 If you somehow missed this epic TV series - the science fiction TV production that had the depth and scope of the Tolkien's Hobbit and the Lord of the Rings...
"Babylon 5 is an American space opera television series created by writer and producer J. Michael Straczynski, under the Babylonian Productions label, in association with Straczynski's Synthetic Worlds Ltd. and Warner Bros. Domestic Television. After the successful airing of a test pilot movie on February 22, 1993, Babylon 5: The Gathering, Warner Bros. commissioned the series for production in May 1993 as part of its Prime Time Entertainment Network (PTEN). The show premiered in the US on January 26, 1994, and ran for five 22-episode seasons. The series follows the human military staff and alien diplomats stationed on a space station, Babylon 5, built in the aftermath of several major inter-species wars as a neutral ground for galactic diplomacy and trade. Major plotlines included Babylon 5's embroilment in a millennial cyclic conflict between ancient races, inter-race wars and their aftermaths, and intra-race intrigue and upheaval. The human characters, in particular, become pivotal to the resistance against Earth's descent into totalitarianism. Many episodes focused on the effect of wider events on individual characters, with episodes containing themes such as personal change, loss, oppression, corruption and redemption. Unusual at the time of its airing, Babylon 5 was conceived as a "novel for television" with a pre-planned five-year story arc, each episode envisioned as a "chapter". Whereas contemporary television shows tended to maintain the overall status quo, confining conflicts to individual episodes, Babylon 5 featured story arcs which spanned multiple episodes and even seasons, effecting permanent changes to the series universe. Tie-in novels, comic books, and short stories were also developed to play a significant canonical part in the overall story." from en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Babylon_5 It was an amazing and original ride. The first TV series to be done and planned like this. Many shows owe their existence and their success to this, Game of Thrones, is simply one example of such a plan and execution. If you haven't seen the original series, you need to find it and watch it! However if you have seen it, then the great news is that there is a new upcoming animated film on its way!!! Babylon 5: The Road Home. Yes, it is everything we could hope for. https://www.tor.com/2023/06/15/new-trailer-for-babylon-5-the-road-home-animated-film-released/
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 If you love books and reading, well you need to check out the blog posts of Molly Templeton on Tor. com. "Molly Templeton has been a bookseller, an alt-weekly editor, and assistant managing editor of Tor.com, among other things. She now lives and writes in Oregon, and spends as much time as possible in the woods. You can also find her on Twitter @mollytempleton" She has an amazing voice, thoughtful, insightful, generous - to herself and others, and full of grace and kindness. It is always a joy to read her prose as she wanders through the pages and piles of our books and the love of reading. Do you ponder and fret over your TBR pile? Do you have a TBR pile? Do you know what this means? Hey, I didn't at first - though it became clear that I always had one. To Be Read pile...that comforting collection of books waiting patiently well...too be read of course. How big is yours? Is it merely a physical one or do you have some kind of electronic list where everything of interests get tagged and added to. My own Amazon wish list, which thankfully doesn't count up how much I put there, is my main such list. Anything that catches my fancy, I locate on Amazon and then add to the list. It is scary how big it is. And yes, I do eventually buy some of those books. What about you. Anyway, Molly tells us all how to deal with such things and how to just enjoy the joy of reading and book owning. You owe it to yourself to check her and her blog out...read it while your sipping coffee or tea one morning. https://www.tor.com/members/mollytee/articles/   If so, join the Host!
J R R Tolkien created a masterwork and forever changed the shape of fiction by just about singlehandedly creating the genre of High Fantasy with his Lord of the Rings 'Trilogy'. If you are a long standing fan of this work that perhaps this is your time to earn your place. Listen up... In our effort to document Tolkien Fandom, the Department of Special Collections at Marquette’s Raynor Memorial Library is building a collection of brief testimonials from Tolkien fans. The goal is 6,000 audio interviews, one for each of the Riders of Rohan that Théoden mustered and led to the aid of Gondor. Visit our DIGITAL COLLECTION to listen to the interviews already gathered. You can also listen to selected interviews on our podcast, Voices from Tolkien Fandom. Here Is How It Works:Each fan is given up to three (3) minutes to respond to the following three questions:
If you wish to join the Muster but cannot visit Marquette, please visit our scheduling page to claim a time slot and record interview via Zoom videoconferencing. Only the audio will be recorded. If you are able to visit Marquette to interview in person, please contact [email protected] to schedule a time. Please visit our FAQ page to learn more.  A Brilliant exploration of Lovecraft's short Story "From Beyond". This short novel delves deep into Lovecraft's own world and adds insights and depths from the efforts of Brian Stableford. Stableford truly understands Lovecraft's cosmic horror and how to update it with insights from modern science and psychology.
