http://www.starshipsofa.com/forum/ The Audio Science Fiction Magazine en-US Thu, 29 Jul 2010 15:51:52 +0000 http://bbpress.org/?v=1.0.2 q http://www.starshipsofa.com/forum/search.php http://www.starshipsofa.com/forum/topic.php?id=1343#post-12981 Thu, 29 Jul 2010 14:30:12 +0000 Gonzalo 12981@http://www.starshipsofa.com/forum/ <p>One (more) vote for SSS is now in the can... </p> http://www.starshipsofa.com/forum/topic.php?id=1452#post-12980 Thu, 29 Jul 2010 14:26:12 +0000 JLeuze 12980@http://www.starshipsofa.com/forum/ <p>Just fired up this episode and was excited to see the three hour runtime, just what I need after a long week. Many thanks to Tony and all who pitched in on this behemoth! </p> http://www.starshipsofa.com/forum/topic.php?id=1452#post-12979 Wed, 28 Jul 2010 14:55:21 +0000 Tony 12979@http://www.starshipsofa.com/forum/ <p><img src="http://i75.photobucket.com/albums/i289/lightfoot-art/SSSAD146cover500.jpg"></p> <p>Coming Up This Week 01:55</p> <p>Flash Fiction: Seven Songs of Trilobite Survival by <a href="http://www.craigdelancey.com">Craig DeLancey</a> 07:30</p> <p>Fact Article: Science News by <a href="http://www.uvulaaudio.com/">J.J. Campanella</a> 14:40</p> <p>Interview: <a href="http://www.langjones.com/">Langdon Jones</a> 36:40</p> <p>Main Fiction: To Have and To Hold by <a href="http://www.langjones.com/">Langdon Jones</a> 48:25</p> <p>Book Promo: <a href="http://www.amyhsturgis.com/">Amy H. Sturgis</a> 02:40:00</p> <p>Fact Article: Film Talk by <a href="http://pitofrod.blogspot.com/">Rod Barnett</a> 02:41</p> <p>Closing Remarks: by Tony C. Smith 02:48:00</p> <p>Narrator: <a href="http://www.obliviongizmo.com/">Neal Corbett</a>, Tom MacGregor</p> <p>Cover Art: <a href="www.benwootten.com">Ben Wootten</a> + <a href="http://benwootten.deviantart.com/">http://benwootten.deviantart.com/</a></p> <p>Discount Code for Captain's Logs: <a href="http://www.starshipsofa.com/captains-logs/">BEACHREAD305</a> August 15, 2010 </p> http://www.starshipsofa.com/forum/topic.php?id=1450#post-12978 Tue, 27 Jul 2010 23:00:12 +0000 sungura 12978@http://www.starshipsofa.com/forum/ <p>Our family loves "They're Made Out of Meat- The Space Opera." We quote parts to one another (slap and flap meat?) since we can't come up with our own witty comments. We just borrow others'. I got my copy at Amazon but don't begrudge the lower cuts of meat their opportunity to get it for free! Enjoy. </p> http://www.starshipsofa.com/forum/topic.php?id=1443#post-12977 Tue, 27 Jul 2010 19:39:35 +0000 Fredosphere 12977@http://www.starshipsofa.com/forum/ <p>I kinda regret making a tangential comment about outré opera productions in my overlong piece on Graphic Novels, but for those few of you actually interested in the topic (all one of you! Hi, Diane!) here's <a href="http://www.therestisnoise.com/2010/07/eek-another-bayreuth-opening.html">a funky image from the latest production of a opera at the Bayreuth Festspielhaus</a>, the shrine built for the performance of Wagner operas. See what I mean? (And how has the cosmos responded to this crime against art and public decency? Zzzzzzz.) Connoisseurs, enjoy!</p> <p>Update: more linky goodness, including <a href="http://intermezzo.typepad.com/intermezzo/2010/07/let-there-be-swans-and-a-few-rats-first-pictures-of-new-bayreuth-lohengrin.html">rats</a> and <a href="http://www.therestisnoise.com/2010/07/here-we-go-again.html">rotting rabbits</a>. Kill Da Wabbit, indeed!</p> <p>[url=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wGhQ2BDt4VE&amp;feature=related][/url] </p> http://www.starshipsofa.com/forum/topic.php?id=1426&page=3#post-12976 Tue, 27 Jul 2010 18:59:46 +0000 alllie 12976@http://www.starshipsofa.com/forum/ <blockquote><p><cite>Fredosphere <a href="http://www.starshipsofa.com/forum/topic.php?id=1426&amp;page=3#post-12974">said</a>:</cite><br /> Allie, did you really like <em>Looking Backward</em>? I seem to recall it having absolutely no conflict. Just a lot of wonderfully enlightened people from the future explaining to the knuckle-dragging dude from the present how wonderfully enlightened they were. Coulda used some Morlocks lurking on the fringes to add a little <em>frisson</em> IMHO.