Blue
Commentia: Various opinions on the events of Alpha Complex. And, y'know, the rest of the world.
It's a bit unnerving when you think that someone's going to end up dead.
Mar 02, 2010
I’m speaking of a character on a television show. Calm down.
I was a fan of Battlestar Galactica (yes, even the cheesetastic 1970s version - hey, a science fiction geek growing up in the 70s didn’t have too many other options), and am now watching Caprica, gleefully recording every episode and then watching it the next day so that I can fast-forward through the ads. I already know I’m going to buy the 1st-season DVDs (though - please, folks, do NOT split the seasons up and sell them in two halves, that just vexes me), but I’m enjoying watching several recorded eps in sequence, catching bits that I didn’t the first time through. I’m enjoying all the detail they’ve put into building out the worlds: the cultures and subcultures, the socioeconomic structures, the family dynamics, everything.
But I think Sam Adama’s going to get deaded.
First off, while there were a few mentions of Admiral Adama’s father in Battlestar Galactica, we heard nothing of his uncle. If Sam was such an influence on young William, one might have expected a few more of those habits to stick. Admiral Adama knew how to get things done, but he didn’t seem as…well…overtly ruthless as someone who was tutored by a mob enforcer. We also got a drive-by mention of Joseph Adama from Lee, who even gave us a quote from granddad (“Be good…but not -=too=- good”), but no mention of his grand-uncle. It would make sense that Sam might have exited the picture before Lee came along, being (as he is) someone whose profession involves more overt violence, overall, than is seen at a Manchester United / Leeds football match. Joseph isn’t precisely clean-fingered, but his violence is more of the chessboard variety: moves and countermoves, actions on paper, all very mandarin. Sam prefers more direct solutions with more immediately measurable results…like the target bleeding, or running, or no longer in need of a forwarding address. Thus it makes sense that Sam is statistically less likely to be around long enough to collect on whatever retirement package the Ha’La’Tha might offer. But still…with what we’ve seen in the first quarter (or third) of the first season, with Sam’s mentoring/deputy-auxiliary-backup parenting of his nephew and the general Tauron relevance and importance of extended family, it feels like something would have had to happen for Sam to fade from his nephew’s life.
Sasha Roiz, the actor who plays Sam Adama, has mentioned that while Sam and his brother don’t agree on parenting styles, they eventually come to some meeting of the minds. I don’t know that this would necessarily mean that William Adama’s uncle suddenly drops to near-zero - even if he severely levels up in “Background, Fading Into The”. So what happens? I have no idea what, specifically - but I’m going to guess that it happened when William was getting along a heck of a lot a bit better with his father - and so less dependent on Sam as the positive adult presence in his life. (Yes, I just called a mob enforcer/assassin a positive adult presence. Unless you watch the show, you’re not really going to grok this one…but trust me, it applies. Now go watch the show.) Possibly Sam does, over time, slowly fade from his nephew’s life in a non-traumatic fashion. Possibly Sam consciously steps aside to let his brother repair the father-son bond that seems to have been neglected. Or, as a longtime member of the Tauron crime syndicate that’s ever so eager to expand, Sam is sent to help move into a new area, and so relocates. Or possibly Larry finally convinces Sam to change careers, and they relocate. That last seems a bit doubtful…but people have done less in the name of family harmony or love for one’s partner, so it’s a bit unexpected, but not totally bizarre.
But honestly? I think he’s going to end up dead at some point in the series. I just hope it isn’t **too soon**, because I like the character.
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Tool users versus consumers
Nov 15, 2009
This is interesting. It’s about how the digital revolution has lead to people who know how to use computer applications, but don’t know how to program them. They know how to use the tools they’re given, but they don’t know how to create new tools themselves. I’d had similar thoughts, but hadn’t ever put it into words.
The digital should have made all of this more probable and more possible, not less.
College kids learn how to use word processors, spreadsheets, and basic graphics programs - but they can’t write a graphics program themself. They’re limited by what they learn - and by which tools they learn to use. (Microsoft’s counting on this…which is why they donate so much software to schools. They’re playing the long game.) I know HTML and CSS, and a teeny tiny bit of JavaScript. I could, if I wanted, sit down and learn SQL programming and even Perl. But I don’t know how to write a program more complex than the simplest GOTO Basic routines that I wrote more than 25 years ago, when I was first learning to use the (then fairly new) Apple IIe that my farsighted dad bought for our home. I can make Photoshop sing and dance, but I don’t know how to write a program to manipulate or edit graphics.
Then again, is it just another step in the journey? The author writes out an interesting analogy about how each revolution raised the social bar, but most people never used the full potential of the latest tool:
- the invention of the 22-character alphabet lead to a society that could write down its knowledge…but only a few ever learned how to read
- the printing press lead to widespread availability of printed material…but only a few (those who could afford the apparatus) mass-produced and distributed written material
- broadcast radio/film/television lead to a more widespread availability of information…but only a small segment of society were producers of the content
Those are some interesting points. The author goes on to state that the real power of the digital renaissance is not in using the tools (blogging, YouTube, et cetera) but in creating the tools (programming). Well…isn’t that how it’s always been, really? A few create the tools, many more make use of the tools, most are consumers of the works produced by those tools. I think this is a result of a few things: the tool creation/tool use mindset and teaching, and peoples’ inclinations. When people don’t know how to create a tool, they won’t - or they’ll juryrig the existing tools to do what they want it to. (I’ve had a few go-rounds of this with my CMS.) Most people may not care about being able to create tools. As long as some do, society will continue to advance. Let’s take a look at me as an example. I learned HTML when the spec was first released in 1991. I learned CSS in 1997, but had to wait until 1999 for serious implementation because so few browsers could render the code. But even those are just markup languages, not true programming languages. As neat as it may be, I don’t care to learn how to program. I’m quite content to use the tools around me. I think that many people feel the same way: they could learn to change their own brakes, but they’d rather just pay someone else to do it. They could learn to spin their own cloth and sew their own clothing, but they’d rather (for the most part) buy something premade. The entire fast-food industry, and to an extent the food distribution industry (grocery stores), is built on the premise that while people could raise their own livestock and grow their own food, for the most part, people would rather buy the ground flour and processed sugar and harvested vegetables and assemble the ingredients - or even buy a loaf of bread or a box of cookies or a bag of salad fixings or a cut of meat (or a burger, or an entree at a restaurant.) I don’t know if human inclination can be overcome so that most of society knows how to create digital-media tools. I think it would be cool if more people had the opportunity to learn, and were given the awareness that those opportunities were there - but, again, look at me. I know where to go to learn PHP programming, and SQL, and JavaScript. I just choose not to do so. I don’t care that much, in my day-to-day life, to learn how to use those particular tools to create other tools.
