THE MT VOID
Mt. Holz Science Fiction Society
02/20/09 -- Vol. 27, No. 34, Whole Number 1533
El Honcho Grande: Mark Leeper, mleeper@optonline.net
La Honcha Bonita: Evelyn Leeper, eleeper@optonline.net
All material copyright by author unless otherwise noted.
All comments sent will be assumed authorized for inclusion
unless otherwise noted.
To subscribe, send mail to mtvoid-subscribe@yahoogroups.com
To unsubscribe, send mail to mtvoid-unsubscribe@yahoogroups.com
Topics:
Science Fiction Discussion Groups
Special Charles Darwin Issue of THE LANCET
Ganging Agley (comments by Mark R. Leeper)
This Country Is In Trouble (comments by Mark R. Leeper)
Polarization and the Rage of the Middle Class
(comments by Mark R. Leeper)
Thrift (comments by Evelyn C. Leeper)
THE READER (film review by Mark R. Leeper)
Mice (letter of comment by Tim McDaniel)
Issue Numbers, Godlogic, OFCS Awards, Stealing More Than
the Company, THE DECAPITATED CHICKEN, and
Sherlock Holmes (letter of comment by John Purcell)
This Week's Reading (STARSHIP TROOPERS) (book comments
by Evelyn C. Leeper)
==================================================================
TOPIC: Science Fiction Discussion Groups
February 26: THE ENEMY STARS by Poul Anderson, Old Bridge (NJ)
Public Library, 7PM
March 12: PLANET OF THE APES by Pierre Boulle, Middletown (NJ)
Public Library, original film at 5:30PM, discussion of
film and book after film
==================================================================
TOPIC: Special Charles Darwin Issue of THE LANCET
Charlie Harris points out that THE LANCET has a special issue
celebrating Darwin's 200th birthday. THE LANCET says, "'Darwin's
Gift' celebrates the bicentennial of Charles Darwin's birth, and
the 150th anniversary of the publication of the most important work
of non-fiction in history: ON THE ORIGIN OF SPECIES. You'll find
essays about Darwin's life and work, and the enduring legacy of his
remarkable theory of evolution. These were Darwin's gifts to all
of us; on the occasion of these anniversaries, this book is our
gift to you.
http://mag.digitalpc.co.uk/fvx/lancet/darwinsgifts/
SCIENCE NEWS also has an issue celebrating the same thing.
http://tinyurl.com/scinews-darwin
==================================================================
TOPIC: Ganging Agley (comments by Mark R. Leeper)
They were going to be pushing a restaurant near me that would
feature Asian fusion cooking. Sadly the plans broke down over
insufficient lead shielding to make it safe for the customers.
But I tell you when you get that sort of heat those dumplings get
crispy. [-mrl]
==================================================================
TOPIC: This Country Is In Trouble (comments by Mark R. Leeper)
I saw a page on the Amazon site with the title "24-Month Financing
on Select Samsung HDTVs from Amazon.com." Now I like movies a lot.
And I would like to have a really good TV. But are there really
people in this country who are stupid enough to finance a loan and
go into debt and pay interest just to buy a nicer TV? [-mrl]
==================================================================
TOPIC: Polarization and the Rage of the Middle Class (comments by
Mark R. Leeper)
I am discussing politics with a friend who leans to the right
politically while I lean to the left. He sent me an editorial by
Charles Krauthammer criticizing what he considers to be unnecessary
and unhelpful spending in the proposed stimulus package. My friend
advocates tax cutting to stimulate the economy rather than the
Keynesian approach of government spending that Barack Obama is
trying. I wanted to share the discussion.
The Krauthammer editorial: http://tinyurl.com/urgent-pork
My friend had asked me only one or two days into the Obama
administration whether I still support what he is doing. I said I
wanted to see what happens after he has been in a little longer.
Then when Krauthammer published his editorial my friend came back
and asked again. The truth is I do not know enough economics to
agree or disagree with his policies even after has been in for two
weeks.
I guess I support Barack Obama at least for now, but I am not going
to defend Obama every step along the way, particularly when it
comes to his economic theory. In economics you don't know what
policies will work; you don't know if your policies are working;
and later you don't know if your policy worked or not. If
economics is a science it is a darn murky one. If you implement an
economic policy for the country there will at every turn be people
who are second-guessing you and you don't know if they know what
they are talking about or not.