</p> </blockquote> <p>True, there was no conflict in <em>Looking Backward</em>, except when Julian West goes back to his own time and tries to convince people to change. And that turns out to be a dream/nightmare. The book is just about someone from the past being shown around the (Utopian) future, but you know that's a popular trope, lots of books and movies have used it. Despite that I found the writing so wonderful, the analysis of the times when it was written (1887) so sharp, that I really enjoyed it. It was the second or third best selling book of the 19th Century and spawned a political movement so it was very popular. A lot of things we take for granted these days were originated or, at least, popularized by <em>Looking Backward</em>. </p> http://www.starshipsofa.com/forum/topic.php?id=1447#post-12975 Tue, 27 Jul 2010 18:32:02 +0000 Fredosphere 12975@http://www.starshipsofa.com/forum/ <p>I'm running a Book Club for my family this summer. Each member of the family gets to put books on each other's reading list. I decided to put Heinlein's <em>Space Cadet</em> on my son's list. (He's eleven.)</p> <p>That had to be one of the very first SF novels I ever read. The scene at the end, where the cadets fly home in the rediscovered, patched-together "ancient" space craft that had been lost for decades (centuries, maybe?) and had become a kind of legend among the spacemen, still gives me chills to this day. Cheesy, I admit, but still: chills. Heinlein really knew how to write a page-turner for juveniles. </p> http://www.starshipsofa.com/forum/topic.php?id=1426&page=3#post-12974 Tue, 27 Jul 2010 18:23:43 +0000 Fredosphere 12974@http://www.starshipsofa.com/forum/ <p>Allie, did you really like <em>Looking Backward</em>? I seem to recall it having absolutely no conflict. Just a lot of wonderfully enlightened people from the future explaining to the knuckle-dragging dude from the present how wonderfully enlightened they were. Coulda used some Morlocks lurking on the fringes to add a little <em>frisson</em> IMHO. </p> http://www.starshipsofa.com/forum/topic.php?id=1450#post-12973 Tue, 27 Jul 2010 18:18:11 +0000 Fredosphere 12973@http://www.starshipsofa.com/forum/ <p>. . .and I should add, I'm flattered you guys are making such heroic--or at least, semi-heroic--efforts to listen to my music. </p> http://www.starshipsofa.com/forum/topic.php?id=1450#post-12972 Tue, 27 Jul 2010 18:16:58 +0000 Fredosphere 12972@http://www.starshipsofa.com/forum/ <p>Robert, I don't want to start giving away the song and thereby piss off those who spent their time &amp; money getting the music from a commercial source, but. . .if there's really no reasonable way for you to buy it, send me a PM via this forum and I'll be very happy to send you a complimentary copy. Just donate to your local chapter of the SPCM (Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Meat) in lieu of a payment.</p> <p>(This offer goes to anyone else in a similar situation. And by the way, it's fair to treat as unreasonable buying a subscription to a music service for the purpose of getting just one song.) </p> http://www.starshipsofa.com/forum/topic.php?id=1450#post-12971 Tue, 27 Jul 2010 04:19:29 +0000 grant_stone 12971@http://www.starshipsofa.com/forum/ <p>I'm in New Zealand and got my copy from emusic.com. I far prefer emusic to iTunes, but it's a subscription based service, so it might not help if you only want the meat. </p> http://www.starshipsofa.com/forum/topic.php?id=1451#post-12970 Tue, 27 Jul 2010 04:07:09 +0000 Church 12970@http://www.starshipsofa.com/forum/ <p>Yeah, just saw this. I'd long heard about the satellite rebroadcasting thing, but never realized he had pretty much come up with GPS as well. </p> http://www.starshipsofa.com/forum/topic.php?id=1451#post-12969 Tue, 27 Jul 2010 03:06:57 +0000 alllie 12969@http://www.starshipsofa.com/forum/ <p><a href="http://www.boingboing.net/2010/07/26/arthur-c-clarke-pred.html" rel="nofollow">http://www.boingboing.net/2010/07/26/arthur-c-clarke-pred.html</a> </p> http://www.starshipsofa.com/forum/topic.php?id=1426&page=3#post-12968 Tue, 27 Jul 2010 01:11:25 +0000 alllie 12968@http://www.starshipsofa.com/forum/ <p>Just read Tanith Lee's <em>Disturbed By Her Song</em>, a collection of contemporary short stories she wrote as Esther Garber and Judas Garbah. They are stories of love and lust, all same sex. Not speculative fiction and little of the wonderful imagery she can weave, but still very good, especially the stories <em>Death and the Maiden</em> and <em>Disturbed By Her Song</em>. </p> <p>On her website she seems proud of the five novels of "contemporary fiction" she has written, more proud than of her speculative fiction. That kind of hurts my heart that she has fallen for the English major's conceit of valuing straight fiction more than speculative fiction, especially since she has written some of the best speculative fiction ever. </p> <p>There's an elaborate hardcover version of her <em>Night's Master</em> now available. Had to have it. Glad to see it in a more durable format than paperback. </p> <p>But still my best wishes to her since her <a href="http://www.tanithlee.com/">website</a> reveals she is fighting cancer. :(( </p> http://www.starshipsofa.com/forum/topic.php?id=1447#post-12967 Mon, 26 Jul 2010 23:49:50 +0000 Judy__ 12967@http://www.starshipsofa.com/forum/ <p>I read just about anything when young... we had a small town library and no bookstore so there wasn't a lot to choose from. The first thing in sci-fi that kept me looking for the genre was "Star Beast" by Heinlein [female heroine] and the Null-A novels by A. E. Van Vogt. The latter because of being based on Korzybski's "General Semantics" and "Science and Sanity" which was my early challenge to understand. That and anything I could get by Bertrand Russell. </p> http://www.starshipsofa.com/forum/topic.php?id=1447#post-12966 Mon, 26 Jul 2010 18:38:23 +0000 Darren 12966@http://www.starshipsofa.com/forum/ <p>For me it was films and TV coupled with the space program. Watching old footage (I'm too young to have seen it live) of men walking on another world (the moon) and seeing rockets blast off to Star Wars, buck Rogers and the tripods. It was all enough to set a young imagination into orbit. </p> http://www.starshipsofa.com/forum/topic.php?id=1447#post-12965 Mon, 26 Jul 2010 15:58:07 +0000 gav 12965@http://www.starshipsofa.com/forum/ <p>I remember watching shows such as Hitchhikers, Star Trek and Blakes 7 when I was a lad, but the book I most remember getting me into SF was Foundations Edge. After that I went out and read everything by Asimov and it took off from there.<br /> I have to say though that I don't just read SF. Some of the best books I've ever read are O'Brian's Master and Commander books. And I also read a lot of non-fiction. </p> http://www.starshipsofa.com/forum/topic.php?id=1443#post-12964 Mon, 26 Jul 2010 15:54:23 +0000 Talia 12964@http://www.starshipsofa.com/forum/ <p>RE: the story - interesting re-imagining of 'Icarus.' &lt;img src=&quot;http://www.starshipsofa.com/forum/my-plugins/bb-smilies/default/icon_smile.gif&quot; title=&quot;:)&quot; class=&quot;bb_smilies&quot; /&gt; </p> http://www.starshipsofa.com/forum/topic.php?id=1450#post-12963 Mon, 26 Jul 2010 14:22:48 +0000 robertmarkbram 12963@http://www.starshipsofa.com/forum/ <p>Hi All,</p> <p>I watched and loved They're Made Out of Meat (<a href="http://www.starshipsofa.com/forum/topic.php?id=1156#post-10511" rel="nofollow">http://www.starshipsofa.com/forum/topic.php?id=1156#post-10511</a>) and very much want to hear the performance version by humans squirting air through their meat.. but Amazon won't sell MP3's to Australia. &lt;img src=&quot;http://www.starshipsofa.com/forum/my-plugins/bb-smilies/default/icon_sad.gif&quot; title=&quot;:(&quot; class=&quot;bb_smilies&quot; /&gt; </p> <p>Do any other meat beings reading this know how I can buy it?