and Roberts

Just based on his responses to the questionnaire Willett seems slightly less awful than some other Republicans, but his references to Scalia and Roberts are not encouraging. I certainly won’t vote for Willett, but to vote against him I need a decent alternative. Unfortunately, Koeisch doesn’t inspire much confidence. I may just skip this one.

Justice, Supreme Court, Place 4
Charles Waterbury (Green) – (Only responded to 411 questionnaire), wants court to favor individuals over corporations
Tom Oxford (Lib) – Not pro-business, named liberal Texas judge William Wayne Justice as a judge he admired, otherwise information limited
John Devine (Rep) – No response to questionnaire

Tom Oxford seems slightly better than most Libertarians and if it were only him and the Republican, I’d probably vote for him. But since the Green candidate Charles Waterbury is on the ballot and he did at least respond to one of the candidate questionnaires (and gave good responses), I’ll probably vote Green on this one.

Justice, Supreme Court, Place 6
Michele Petty (Dem) – Good responses to questionnaire, attacks pro-business decisions
Jim Chisolm (Green) – Not listed (No response on Vote 411)
Nathan Hecht (Rep) – Flatly denies pro-business bias
Mark Ash (Lib) – No response to questionnaire

If John Chisolm, the Green candidate, was actively campaigning I’d have to give him at least a little consideration. But he doesn’t seem to be, and the Democrat Michele Petty looks pretty good. So I think Petty will get my vote in this race.

Presiding Judge, Court of Criminal Appeals
Keith Hampton (Dem) – Most responses seem good if vague, unwilling to comment on death penalty since the issue may be heard by the court, highly critical of Keller’s controversial refusal to grant a plea for an hour’s extension for filing an appeal, thereby resulting in the execution of a death row inmate
Lance Stott (Lib) – No response to questionnaire
Sharon Keller (Rep) – No response to questionnaire, ruled against new trials in two controversial case, was charged with ethics violations over the case cited above though ultimately not punished

This one isn’t too difficult. Hampton looks at least okay, whereas Keller is awful (the only thing I know about Stott is that he’s a Libertarian; not exactly a positive). I’ll definitely go with Hampton on this one.

Member, State Board of Education, District 11
Jason Darr (Lib) – No response to questionnaire
Patricia Hardy (Rep) – No response to questionnaire, took slightly more moderate stances on evolution, Islam and Thomas Jefferson disputes than some extremist members of the board, but was the one responsible for the idiotic banning of Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What Do You See based on an email from a fellow board member

While Hardy is not one of the worst members of the awful Texas State Board of Education, that’s merely a relative thing. If I can find anything positive about the Libertarian Jason Darr, I’ll vote for him. Otherwise I’ll probably have to skip this one, though I might still vote for Darr to send a message about my irritation with the idiocy of the board over the past few years, which Hardy has take at least a little of the blame for.


On additional election related note, this is a little disturbing, especially when combined with the various Republican efforts to suppress voting. We’ll just have to hope it’s not so close that these things will be able to tip the scales.

A Major Discovery: A Planet in the Alpha Centauri System

A major astronomical discovery was announced in the past few days, one that was not all that widely reported (or at least I didn't see a lot of reports on it). A team of astronomers announced that they had discovered a planet in orbit around Alpha Centauri B, one of the three stars in the Alpha Centauri system. The stars of Alpha Centauri, at a distance of 4.3 light years, are the closest stars to us other than the Sun itself. What's more, the two main stars, Alpha Centauri A and Alpha Centauri B are very similar to the Sun, so a planet orbiting at the right distance from either of them might very well be habitable. The recently discovered planet is certainly not habitable by life as we know it, as it orbits far to close to its star and so is probably hot enough to melt rock. But where there's one planet, there may be more. The prospect of habitable planets around one or both of these relatively close, Sun-like stars is very exciting.