But the Republicans are finding things they do not like in the
stimulus bill and turning them into T-shirt slogans and witty
comments on late-night AM radio. This technique of finding an
issue that can be used to arouse the public, regardless of whether
it is a valid issue or not, playing on public prejudice and hitting
on it again and again was pioneered by political advisor Lee
Atwater who specialized in dirty, below-the-belt tactics.
Sadly, it looks like we are past the point in history when the two
parties can cooperate on alleviating a common threat, even when
that threat is so obvious. The Lee Atwater School of attack
politics has taken over. It looks like it is going to be partisan
politics all the way to the end. The Oliphant cartoon is
appropriate:
http://picayune.uclick.com/comics/po/2009/po090205.gif
I don't know if the cure is government spending or if it is tax
cuts. And there are advocates of both sides, many with selfish
motives. We have had eight years of tax cuts, mostly
disproportionately handed to the wealthy. One of the big
financiers (was it George Soros?) pointed out that he legally paid
less in taxes than his secretary did. The economy did not improve
over those eight years of tax cuts and advantages to the very
wealthy. In fact, it got incredibly worse. The current financial
crisis is the result. Meanwhile the inequity in income between the
super-wealthy and those not so wealthy yawned ever wider.
See: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB119215822413557069.html
Even if more tax cuts to the wealthy would have suddenly kicked in
and started improving things, there is no way the public would
allow it. Hatred of the wealthy is right now as high as I have
ever seen it in this country and is getting to be a strong force.
It will be interesting to see where it will lead. The middle
class needed to have visions that its members would slowly climb up
the economic ladder and prosper. Now they have been kicked back
down that ladder for the benefit of the wealthy. The middle class
is facing debt, unemployment rising at half a million per month--
increasing to nearly 600,000 in January--and a legion of other
financial problems, while those at the top of the ladder actually
profit from the bailouts. The Bush administration gave a lot to
the wealthy, but took away one small thing the wealthy desperately
need. The one thing that George W. Bush cost the wealthy was the
security of having a contented middle class.
Most people I talk to these days blame the Republican
administration and their policies of deregulation without the
policing necessary to make sure the banks and Wall Street were not
cheating. The Republicans need to win back the trust of the middle
class. And the Democrats need that trust also, but if there is a
bright side for them, it is that the policies that caused the
problems happened when the Republicans had the power and
responsibility to regulate and were refusing to do so.
Even prior to the public's awareness of the financial crisis Obama
made a promise to find the best people for his cabinet regardless
of party affiliation. Obama chose staunch Republican applicant
Judd Gregg for Commerce Secretary. But to the Republican press
this seemed too much like collaboration with the enemy. Gregg
withdrew his application. Now Fox News Forum is asking "What was
Judd Gregg Thinking?" to apply in the first place. Probably what
he was thinking it was better to cooperate across party lines on a
fix for the economic emergency than to jockey for which party has
the best position in the rubble.
The Republicans need right now to show they are the party
predominantly of cooperation, not indignant and unconditional
obstruction as the Democrats try to clean up the mess the
Republicans left. Right now what the people want to hear is that
all that can be done is being done for the economy and that there
is some progress. What the public does not want to hear is a lot
of backbiting and attack criticism of the repairs from the people
who championed deregulation and the interests of the wealthy in the
first place. I don't think that the Republicans going back into
attack mode at this time is going to be a strategy that works for
them. The Lee Atwater playbook may recommend that strategy, but it
is not a good idea. Sure, the middle class might just let the
politicians battle it out and go back to sleep, but facts like
losing half a million jobs a month (and increasing) are more likely
to keep them awake nights and days.
I promise next week to get back to a more fun topic. [-mrl]
==================================================================
TOPIC: Thrift (comments by Evelyn C. Leeper)
I just read an article which talked about how the economic downturn
was affecting one family, and it said, "The Smiths weren't
unusually lavish spenders, but they rarely stopped to think before
spending money: new computers at Christmas, new videogames for the
kids' birthdays, a new car at the first sign of trouble from the
old one. If the money in the checking account wasn't enough to
cover it, well, that's what credit cards were for. They accumulated
more than $25,000 in credit-card debt." My response was that that
sounded pretty lavish to me, even given their (pre-downturn) income
of $180,000 a year.