</p> <p>Yours, meatily.</p> <p>Rob<br /> &lt;img src=&quot;http://www.starshipsofa.com/forum/my-plugins/bb-smilies/default/icon_smile.gif&quot; title=&quot;:)&quot; class=&quot;bb_smilies&quot; /&gt; </p> http://www.starshipsofa.com/forum/topic.php?id=1449#post-12962 Mon, 26 Jul 2010 08:28:28 +0000 umbrellapod 12962@http://www.starshipsofa.com/forum/ <p>In case anyone is curious: <a href="http://www.empsfm.org/education/index.asp?articleID=995" rel="nofollow">http://www.empsfm.org/education/index.asp?articleID=995</a> </p> http://www.starshipsofa.com/forum/topic.php?id=1447#post-12961 Mon, 26 Jul 2010 08:13:48 +0000 umbrellapod 12961@http://www.starshipsofa.com/forum/ <p>I can't remember my first sci-fi book, at some point I switched from books about unicorns to ones about aliens. I was pretty entrenched in sci-fi by the time I reached my teens. Notably, my high school offered an english course that was all sci-fi. Imagine an entire quarter reading only sci-fi, talking about it and writing it. We even designed a space mission, including the ship, destination, world and creatures. We presented it as though we were reporting back from a successful mission. It was truly fabulous. In college (the first and second time around) I expanded my horizons into things like feminist poetry, regional literature (read WAY too much Ivan Doig and Richard Hugo), the beat authors and blah blah blah. Science fiction is just so much more intresting and lets face it- open minded. Now if I'm not reading sci-fi, it's professional journals. In retrospect I think I had some pretty amazing sci-fi experiences in my youth. Also in adulthood- I had the good fortune to meet Samuel R Delany at MisCon a few years ago. </p> http://www.starshipsofa.com/forum/topic.php?id=1426&page=3#post-12960 Mon, 26 Jul 2010 00:38:32 +0000 the english assassin 12960@http://www.starshipsofa.com/forum/ <blockquote><p><cite>umbrellapod <a href="http://www.starshipsofa.com/forum/topic.php?id=1426&amp;page=3#post-12958">said</a>:</cite> English Assasin you sound bitter. I can relate, there is nothing worse than feeling used/suckered which is how bad books with tired ideas make me feel. May your next book be both gripping and fascinating!</p></blockquote> <p>Disappointed and puzzled more than bitter... if it was a longer book and took up more of my life, then bitter I might be...</p> <p>Anyway, I'm going to start the 4th vol of collected stories of Clark Ashton Smith now that I've been saving for a while and I'm dipping into Everybody Talks About the Weather... We Don't: the writings of Ulrike Meinhof </p> http://www.starshipsofa.com/forum/topic.php?id=1447#post-12959 Mon, 26 Jul 2010 00:06:49 +0000 ius66 12959@http://www.starshipsofa.com/forum/ <p>I think Ami inadvertently helped me with my question in a comment on goodreads. Must have been a Lucky Starr... &lt;img src=&quot;http://www.starshipsofa.com/forum/my-plugins/bb-smilies/default/icon_smile.gif&quot; title=&quot;:)&quot; class=&quot;bb_smilies&quot; /&gt; </p> http://www.starshipsofa.com/forum/topic.php?id=1426&page=3#post-12958 Mon, 26 Jul 2010 00:01:33 +0000 umbrellapod 12958@http://www.starshipsofa.com/forum/ <p>English Assasin you sound bitter. I can relate, there is nothing worse than feeling used/suckered which is how bad books with tired ideas make me feel. May your next book be both gripping and fascinating! </p> http://www.starshipsofa.com/forum/topic.php?id=1426&page=3#post-12957 