Alpha Centauri A is a yellow star of the same spectral class as the Sun, though it is very slightly hotter and more massive. Alpha Centauri B is a little cooler and less massive than the Sun, and is orange in color. These two stars orbit each other at a distance at a distance ranging from that between the Sun and Saturn to that between the Sun and Pluto. A third star, a small, cool red dwarf named Proxima Centauri, appears to orbit the other two at a great distance (it is somewhat closer to us, and so is the closest star other than the Sun). The planet orbiting Alpha Centauri B, designated Alpha Centauri Bb, is slightly larger than Earth (making it the smallest planet yet discovered orbiting a normal star other than our Sun) and orbits the star in only a little over 3 days, as compared with 88 days for Mercury in our solar system and 365+ days for Earth. Since it is so close to Alpha Centauri B, it is certainly very hot, probably several times as hot as Venus, which has surface temperatures of over 400 degrees Celsius. If there is a habitable planet orbiting Alpha Centauri B, it would have to be much further out. It is even possible that both Alpha Centauri A and Alpha Centauri B have habitable planets, which would be an exciting prospect. If such planets do exist, we may discover them within the next decade or two, or even sooner, though it is easier to detect planets that are very close to their stars with our current technology.

However, even if we do discover planets in the habitable zones of Alpha Centauri A and Alpha Centauri B, it will take further advances before we will be able to look for indications that life exists on them (such as the presence of molecules that are unlikely to produced by non-organic processes). Supposing that we do find signs of life on a planet in the Alpha Centauri system a few decades from now. What then? The obvious answer would be to go and visit them, or at least send a probe to explore them. But while Alpha Centauri is relatively close, the key word here is "relatively". Even the closest stars are still incredibly distant. It takes light 4.3 years to reach them from the Sun traveling at 300,000 km per second, while light from the Sun reaches the Earth in only 8 minutes and reaches Pluto in about 5 hours. Our current rockets can't reach even 1% of light speed, so it would take them thousands of years to get to Alpha Centauri. While propulsion systems have been proposed that might get us up to a few percentage points of light speed, it will take quite a bit of work, including further technological advances and lots of money, to actually build them. So it's not likely that we will be able to visit Alpha Centauri anytime soon. But if habitable planets are actually discovered there, especially ones with signs of life, it might provide the incentive needed for humanity to undertake the long-range project of trying to get to them. This discovery may be the first step along that road.

Here's an infographic providing more information on Alpha Centauri and the newly discovered planet.

Mocking Religion

One of the biggest news stories of this month was the furor over a low budget anti-Muslim film, portions of which were posted on YouTube where they attracted the attention of radical Islamists who took to the streets in protest in countries throughout the Middle East and Asia. Though the film itself is not worth commenting on (I haven’t seen it and don’t intend to), the subsequent debates about the conflict between religious sensibilities and freedom of expression is a more important issue, as some conservative Muslims have called for the enactment of international laws against insulting religion. While this proposal has little support in the West (and as the misuse of blasphemy laws in places like Pakistan shows, it’s a very bad idea), some Western leaders have said that while freedom of expression takes precedence, they personally oppose saying anything that insults others’ religious beliefs. But is this really wrong? After all, any sort of mockery or lampooning of a religion will be bound to be considered insulting or blasphemous by overly sensitive believers.

In medieval Europe, anything considered blasphemous by the religious authorities was punishable by death, as it still is in a few of the most conservative Muslim countries. But lampooning religion has a long and indeed artistically respectable history in the West, including brilliant works of art from Candide to The Life of Brian. While I myself have mostly refrained from mocking religious beliefs in this blog, except for my criticism of the practice of burning ghost money in Taiwan and the Catholic stance on contraception, I wouldn’t rule it out in the future (I can even think of tempting satirical targets in the beliefs or writings of every major religion). I don’t think religion should be any more inviolate than other belief systems, such as cultural traditions, superstitions, or nationalism. But I do think that any mockery of such things should be intelligent and based on actual elements of the religion (or whatever belief system is the target). Unintelligent name-calling and irrational insults make the one attacking look like more of a fool than their targets.