This got me to thinking about how I grew up. I always thought of
us as middle class, but I suspect we may actually have been lower
middle class. We were a military family, and so I suspect I was
comparing us to the other military families rather than a broader
cross-section of society.
But there was one great economic advantage to being a military
family: you did not live beyond your means. First of all, anyone
who got into heavy consumer debt would find themselves in trouble
with the military, but more importantly, you were never trying to
convince anyone you were better off than you actually were.
Everyone knew everyone else's salary. If you were a sergeant,
everyone knew what you made, and there was no point in living a
colonel's lifestyle to try to convince people you were making more.
In some ways you couldn't--base housing was assigned by rank, so if
you lived on base, you got housing based on your rank and family
size. And if you tried to, you would certainly have been found
yourself criticized for it.
One can argue, of course, that this is basically a class system of
the sort we Americans disapprove of, but this is really true of any
industry. Is the janitor in a Ford Motors plant really the
economic equal of Ford's CEO? It may be that the military is just
more up-front about it.
A side effect of this is my attitude toward thrift shops. In the
military, every base had a thrift shop. This was not a charity
venture, but a consignment shop where you could sell items you no
longer needed or wanted. Children's clothing was a big part of it,
but also housewares, adult clothing, and other items. Because
everyone moved every couple of years, people had a tendency not to
accumulate as much stuff. (And because one could not keep moving
into larger and larger houses, this put a limit on things as well.)
Families being sent overseas in particular tended to sell off most
of their household items. And maybe because it was a consignment
shop, no one felt they were accepting charity by shopping there.
Indeed, you were making it possible for other people to make money
on their unwanted items.
Out in the real world, on the other hand, people seem to have spent
a lot of time trying to "keep up with the Joneses," even though Mr.
Jones was making more money, because then Mr. Jones would think
*they* were making more money. In this mode, spending more money
for something (rather than less) was what people wanted. No one
bragged about the great deal they got on their new car--it was more
like, "Oh, it cost me a fortune, but I feel it's worth it."
And I got a double dose of thrift--not only were we a military
family, but my parents lived through the Great Depression. It's a
wonder I spend any money at all. [-ecl]
==================================================================
TOPIC: THE READER (film review by Mark R. Leeper)
CAPSULE: In the 1950s a German teenager has an affair with an older
woman. Later, when the woman is on trial for wartime crimes, her
former lover realizes that she has a secret shame than runs deeper
than that of the crimes of which she is accused. Revealing the
secret would lessen her punishment. This is a powerful drama
touching on German guilt and responsibility, but also about a
humiliation is greater still and shapes a woman's life. Kate
Winslet reveals herself to be a much more versatile actress than we
could have suspected before. Stephen Daldry directs a screenplay
by David Hare based on the book by Bernhard Schlink. Rating: +2
(-4 to +4) or 7/10
(It is impossible to discuss this film without revealing an
important plot twist. There are minor spoilers throughout and a
spoiler paragraph after the main review.)
The story is told mostly in flashback as a lawyer Michael Berg
(played by Ralph Fiennes) thinks about his life. In the late 1950s
a teenage Michael (David Kross) becomes very ill and takes refuge
by the door of what turns out to be a tram conductor, Hanna Schmitz
(Kate Winslet). She shows him some kindness and he becomes
obsessed with her. The relationship blooms into passion,
explicitly portrayed. But she chooses a peculiar sort of foreplay.
She wants her lover to read aloud to her. Having people read to
her becomes an obsession. The desire for readers goes the very
core of who she is. Eight years later Michael's path crosses
Hanna's again. Hanna is on trial for her crimes as an SS guard at
Auschwitz and elsewhere. Michael will make a deduction that casts
all of Hanna's strange behavior in a new light. Michael may be the
main character, but the viewer's eye throughout is on Hanna. In
spite of the leads being played by two good actors, Michael is a
character we have seen before and who in the first two of the three
sections of this film is more acted upon than he is acting. The
film seems intended to be about Michael and a moral decision that
he is forced to make. But Hanna pulls our attention so strongly
that what should be the central moral issue is just demoted to a
plot turn. The film as it was made is now really about Hanna and
how she could be the person that she is. Her character cannot
elicit much sympathy from the audience, but she can come to be
understood.