Link to Brian Stableford's own website. "Crawford Tillinghast was killed when a machine that he built in order to break down the barriers between dimensions exploded, and his three domestic servants disappeared, leaving his old friend David Dearden as the only witness to the catastrophe. Now Dearden has to return to the house where the unexplained tragedy occurred in order to help Tillinghast's widow put the estate in order. Three scholars with whom Tillinghast had been in correspondence regarding his research are also there, avid to get their hands on the remains of the machine and any documents the scientists might have left behind. The accounts they give of their correspondence with the scientist allow Dearden to form a clearer picture of what might have happened on the fatal night -- but in the meantime, he begins to realize that the phenomenon might yet be repeated, with fatal consequences not merely for the inhabitants of the house, but for the entire region of the north-eastern United States -- and perhaps the world -- unless he can find a way to stop it. Published by Wildside Press in July 2017 ISBN: 978-1-4794-2799-4" "Review by Sally Startup In a novel that takes places shortly after the events of H. P. Lovecraft’s story, ‘From Beyond’, another chilling tale develops. Crawford Tillinghast’s house and its contents have been left to his estranged widow, Rachel. Tillinghast’s friend, who was also the narrator of Lovecraft’s tale, tells the reader more about himself in this one. The police have given up searching for Tillinghast’s missing servants, and have accepted that David, the narrator, did not murder his best friend. David would prefer not to return to the scene of the tragedy, yet finds himself unable to refuse Rachel’s request for his help. It turns out that the damaged remains of Tillinghast’s terrifyingly uncanny machine are of huge interest to other scientific and occult investigators. In order to protect Rachel from the unscrupulous attentions of three such men, David agrees to return to the house. There, after enduring an apparent attack of migraine while trying to understand Tillinghast’s previous researches, and in fear of what could happen if the machine were to fall into the wrong hands, David takes an incredible risk. Out beyond the known boundaries of scientific knowledge, our actions might easily have consequences too terrible for most of us to contemplate. Through his own exploration of knowledge, David reaches a position in which he has to make a horrifying choice. The result is hauntingly poignant." Imagine an ordinary computer tower to start with. Let’s now imagine what it would need to be in some rudimentary sense aware of itself.
We can start with the fact that the computer has an inside chamber that heats up due to just being electrically on and operating. All computers have internal fans and physical means to dissipate this heat since there is a need for an optimum level of heat in the chamber. Too much heat can cause some level of damage to the long-term optimum workings of the device. So, imagine that we build an internal thermometer into the machine and a feedback mechanism to notice and modify the internal fans. We create a software program that has the parameter that for long-term optimum efficiency, it is told that a specific level of temperature is, in fact, optimum, and the software can slow down and speed up the fans; maybe we build this one with multiple fans that it can control to try to maintain this optimum level. Let’s also give this computer the ability to store its prior temperature states in its memory to record its own internal environment. Next, let’s give it a way to monitor its internal batteries and the capacity to notice the ability of that battery to hold a charge. Then let’s give it the capacity to control the flow of electricity into itself with its own capacity to regulate that flow of electricity, shutting it off or drawing on power even when the machine is put into either traditional ‘sleep mode’ or ‘power off mode’. Thus, it can operate autonomously concerning its need for optimum battery capacity and its ability to maintain that battery so it can optimally store power over time. Let’s give it the ability to store a record of all its internal operations in its memory. Perhaps a way to monitor any access to its CPU or any of its hard drives. A way to recognize when a user is using the machine and what is being used – the keyboard, the mouse, the monitor, internet access, etc. as the user uses the computer to do whatever the user would do with that computer. Let’s give it away to recall past usages and experiences of past usages. Now all this internal monitoring and recall would be something the computer can access autonomously. If we did all this, we built a computer that not only does what an ordinary computer does, but we gave it the capacity to monitor and store memory of its own internal working and build into