StarShipSofa: Science Fiction Audio Podcast

Hints of science fiction themes and sensibilities show up in the oddest places, if you look hard enough for them.  Take a moment to one of my favorite poems, by James Elroy Flecker:

I who am dead a thousand years,
And wrote this sweet archaic song,
Send you my words for messengers
The way I shall not pass along.

I care not if you bridge the seas,
Or ride secure in the cruel sky,
Or build consummate palaces
Of metal or of masonry.

But have you wine and music still,
And statues and a bright-eyed love,
And foolish thoughts of good and ill,
And prayers to them who sit above?

How shall we conquer? Like a wind
That falls at eve our fancies blow,
And old Maeonides the blind
Said it three thousand years ago,

O friend unseen, unborn, unknown,
Student of our sweet English tongue,
Read out my words at night, alone:
I was a poet, I was young.

Since I can never see your face,
And never shake you by the hand,
I send my soul through time and space
To greet you. You will understand.

The constant in Fukuyama's analysis was that human nature remains constant. My favorite short definition of conservatism was offered by Boston University Professor Glenn Loury, who seems to be wondering whether he's still a conservative. He said that the essence of conservatism was that human nature has no history.

If we can really alter human nature, than the constant of The End of History equation has suddenly become a variable.  I think he's probably right.  History is on the move again. (Remember how the always prescient original Star Trek predicted that the Third World War would be between genetically engineered supermen and the rabble?)

Since I cannot decrypt your code,
Or comprehend the width of your band:
Through time and space I send my node
To ping you.  You will understand.