Acting honors have to go to Kate Winslet. Even in a year in which
she is being touted for her acting in REVOLUTIONARY ROAD her
Academy Award nomination is for this film, and for once I agree
with the Academy voters. She not only has to convincingly play a
German woman (okay, she does it in English with a German accent),
but she has to play the woman as she ages over several decades and
is uniformly credible at each age. The film also has Bruno Ganz as
a law professor. Ganz may be the best actor that Germany has had
since it lost Peter Lorre and Conrad Veidt. Ralph Fiennes is
quietly professional as a man totally bottled up within himself.
He is completely believable, but his role is just not very
compelling. Perhaps the same can be said of David Kross playing
the same character at a younger age. Lina Olin is along in a
double role as mother and daughter involved in the trial.
One touch that we have not seen much before is the ferocity with
which the generation after the war turned against their parents'
generation. They see the Holocaust as a crime against their own
country and want to disassociate themselves violently from their
parents' actions. Films like ZENTROPA dramatize the undercurrent
of secret loyalty to the principles of the Third Reich after the
war. This film shows us that much of the next German generation
turned on an older Germans who could commit such brutal crimes.
At heart what makes the film powerful is Winslet in so strong a
performance and so totally different from anything she has done in
the past. I rate THE READER a +2 on the -4 to +4 scale or 7/10.
SPOILER WARNING:
Somehow there is an uneasy feeling about the point of view of this
film. Much of the point of the film is that Hanna is treated
unjustly by the system of war crimes justice. And while we are
watching the film we feel for her. Because we have come to know
her we feel that she deserves a lighter punishment. But at the
same time she is getting a lenient punishment for her actual
actions. The implication is that if others get punishment that is
lighter than they deserve, she should also get a punishment that is
too light. At heart this film is about a case of sympathy for the
devil.
Film Credits: http://us.imdb.com/title/tt0976051/
What others are saying:
http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/10009498-reader/
[-mrl]
==================================================================
TOPIC: Mice (letter of comment by Tim McDaniel)
In response to Mark's comments on mice in the 01/16/09 issue of the
MT VOID, Tim McDaniel's response in the 01/23/09 issue, and further
letters in the 01/30/09 issue, Tim writes again:
"Digestive gases expand enough to kill sheep ...": but a ruminant's
first stomach works by fermenting its contents, generating a lot of
gas. "... and that is just gas": (LZ Hindenburg snark omitted.)
Gas generation can cause a lot of pressure without much mass input,
so "just gas" is an unfair dismissal.
Quibbling aside, "bloat" seems to be the veterinary term. Per
http://www.thepetcenter.com/sur/bloat.html, dogs can get bloat
and are not ruminants. Bloat is usually due to "recently eaten a
meal of dry dog food and then exercises", often with lots of
drinking water and fermentable grain, but it can't be reproduced in
the laboratory.
So I retract my original comment. Perhaps mice could be killed by
feeding them dried potato flakes. But given the strong chance that
they'll instead just nibble or burp, it doesn't seem practical.
[-tmd]
==================================================================
TOPIC: Issue Numbers, Godlogic, OFCS Awards, Stealing More Than the
Company, THE DECAPITATED CHICKEN, and Sherlock Holmes (letter of
comment by John Purcell)
In response to the 02/13/09 issue of the MT VOID, John Purcell
writes:
So onward you two go, steadily producing your weekly
zine/newsletter in a quiet, unassuming way while guys like Chris
Garcia trumpet their 200th issue from the highest mountains of
fandom. Oh, well. I am definitely glad you two keep MT Void
going, mainly because it contains timely commentary--which a weekly
e-zine can do, unlike Ye Olden Daze of print zines, especially
since 1st class mail is going up another 2-cents Real Soon Now--and
interesting book reviews. Thank you, Mark and Evelyn, for keeping
this pace up. I am always pleased to get the latest ish in my
e-mail inbox every week.