Offensively stupid attacks on Islam (and other religions and ethnic groups) are unfortunately not hard to find. Comment boards on news articles are littered with offensive Islamaphobic garbage from Internet trolls, including comments calling for all Muslims to be killed, comments comparing Muslims to pigs, and other blatant hate speech. That sort of thing is indefensible, and while I wouldn’t say the posters deserve to be stoned, some more mild form of punishment might well be in order. Aside from being violent and extremist, these comments are idiotic and ignorant. One I saw tried to rationalize his Islamaphobia by stating that all the violence and conflicts in the world involved Muslims (a laughably ignorant assertion, given that some of the world’s worst conflict zones – the Congo comes to mind – have no Muslims at all) and that Islam spread through forced conversions. The latter claim was only true at certain times and places – in most places Islam spread peacefully – and considering the history of forced conversions in Christianity from Charlemagne to the European colonial era, only an extremely biased or extremely ignorant person would condemn Islam for forced conversions without condemning Christianity as well.

For that matter, Christians are hardly in a position to accuse Muslims of violent overreaction to perceived slights to their religion (especially since the violent Islamists constitute a tiny minority of Muslims). While it’s true that now attacks on Christianity can be made with relative impunity in most places, only four and half decades ago John Lennon received death threats in the US just for saying that the Beatles were more popular than Jesus, even though it was the truth, at least in the UK (which was what he was talking about). I am not saying that most of the Islamaphobes in the West are Christians, but some certainly are (the maker of the recent film and the Quran-burning pastor in Georgia are just two examples – and I also read some rather incendiary comments about Mohammed in a newsletter for a Christian organization once), and many of the blanket attacks on Islam apply equal to Christianity, and many other religions for that matter. But even anti-religious secularists who attack all religions equal shouldn’t engage in gratuitous insults. On the other hand, if they want to make fun of believers and even their holy books and holy figures, and they do so in an intelligent way, basing their mockery on the actual tenets of the faith or the way it is actually practiced (as opposed to just making things up), then I say more power to them. And as Salman Rushdie (and others before him) pointed out, if your belief system can’t handle a little lampooning, then it must not have been very strong to begin with.

I will also add that the violent reactions among the radical Islamic fringe to any depictions of Mohammed, let alone hostile or insulting ones, is an example of one of the worst tendencies among religions and other strongly-held belief systems, namely that of trying to impose your beliefs on others. I understand why Islam discourages depictions of people in general and Mohammed in particular – a similar feeling that such images may become objects of worship motivated the Christian Orthodox iconoclasts of the Byzantine Empire and some Protestants – but that doesn’t mean non-Muslims should be bound by this. Similarly, if your religion forbids gay people from marrying, the eating of pork or beef, the consumption of alcohol or other drugs, abortion, extramarital sex, dancing, shaving, wearing hats, standing on your head, or whatever, then don’t do those things – but don’t try to tell non-believers they can’t do them, or advocate secular laws and other measures that make doing these things difficult (unless you have a completely non-religious reason for it, as might arguably be the case for a very few of the above things). For that matter, even believers cannot be punished for violating such rules except by expulsion from the religion – and if they choose to still consider themselves followers of your religion despite violating some of its rules, then there’s nothing you can reasonably do about it. In the final analysis, if a religious believer really wants to help spread their religion, the best way they can go about it is by being tolerant, pleasant, caring and positive in their speech and actions, not by responding to mockery with hostility or by telling others what they can’t do. As Rushdie said, argument is one of the characteristics of an open society, and people will always be saying things you don't like. As a Middle Eastern observer noted, this film and the response to it is an example of how the crazy people on both sides feed on each other. I would say the best response to the fringe elements on both sides (aside from taking whatever measures are appropriate against those who resort to violence), if we bother to pay any attention to them at all, is to laugh at them, and satire, whether targeted narrowly or broadly, is the best way to do that.