But I’m quite happy that others do. Otherwise I wouldn’t be able to run this blog on my own hosted web space, with the script of my choosing/installing/configuring.
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How...Reseunesque
Apr 25, 2009
US Army trying to keep its soldiers younger and more highly functional for longer periods of time. One of the writeups specifically notes that this mitochondrial serum (which I'm calling rejuv, a term used by C J Cherryh in her Alliance-Union novels) would be sold to "warfighters", and that significant civilian interest in the product is also expected.
Since I'm a big fan of C J Cherryh and Robert J. Sawyer and others who have written stories about societies dealing with artificial life prolongation, I would have a few questions about any such drug:
- Would warfighters (translation: soldiers actively engaged in combat operations) have to pay for rejuv out of their military paychecks, or would this drug be provided to them like their vehicles, their ammunition and weaponry, their uniforms, and to a large extent their food?
- What medical support would be provided to soldiers who suddenly go off of this drug? One assumes that with the sudden cessation of rejuv, the body would essentially "crash". Whether this crash would be a hard crash or a softer crash has to be seen; but the aging process, which had been held off, would suddenly be turned back on. Depending on how long one was on rejuv, the adjustments could be quite severe - especially if one went from the mental and physical acuity of a 30-year-old to that of a 60-year-old with the beginnings of dementia. That's rough on anyone when it happens over a period of decades, let alone if it happens over a period of years.
- Once soldiers began taking rejuv, would they be entitled to purchase the drug at a discount once they left the service (assuming that they were honorably discharged)?
- If the cost of the drug was such that the civilian population was indeed split into the well-off with longer active lifespans - and thus increased attractiveness/productivity in the workforce/earning power - and the less moneyed who only had the typical productive "workforce" lifespan of 50-60 years, would there be an increasing divide of wealth distribution in society in general? Or, flip that, would workers who were on rejuv be paid less since they would effectively be expected to be gainfully employable for longer periods of time?
- I can already see enterprising legal folks drooling over the prospects of all those age- and inheritance-related wrinkles that would crop up.
No conclusions drawn, just questions asked. Hey, the weather's kind of nice, I'm going out and enjoying it while I can.
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and then rolls it right up
Apr 24, 2009
Wow. There goes a bit of history.
Aside from the incredibly rudimentary text-only pages and fingerfiles on my college’s Unix system (and one Santa Cruz geekhaus), my first real web sites were on Geocities. I helped out by volunteering as a community leader, I ran a few “groups”, and I had web rings (back when that particular entity was run by Sage Weil.) I left Geocities in 1998, shortly after Yahoo first partnered with Geocities and tried a stealth-rewrite of its Terms of Service. I stopped using Webring (or joining any webrings) when Geocities bought *that* in 1998. Still…it’s kind of sad to note the complete demise of Geocities.
I tried most of the first (1993-1996) free-webpage hosting services: Tripod. Angelfire. Xoom. I had a free graphics gallery, a database of support and recovery resources online, a primitive choose-your-own adventure game that was always more idea than actual game. (Trying to come up with, and keep track of, all those forking story ideas was a bit labor-intensive.)
I’ve since moved on quite a bit, running my own hosting business (minus any popup ads). But I still remember the Geocities culture, its general structure, its community. Geocities died a long time ago. Yahoo’s just been using the corpse to try and attract the occasional customer who decides to pay for premium service. (I’ve gotten a few of those clients who’ve found out that Yahoo’s idea of ‘premium’...isn’t very.)
Hearing this news is a bit like hearing that the playground you loved as a child…the playground you hadn’t thought about in a decade and hadn’t visited for a bit longer…is finally being demolished.
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Equal is equal. Anything else is a sham.
Nov 15, 2008
When people want to commit to each other to live together, work together, build a life, build a family, that should not be tolerated. It should be celebrated. When people work together, society gets more stable, gets stronger. So why are people so dead-set against equal rights for any adults who want to be married to another adult, to marry?
Join the Impact
Big demonstrations are today, in cities across the nation. Little demonstrations can and should happen continuously.
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The (relatively few) things I love talking about
Nov 04, 2008
I'm not much of a chatterbox. Well, at least not with people I don't know. Even with groups of my friends, I prefer to be the listener than the talker. I am not a big conversationalist. Still...there are certain subjects where I will put my oar in the water. (Sometimes uninvited. But that's another story...)
- Anthropological or sociological science fiction
- Mythological themes
- My hosting business
- The hosting or internet industry, in general
- Civil rights
- Philosophy
- My cats
- (currently) Projects for my new house
- Colors and color theory
- (again, currently) mineral makeup
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