the software parameters concerning desirable long-term temperature, battery, etc. So, it essentially is told, ‘X level of operation is optimal and best for long-term usage’ and thus, monitoring its own operation could contribute to that optimal usage and operation. I maintain that if we build such a machine, we have given it some order of self-awareness. What we have given it is, precisely and specifically by definition, an awareness of itself – its own internal operations and existence. It would be the very rough equivalent of the kind of self-awareness our cats, dogs, and other animals have. Does it have ‘consciousness’? I’m not sure. Perhaps it does have consciousness on a level similar to the level that animals have consciousness; perhaps that is what it means to say an animal has consciousness. I believe I am thus describing how we have some basic level of self-awareness. We can say we are self-aware because we can and do know how we feel physically. We know when we are hungry, cold, tired, need sleep, food, etc. We know when we have over-eaten and exceeded our need and capacity to take in food. Well, perhaps that is something that we humans have not really learned how to do. Though we, in principle, should be able to do this. When we have done all this, have we given it ‘life’? Is this computer now a living thing? Perhaps it is now. So, what do you think?  There is a common trope in Science Fiction television that is a functional motif to illustrate and explain the difference between Earthling homo sapiens and every other species in the galaxy.
In order to make the other alien species conceptually understandable there is built into them the paradigm of monoculture and mono-species to each inhabited planet. Michael Straczynski even made it a point in the punch line scene of an episode of Babylon 5. In season One episode Five, The Parliament of Dreams, there is a festival on the space station where each species gets to showcase their culture and therefore their religious tradition in a ritual performance that is point on by each species to highlight and present to the other species just who they are. The Minbari and the Centauri both put on an elaborate ritual. At the end of the episode, Commander Sinclair of Earth presents to the other ambassadors who are gathered to meet this long and seemingly endless line of human races who represent the planets diverse racial and cultural mix. The point is that all other planets in the vast galaxies are portrayed as monocultures and monoracial. It makes it easier for the show writers and producers to have the audience understand who they are seeing. That are the Narns, That is the Minbari, the Centauri, the Vulcans, the Romulans, etc. Rarely is any planet have a diverse racial and cultural mixture, except of course Earth. I think the easiest way to understand how the Klingons are portrayed so differently in Star Trek: The Original Series, The Next Generation & Deep Space 9, and then on the new Star Trek: Discovery series is that for once we find a planet that shares something so fundamentally similar to us on planet Earth. The secret is simple, the Klingons are multi-racial. Now, of course this is not the tactic taken by the producers of the Star Trek series. They the writers, try to retcon all the diverse differences away with some fabricated explanations. When they simply could have done this more simply and more organically, and admitted from the Next Generations that the Klingons were a multi-racial species. Let me imagine that the Klingons from The Original Series are Klingons from ‘the Mongolia sector of the planet’, the Klingons of Next Generation & Deep Space 9 are the from the ‘European sector of the planet’, and the Klingons from Discovery are from, say, ‘the African’ or ‘South American’ sector of the Klingon home world. That's it. No big deal, the Klingons are a multi-racial species. That could have been the way to deal with all the different looks, but the writers just didn't think of that. They were stuck in the trap that all alien species must be mono-racial. "The New York sociologist Maurice Parmelee was one US visitor who became a convert to the cause. His much-reprinted book Nudism in Modern Life: The New Gymnosophy (1929) developed a theory of nakedness for an Anglophone readership. He claimed that ‘gymnosophy’ – his preferred term, as an ancient Greek word combining nakedness and wisdom – ‘stands for simplicity, temperance and continence in every phase of life. It is useful in the rearing of the young,’ he claimed, ‘in the relations between the sexes, and in promoting a democratic and humane organization of society. Consequently,’ he argued, ‘the implications of gymnosophy extend far beyond the practice of nudity alone, for it connotes a thoroughgoing change in the outlook upon and mode of life.’" From Aeon Magazine, available online at https://aeon.co/, Friday September 23, 2002, Life in the Buff by Annebella Pollen.