Sun, 25 Jul 2010 23:19:46 +0000 the english assassin 12957@http://www.starshipsofa.com/forum/ <p>Oh dear... I just finished <em>Cold Skin</em> by someone or other Pinol... simple yet engaging premise, man stuck on Antarctic island fighting sea creatures... all very Lovecraft meets WH Hodgeson... but there's a big difference... they provide a cosmic backdrop and this has a turgid human-centric one... indeed it degenerates into a anthologistic understanding the natives/humanising the other storyline... a sort of sub-Le Guin's The Word for the World is Forest... or a slightly less patronising Avatar... a valiant enough message I suppose, but using the alien as a metaphor for racism/colonialism is frankly a hideous SF cliche today and should be consigned to Star Trek and the 1960s. I could probably have forgiven it if Pinol had the skill of Le Guin, but he doesn't and importantly: this is genre horror not SF, horror should keep the other alien - horror is inherently xenophobic... not that this is particularly politically correct, there's a sex-slave fantasy element to this story that manages to derail its nobler aims completely... another problem... it piles on the monsters/horror too soon - by 100 pages in the horror had burned out and without any conceptual horror to back it up... all fairly vacuous I'm afraid. There's also some war metaphor running through it... which possibly could have been the most interesting part of it, but frankly it just runs out of steam... also, the attempt at gothic horror writing is an OTT pastiche... poor, very poor! How has this book, this poor genre book been translated into so many languages and received so much praise by major literary figures of today? Yan Martel and David Mitchell both seem to love it according to the blurb on the back... Well, Yan at least shares the publisher... I smell nepotism! Authors are forever playing this game of praising each others novels and frankly it should stop. </p> http://www.starshipsofa.com/forum/topic.php?id=1448#post-12956 Sun, 25 Jul 2010 21:28:08 +0000 alllie 12956@http://www.starshipsofa.com/forum/ <p><a href="http://www.boingboing.net/2010/07/22/ted-chiang-interview.html" rel="nofollow">http://www.boingboing.net/2010/07/22/ted-chiang-interview.html</a> </p> http://www.starshipsofa.com/forum/topic.php?id=1447#post-12955 Sun, 25 Jul 2010 13:57:38 +0000 Robyn Bradshaw 12955@http://www.starshipsofa.com/forum/ <p>I am told I was watching Star Trek, Space 1999 and The Starlost (!!!) back in 1976 when my little 2 year old hands were not strong enough to turn the TV's power/volume knob (!!!) by myself. Naturally, once I learned to read it was all downhill from there. I had to diversify for a while in university . . . happily a more well-rounded background in literature only increases my appreciation of science fiction. </p> http://www.starshipsofa.com/forum/topic.php?id=1447#post-12954 Sun, 25 Jul 2010 12:18:45 +0000 alllie 12954@http://www.starshipsofa.com/forum/ <blockquote><p><cite>ius66 <a href="http://www.starshipsofa.com/forum/topic.php?id=1447#post-12953">said</a>:</cite><br /> What hooked you? </p></blockquote> <p>Like a lot of scifi fans I started out reading everything then everything but scifi (and science) paled. </p> http://www.starshipsofa.com/forum/topic.php?id=1447#post-12953 Sun, 25 Jul 2010 09:37:49 +0000 ius66 12953@http://www.starshipsofa.com/forum/ <p>Someone (my girlfriend) recently asked me how "I got mired in scifi". Regardless of any slights  possibly intended, it got me wondering. My early reads were - as presently - rather random. I read what was at hand that looked interesting. Everything by Capt. W E Johns or Georges Remi. Anything by Jules Verne. If i ran across Enid Blyton or Lucy Maud Montgomery, that worked too. Tv brought me Flash Gordon, Startrek and Space 1999, but I can't for the life of me remember what my first scifi book was called.