[The reference to Chris Garcia is in regard to his publishing his
two-hundredth issue of DRINK TANK. For details, see Mike Glyer's
write-up at http://file770.com/?tag=chris-garcia. -ecl]
That "Godlogic" item you led the latest ish off with is a great
example of an extended syllogism. The only thing missing in this
particular equation was the concluding statement "Therefore, Jesus
makes the seasons," thereby inferring that because of Jesus, there
is snow. Hang the scientific explanation for snowfall; this kind
of logic, though flawed when closely examined, does have a mindless
and easily acceptable appeal. In a way, this kind of thinking
helps the mass mind handle things they otherwise cannot explain nor
comprehend. But that's just me expounding from atop one of my
soapboxes again. I really should stop doing this...
Anyway, for some reason I am not surprised that fantasy films
dominated the OFCS listing you provided. When you look more
closely at the list, THE DARK KNIGHT captured four of these awards,
and WALL-E has three. Except for THE WRESTLER, I am unfamiliar
with the other films mentioned, but two movies definitely belonging
to the fantasy genre hold seven of those sixteen categories (44%).
That's kind of interesting. By the way, thanks for the link to the
OFCS. More fun reading for those willing to pursue matters deeper.
That "Stealing More than the Company" commentary is sobering, but
doesn't surprise me. It is maddening that our tax dollars aren't
really bailing out the economically strapped denizens of Wall
Street, but it is my contention that those people abused the system
to the point of its collapse. Face it, so long as things were
going along fine nobody cared. Once the fecal matter started
splattering against spinning fan blades, *then* people started to
care and scream for the heads of those responsible. In a sense, we
all are for what I just said. The problem of our economy is that
the "haves" are so spoiled--heck, America in general is exceedingly
spoiled, but that's another soapbox of mine, just a short hop to
the left of my mindless Christian masses soapbox--that they have
desired more and then acquired their desires, while we who "have
not" maintain our level of non or minimal material wealth and
seemingly have less of it. American society is becoming
increasingly polarized, and that to me is the major problem facing
this country. Somehow we need to convince the "haves" to start
sacrificing their exorbitant wealth, which is something not likely
to happen, in my humble opinion.
Feh. I gotta natter a bit about fun stuff, and that's where
Evelyn's review of THE DECAPITATED CHICKEN AND OTHER STORIES comes
in handy. These capsule story summaries sound interesting; lately
I've been branching farther afield in my reading, trying out
authors I haven't heard much about but who are getting good buzz
from friends and colleagues. I may have to browse the Texas A&M
Library online catalog for this book and other work by Horacio
Quiroga. Thank you, Evelyn, for piqueing my interest.
Not only that, but I have always enjoyed mysteries, especially the
Sherlock Holmes canon. Thus, Evelyn's closing book reviews tell me
to avoid these, even though the titles sound promising. A mystery-
western mixture has promise, but must be a devil to pull off well.
And that's a wrap. Take care of yourself, folks, and thank you
once again for the latest VOID. As usual, an enjoyable read.
[-jp]
Mark responds:
Ok, your first paragraph qualifies this mail for my "ego" mail
folder. Thank you.
It is odd that I am writing a justification for the statement that
"Jesus is the reason for the season." What kind of thing is that
for a Jewish kid like me to do? Well, my group at work would
distribute Christmas candy at a local children's cancer ward. I
was the closest person to the Santa Claus stature so multiple times
I was the Yiddishe Santa. Once I was Santa for a Cub Scout
celebration. This may not be as strange as it sounds. A site
called InterfaithFamily.com reports that of the twenty-five most
popular Christmas songs, more than half were written by Jews.