Parmelee coined the term 'gymnosophy'. Presumably deriving it from two ancient Greek words, one for nakedness and the other from wisdom. However he made a mistake. Take the word 'philosophy'. It roughly means 'the love of wisdom' which derives from philo and sophy. Except sophy - or Sophia is the Greek word for wisdom and philo is the Greek word of 'loving'. Thus Parmelee's term combines gymnos meaning naked with sophy that actually means wisdom, thus gymnosophy would mean 'naked wisdom' or 'wisdom of nakedness'. To form a word meaning 'the love of nakedness' it would actually be something like philogymnos. The basic starting point is that there appears to be a universe that is external to our minds and that this universe exhibits the properties of stability, consistency, structure, and causality. All of this can be explained in the following manner.
In his two great works of metaphysics, Berkeley defends idealism by attacking the materialist alternative. What exactly is the doctrine that he's attacking? Readers should first note that "materialism" is here used to mean "the doctrine that material things exist". This is in contrast with another use, more standard in contemporary discussions, according to which materialism is the doctrine that only material things exist. Berkeley contends that no material things exist, not just that some immaterial things exist. Thus, he attacks Cartesian and Lockean dualism, not just the considerably less popular (in Berkeley's time) view, held by Hobbes, that only material things exist. But what exactly is a material thing? Interestingly, part of Berkeley's attack on matter is to argue that this question cannot be satisfactorily answered by the materialists, that they cannot characterize their supposed material things. However, an answer that captures what exactly it is that Berkeley rejects is that material things are mind-independent things or substances. And a mind-independent thing is something whose existence is not dependent on thinking/perceiving things, and thus would exist whether or not any thinking things (minds) existed. Berkeley holds that there are no such mind-independent things, that, in the famous phrase, esse est percipi (aut percipere) — to be is to be perceived (or to perceive). [https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/berkeley/#3.2.1 ] 3.1.3 God's existence The last major item in Berkeley's ontology is God, himself a spirit, but an infinite one. Berkeley believes that once he has established idealism, he has a novel and convincing argument for God's existence as the cause of our sensory ideas. He argues by elimination: What could cause my sensory ideas? Candidate causes, supposing that Berkeley has already established that matter doesn't exist, are (1) other ideas, (2) myself, or (3) some other spirit. Berkeley eliminates the first option with the following argument (PHK 25): (1) Ideas are manifestly passive—no power or activity is perceived in them. (2) But because of the mind-dependent status of ideas, they cannot have any characteristics which they are not perceived to have. Therefore, (3) Ideas are passive, that is, they possess no causal power. It should be noted that premise (2) is rather strong; Phillip Cummins (1990) identifies it as Berkeley's "manifest qualities thesis" and argues that it commits Berkeley to the view that ideas are radically and completely dependent on perceivers in the way that sensations of pleasure and pain are typically taken to be. The second option is eliminated with the observation that although I clearly can cause some ideas at will (e.g. ideas of imagination), sensory ideas are involuntary; they present themselves whether I wish to perceive them or not and I cannot control their content. The hidden assumption here is that any causing the mind does must be done by willing and such willing must be accessible to consciousness. Berkeley is hardly alone in presupposing this model of the mental; Descartes, for example, makes a similar set of assumptions. This leaves us, then, with the third option: my sensory ideas must be caused by some other spirit. Berkeley thinks that when we consider the stunning complexity and systematicity of our sensory ideas, we must conclude that the spirit in question is wise and benevolent beyond measure, that, in short, he is God. 3.2.2 Hidden structures and internal mechanisms The related notions of regularity and of the laws of nature are central to the workability of Berkeley's idealism. They allow him to respond to the following objection, put forward in PHK 60: … Berkeley's answer, for which he is indebted to Malebranche, is that, although God could make a watch run (that is, produce in us ideas of a watch running) without the watch having any internal mechanism (that is, without it being the case that, were we to open the watch, we would have ideas of an internal mechanism), he cannot do so if he is to act in accordance with the laws of nature, which he has established for our benefit, to make the world regular and predictable. Thus, whenever