</p> <p>It was about a trip to Mercury. The intrepid hero had chemical showers (water being scarse) and toted a raygun, lucky, since he ran into well camouflaged cave dwelling Mecurians with tentacles sucking heat from anything nearby. It's unclear just why this strategy had evolved. He successfully evaded these fearsome creatures by setting his trusty raygun to low heat and throwing it into the cave leading the tentacly things to abandon it for him. There may have been a heroine saved, though this is vague.</p> <p>Anyone in this illustrious forum know the name of the book?</p> <p>What hooked you? </p> http://www.starshipsofa.com/forum/topic.php?id=1426&page=3#post-12952 Sat, 24 Jul 2010 19:22:55 +0000 alllie 12952@http://www.starshipsofa.com/forum/ <p>Just read <em>Red Star</em> (1908) and <em>Engineer Menni</em> (1913) by Alexander Bogdanov (1873-1928). Bogdanov was an early communist and <em>Red Star</em> is supposed to be the first Bolshevik Utopian novel. </p> <p>Do you know what communism is? Cause I don’t. I’ve tried to read Marx’s <em>Das Capital</em> but I’ve never gotten more than a 2 or 3 pages in. I think of it as the CIA translation, because it’s absolutely impenetrable. I suspect <em>Red Star</em> is also a CIA translation (1984). While socialist Utopian fictions in English, like Edward Bellamy’s <em>Looking Backward</em> and Jack London’s <em>The Iron Heel</em>, are well written and convincing, Bogdanov’s books are cold and unconvincing. There is nothing appealing in the Utopia in these translations though maybe it would have seemed attractive to Bogdanov in those years. <em>Red Star</em> was written after the failed revolution of 1905 when “the authorities struck out with vengeful fury to punish the insurgents…Martial law, drumhead trials and shootings, brutal punitive expeditions, and murderous repression of urban uprisings crushed the radical wing of the revolution and drowned it in blood.”</p> <p>Leonid, a scientist-revolutionary, is recruited to travel to Mars to learn and experience their socialist system and to teach them of his own world. The descriptions of this socialist Mars are not particularly appealing, except maybe in comparison with what was happening in Russia at the time. Or maybe this is a deliberate failure of the translation. </p> <p>Leonid has a nervous breakdown. During his recovery he discovers the Martian council is considering colonization of Earth and the extermination of humanity. The people of Mars are facing famine within 30 years. They are running out of resources and will soon be faced with famine, infanticide or colonizing Earth or Venus. Earth is much more hospitable than Venus but the Martians know humanity would fight them. The colonization of Earth is voted down by the council and Leonid finds the leader who had proposed it, and murders him. </p> <p>He is sent back to earth. </p> <p>Not really an appealing scenario. Not much hope in it. Bogdanov recognizes that even socialism will not solve the problems of overpopulation and scarcity. </p> <p>The most interesting point that Bogdanov warns of is “in those instances where socialism prevails and triumphs, its character will be perverted deeply and for a long time to come by years of encirclement, unavoidable terror and militarism, and the barbarian patriotism that is the inevitable consequence.” That is pretty much what happened to the Soviet Union. </p> <p>Bogdanov also wrote <em>Engineer Menni</em> about the Martian engineer responsible for the canals of Mars. The canals allowed the settlement and cultivation of many previously desert areas. I think it was a better book than <em>Red Star</em>, though also a depressing one, as Menni is persecuted and framed by capitalist forces that want to use this global project as a way to steal billions. Menni, honest