http://tinyurl.com/JewishChristmas
I will point out that some mail readers lost the indentations last
week that told which Online Film Critic Society films were fantasy
and which were not. So I will reprint:
Fantasy:
PICTURE: WALL-E
DIRECTOR: Christopher Nolan, THE DARK KNIGHT
SUPPORTING ACTOR: Heath Ledger, THE DARK KNIGHT
ORIGINAL SCREENPLAY: WALL-E, Andrew Stanton & Jim Reardon
ADAPTED SCREENPLAY: LET THE RIGHT ONE IN, John Ajvide Lindqvist
ANIMATED FEATURE: WALL-E
FOREIGN LANGUAGE FILM: LET THE RIGHT ONE IN (Sweden)
CINEMATOGRAPHY: THE DARK KNIGHT, Wally Pfister
ORIGINAL SCORE: THE DARK KNIGHT, James Newton Howard & Hans Zimmer
BREAKTHROUGH PERFORMANCE: Lina Leandersson, LET THE RIGHT ONE IN
BREAKTHROUGH FILMMAKER: Tomas Alfredson, LET THE RIGHT ONE IN
Non-fantasy:
ACTOR: Mickey Rourke, THE WRESTLER
ACTRESS: Michelle Williams, WENDY AND LUCY
SUPPORTING ACTRESS: Marisa Tomei, THE WRESTLER
DOCUMENTARY: MAN ON WIRE
EDITING: SLUMDOG MILLIONAIRE, Chris Dickens
I agree with you on the haves, so there is a big problem with the
wannabee haves who who buy non-essentials on credit. They just do
not look at what this debt is going to do to them down the road.
Evelyn and I have lived in the spirit of not borrowing for what we
cannot afford. In fact, I can honestly say that we have taken only
two loans that we had to pay interest on. One was the mortgage on
our house. The other was a credit card charge that did not get
paid on time because the mail department at Burroughs Corporation
(where we worked at the time) had mislaid a mailbag. We have never
financed a car, a vacation, or a bag of groceries.
Thanks a lot for the nice LOC. [-mrl]
==================================================================
TOPIC: This Week's Reading (book comments by Evelyn C. Leeper)
STARSHIP TROOPERS by Robert A. Heinlein (ISBN-13 978-0-441-78358-8,
ISBN-10 0-441-78358-9) was chosen for the science fiction
book-to-movie discussion group this month. The novel is known for
its didactic style, but I had forgotten just how awkward they are.
For example, on page 6, the sergeant says, "You're supposed to know
the plan. But some of you ain't got any minds to hypnotize so I'll
sketch it out." And then he does, even though the chances that the
military would keep non-hypnotizable people if hypnosis is how they
brief you for a mission is, well, zero.
[I don't know. I have heard rumors that training sergeants have a
lamentable tendency to forget themselves accidentally and stretch
the truth to be impolite to their men on occasion. It may be that
he was not being entirely sincere and in an unguarded moment had
inadvertently insulted some of his men whom he actually knew to
have minds. Couldn't this have been perhaps a spur of the moment
faux pas that he might later have regretted? Golly. -mrl]
On page 7 (and various times later, Heinlein makes a big deal of
how everyone fights--"the chaplain and the cook and the Old Man's
writer." That sounds great for morale, but terrible for
efficiency. Even if one has civilians doing most of the support
work (as seems to be the case later), having specially trained
personnel fight as ordinary infantry seems like a waste of the
specialized training.
[But in Heinlein's society you needed to actually take risks and
fight to get the rights of a citizen. Spending your entire
military service next to a dentist chair may not be considered
sufficient sacrifice to earn the right to vote. Perhaps it is not
the most efficient system, but I can see how it may be a necessity.
-mrl]
On page 143 is Heinlein's defense of the entire society he has set
up. Why is having the franchise given only to discharged veterans
the best way to structure a society? Well, the basic claim seems
to be "Under our system every voter and officeholder is a man who
has demonstrated through voluntary and difficult service that he
places the welfare of the group ahead of personal advantage." (Oh,
and "our system works quite well. Many complain, but none rebel;
personal freedom for all is [the] greatest in history, laws are
few, taxes are low, living standards are as high as productivity
permits, crime is at its lowest web." In other words, proof by
assertion--or perhaps by intimidation.)
[You are absolutely right. He is setting up a purely hypothetical
society and using it to expound his views. And you are right that
it is no more a valid device today than it was when Plato tried it.
-mrl]
Anyway, after having a few years of an "all-volunteer" army which
turns out to be filled based on economic conditions--people enlist
when they are poor and see the military as their only option--I
would contend that we do not have a lot of evidence to support
Heinlein's theory. Yes, his military weeds people out more
strongly, and he seems to imply that there is no economic pressure
to join, but I definitely would need more evidence before I thought
that Heinlein had something. Add to this Rico's thinking, "I
wished I were back in the drop room of the 'Rog', with not too many
chevrons and an after-chow bull session in full swing. There was a
lot to be said for the job of assistant section leader--when you
come right to it, it's a lot easier to die than it is to use your
head." Given that the majority of discharged veterans will be
enlisted personnel, not officers, the electorate will be mostly
people trained to follow orders rather than to "use their heads."