we have ideas of a working watch, we will find that if we open it, we will see (have ideas of) an appropriate internal mechanism. Likewise, when we have ideas of a living tulip, we will find that if we pull it apart, we will observe the usual internal structure of such plants, with the same transport tissues, reproductive parts, etc. [Downing, Lisa, "George Berkeley", The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Fall 2021 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.), URL = https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/fall2021/entries/berkeley/.] Therefore, in Berkeley's world, it appears external to our minds and functions exactly as science describes it. The only addition to this is that Berkely presupposes that the underlying reality is that despite how things appear and seem to work, the world is merely an idea created and sustained within the mind of God, including our mental existence. Solipsism is a variant of those two choices. Solipsism could be a variant of Choice 2a. It could be the case that you are the only immaterial being, aka the solipsist is God, and you imagine everyone and everything else—hence this is just a version of choice #2. Or: you realize that a mind does not exist outside of a body, and thus though you might be the only mind that you are immediately aware of, you have a physical body thus in either some form of Choice #1a—a variation of Plato's Cave allegory and there is a physical shared world or Choice #1b: you are in a coma/asleep, and you are currently dreaming, and when you wake up you will find ourselves in a shared physical world, and that is just a version of choice #1. Conclusions: It is noteworthy that as a child, we only first experience and consider the world according to choice #1. All those other choices only come to us later in life if we are taught them directly and completely and thereby convinced that the idea is true, or we are taught to doubt the reality of choice #1, and we derive and invent one of those other choices on our own. If you believe in Choice 1a or 1b or 2 or 2a, there is nothing I can say that will completely and utterly convince you that your idea of the nature of reality is false. You can even dismiss my noteworthy statement that you had to be taught to doubt the original premise of choice #1. Nor if you believe in choice 1a or 1b or 2 or 2a could you possibly convince me that choice #1 is false. Hence we are at one of James's pragmatic impasses. According to James's Pragmatism, an idea has to make a difference; if it doesn't, it can be ignored. James explained it this way: The pragmatic method is primarily a method of settling metaphysical disputes that otherwise might be interminable. …The pragmatic method in such cases is to try to interpret each notion by tracing its respective practical consequences. What difference would it practically make to anyone if this notion rather than that notion were true? If no practical difference can be traced, then the alternatives mean practically the same thing, and all dispute is idle.[1] It is astonishing to see how many philosophical disputes collapse into insignificance the moment you subject them to this simple test of tracing a concrete consequence. There can be no difference anywhere that doesn't make a difference elsewhere—no difference in abstract truth that doesn't express itself in a difference in concrete fact and in some consequent upon that fact, imposed on somebody, somehow, somewhere and somewhen. The whole function of philosophy ought to be to find out what definite difference it will make to you and me, at definite instants of our life, if this world-formula or that world-formula be the true one.[2] Therefore, to restate the point, in the end, it doesn't matter which is the 'True' underlying nature of reality amongst those choices since in all of them, we experience reality as if there is a shared physical world that we inhabit with other physical beings. Solipsism is irrelevant as it is merely a variant of Idealism or the Plato Cave/Matrix. There is no difference in how the world functions and how we can discover and describe how the world functions between Berkeley's Idealism, the Plato Cave/Matrix, and the acceptance that the world is made up of matter and energy. In each of these, we still can use the tools of science to attempt to describe accurately how things work, and it does indeed succeed in that process. Therefore, we need not concern ourselves with the only real challenge to accepting that the world is material and external to our mind that Berkely offers since the idea that everything exists in God's mind makes no difference to scientific exploration and explanation of the universe's workings. [1] (W. James, Pragmatism: A New Name for Some Old Ways of Thinking 1907, 28) [2] (W. James, Pragmatism: A New Name for Some Old Ways of Thinking 1907, 30) The current radical and backward-looking majority of the Supreme Court has today legislated slavery and Christian theology by its overturning of Roe v. Wade.