and ambitious only to see his project finished, is eventually destroyed by them, though many of them are destroyed in return and the canals are built. It’s all very human despite the Martian setting. Also not a hopeful scenario. </p> <p>Still, both were interesting just from an historical POV. </p> http://www.starshipsofa.com/forum/topic.php?id=1426&page=2#post-12949 Fri, 23 Jul 2010 23:23:07 +0000 the english assassin 12949@http://www.starshipsofa.com/forum/ <p>Just finished <em>Dark Matter</em>... utterly brilliant... conceptual crime fiction... very Ted Chiang, with a detective that somehow reminded my of a Vonnegut character, although not as absurd or funny... On the recommendation of a friend I've now moved on to Albert Sanchez Pinol's <em>Cold Skin</em>, which so far (only 30 odd pages into it) reminds me of Lovecraft and, even more so, William Hope Hodgson... a little over-written perhaps, but then that fits the genre nicely... so far: a man stuck on an Antartic island is under siege by strange tentacled monster-men... too early to tell, but I'm hopeful! </p> http://www.starshipsofa.com/forum/topic.php?id=1443#post-12948 Fri, 23 Jul 2010 20:28:39 +0000 AdamGurri 12948@http://www.starshipsofa.com/forum/ <p>Awesome work getting the interview with Bradbury! Though he just sort of sounded like a cranky old man, hahaha. </p> http://www.starshipsofa.com/forum/topic.php?id=1445#post-12947 Fri, 23 Jul 2010 03:38:32 +0000 umbrellapod 12947@http://www.starshipsofa.com/forum/ <p>Curses!!! I live an entire continent and an ocean away. I would so be there!! </p> http://www.starshipsofa.com/forum/topic.php?id=1443#post-12946 Thu, 22 Jul 2010 21:24:15 +0000 alllie 12946@http://www.starshipsofa.com/forum/ <blockquote><p><cite>Fredosphere <a href="http://www.starshipsofa.com/forum/topic.php?id=1443#post-12943">said</a>:</cite><br /> Great question, and thanks for asking it. You've reminded me of something I should have mentioned: a semi-famous <a href="http://mises.org/books/trts/">graphic rendering</a> of one of the seminal documents of libertarianism: <em>The Road to Serfdom</em> by Friedrich Hayek. The cartoon is not very persuasive; because it is so abbreviated, it comes off as glib. It's also anachronistic, being aimed at the style of totalitarianism in fashion 80-90 years ago. Nevertheless, some of the pictures are pretty funny. My favorite is when the man in uniform breaks golf clubs over his knee.</p> <p>Again, I offer this stuff as a historical curiosity, with the realization that many will find it annoying, or worse. Do with it what you will.</p> </blockquote> <p>Interesting. Also it is true that wars lead to more oppression and the end of war rarely ends the oppression war was used to justify. The progenitor of the CIA, the OSS began in WWII, and with the end of war it was supposed to end. But it didn't. </p> <p>The Iraq War was used as an excuse to spy on the American people and this week's <a href="http://projects.washingtonpost.com/top-secret-america/articles/a-hidden-world-growing-beyond-control/">article in the Washington Post</a> revealed there are over 854k people now hired to spy and having top secret clearance. That doesn't even count those with "secret" clearances. Too many to trace. There are five groups in my little city to spy on us, 3 governmental and 2 contractors, and I can't imagine there's a single terrorist here. Here's <a href="http://projects.washingtonpost.com/top-secret-america/map/">the map</a> so you can look up your own city. </p> http://www.starshipsofa.com/forum/topic.php?id=1443#post-12945 Thu, 22 Jul 2010 20:58:12 +0000 alllie 12945@http://www.starshipsofa.com/forum/ <p>Let me echo everyone in their appreciation of the video but I just listened to it on a pair of headphones I'd repaired (cat chewed on them) and I though the music was especially lovely through the headphones. </p>