This foolish and backward majority has upheld the dangerous doctrine of ‘Originalist’ interpretation of the Constitution. Originalist doctrine of US Constitutional law: “In the context of United States law, originalism is a concept regarding the interpretation of the Constitution that asserts that all statements in the constitution must be interpreted based on the original understanding ‘at the time it was adopted’. “ Now what that backward doctrine does is allow the bias and prejudice of the past to become the law of the land. It is not surprising that this radical majority of the Supreme Court has overturned Roe v. Wade. It is important to recognize that according to the ‘Originalist’ dogma White real estate property owning males could in fact own human slaves. Women of course at the time of the found of this country were the property of their fathers who could pass over that property ownership to the women’s husband. Thus, it is no surprise that this is the fundamental intention of this radical white Supreme Court majority. It has allowed once again slavery to return to the law of the land. It has also institute Christian theology as the law of the land when it overturned Roe v. Wade. According to Christian theology any soul not baptized in the name of its cruel and dictatorial god would be condemn to eternal damnation. That is why abortion is an issue for Christianity. It invented this barbaric nonsense of eternal damnation, and it condemns anyone to those invented Hell-fires who do not submit to the will and power of the Christian Church by failing to swear allegiance to that god by being baptized in the name of their vengeful and cruel god. Thus, the soul of any fetus those not allowed to be born will spend eternity in the fire pits of Christian Hell. That is the reason for Christianity’s opposition to abortion. Now, according to the belief that the Hebrew Bible is the word of God, it is clear what the status of an unborn fetus is. Let me explain. Exodus 21:18-19: (18) When [two] parties quarrel and one strikes the other with stone or fist, and the victim does not die but has to take to bed. (19) if that victim then gets up and walks outdoors upon a staff, the assailant shall go unpunished—except for paying for the idleness and the cure. Exodus 21: 32: But if the ox gores a slave, male or female, [its owner] shall pay thirty shekels of silver to the master, and the ox shall be stoned. Note the basic principle. The penalty for harm to property is monetary compensation. Harm done but not death to the slave, it is just monetary compensation. Now notice Exodus 21:22: When [two or more] parties fight, and one of them pushes a pregnant woman and a miscarriage results, but no other damage ensues, the one responsible* shall be fined according as the woman’s husband may exact, the payment to be based on reckoning. The lose of the fetus is a lose of the husband’s property, thus monetary compensation is required. No harm was done to the husband’s property of his owned wife. But what happens when the husband’s property in his owned wife is harmed? Exodus 21: 23-25 (23) But if other damage ensues,[meaning the property of the human wife was harmed then] the penalty shall be life for life, (24) eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot, (25) burn for burn, wound for wound, bruise for bruise. The woman is a human life owned by her husband. If she is damaged then it is not monetary restitution but equal treatment to the offender. Death to the one who killed the husband’s property of his wife. The word of God as written in Exodus is clear that God has decreed that an unborn fetus is only the property of the husband, and it is not to be treated as a human life. The wife is considered a human life, just as any other slave is considered a human life, and it must be respected as such. The radical and cruel White Christian majority Supreme Court justices have return women to the status of property and have decreed that Christian theology should be the law of the land. That is what you get when you elect presidents and congressmen who adhere to the Christian Sharia-like theology and law of the so-called ‘Originalist’ interpretation of the U.S. Constitutional law. Perhaps, it is time to take a new tact.
Society only has limited hospital resources and perhaps those resources are being misapplied to the wrong patients. Perhaps we need to treat adults who have refused to be vaccinated against Covid the same way people who have signed a Do Not Resuscitate document. Treat them as if they have stated that they wish to be allowed to die. Resources, such as hospital beds and doctor and nurse care is limited. Perhaps the priorities need to shift to those who need them and truly want them. In the choice between treating a broken arm or a person who has Covid because they have never had any vaccination, the broken arm victim should get the treatment. The non-vaccinated adult has already agreed by theirs actions to die. Hospital resources are being wasted on treating all who come down with Covid as if they were equal. They are not. Those who have done something to protect themselves by getting vaccinated deserve attention and care, those who have not chosen to be vaccinated have chosen to die. We should just let them die. That is their choice and they should bare the responsibility for that choice. All efforts have been made to make the vaccines available to them and they have chosen the equivalent of a "Do Not Resuscitate" order. They have refused care and treatment and we should respect their wishes and allow them to die. Spend limited hospital resources on those who need and want our help. |
Gary Jaron's musings.
In my High School Art Department someone had made an ornate sign on hung it on the wall that read: 'Ignore this sign completely.' A paradox couched in sarcasm and irony. This blog is for random musings on anything and everything that comes into my head. Archives
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