[Heinlein is probably overvaluing the importance of real
battlefield experience. -mrl]
On pages 153 through 156, Heinlein recounts events from the June
1813 battle between the Chesapeake and the Shannon: "... there were
four officers in the chain of command above [William Sitgreaves
Cox]. When the battle started his commanding officer was wounded.
The kid picked him up and carried him out of the line of fire. ...
But he did it without being ordered to leave his post. The other
officers all bought it while he was doing this and he was tried for
'deserting his post of duty as *commanding officer* in the presence
of the enemy. Convicted. Cashiered."
The problem with this is it is wrong. When Cox "deserted" his post
in this description, he was not the commanding officer. He became
the commanding officer during the time he was taking the wounded
man out of fire, and during that time he couldn't desert his post
because he was never at it. The true description seems to be,
however, that the other officers had already been hit *before* he
left his post, but that in the tumult of battle, he did not know
that.
Heinlein also said, "This boy's family tried for a century and a
half to get his conviction reversed. No luck, of course." This
really is wrong. They *did* get his conviction reversed--in 1952,
less than a century and a half later, and before Heinlein wrote
STARSHIP TROOPERS. Clearly Heinlein heard this story back in the
Naval Academy in the 1920s and it made quite an impression on him,
but he did not do any follow-up research before including it in the
novel in 1959.
And once again, I will note, this just emphasizes that what one
learns in the military is blind obedience to orders, and
regulations enforced to the letter--which may be fine for the
military, but don't strike me as what you want in your electorate.
For that matter, the recruiting sergeant in STARSHIP TROOPERS says,
"But if you *want* to serve and I can't talk you out of it, then we
have to take you, because that's your constitutional right. It
says that everybody, male or female, shall have his born right to
pay his service and assume full citizenship--but the facts are that
we are getting hard pushed to find things for all the volunteers to
do that aren't just glorified K.P." Given that, there are probably
lots of people who would sign up, knowing that they would never
qualify for anything risky.
[Every able-bodied person apparently gets a tour with some risk so
he earns the franchise. Apparently he may still spend most of the
rest of his time on glorified K.P. -mrl]
"If you came in here in a wheel chair and blind in both eyes and
were silly enough to insist on enrolling, they would find something
silly enough to match." But why silly? Heinlein seems to have
decided that really only able-bodied people should be allowed to
vote, and for disable people to want to is just silly.
And speaking of the right to vote, I've been reading the Federalist
and anti-Federalist papers recently, and ran across this where
James Madison recommends not "confining the right of suffrage to
freeholders, and to such as hold an equivalent property,
convertible of course into freeholds. The objection to this
regulation is obvious. It violates the vital principle of
Government that those who are to be bound by laws, ought to have a
voice in making them." [Madison's note number 2, 1820s]
Unless it was Madison's intention that women (or slaves) were not
to be bound by laws, this seems amazingly obtuse.
Having nit-picked the book STARSHIP TROOPERS, I will now proceed to
the movie. First, they dumbed down the lectures. Where the book
gives Carthage as an example where violence settled something, the
movie uses Hiroshima. But Carthage was completely destroyed (and
sown with salt to keep it that way), while Hiroshima was only
partially destroyed, and rather quickly rebuilt.
The screenwriter doesn't seem to know the difference between
arachnids and insects, using the terms interchangeably. I would
let him get away with "bugs" for both, but not the two other terms
as being the same.
[Why do you let them get away with "bugs" but not with confusing
arachnids and insects? If they are not in the group of Heteroptera
they are not bugs. -mrl]
In the movie, the recruits are constantly saying "Sir" to their
sergeants. One does not say "Sir" to a sergeant--if one does, one
is immediately told, "Don't call me sir--I work for a living!" One
says "Sir" only to officers.
[Might the military have changed? This is the future. -mrl]
Carmen does not shave her head in the movie. Then again, the ships
she is flying appear to have artificial gravity.
And can you really set off a nuclear bomb a few hundred feet away
and not suffer any ill effects? [-ecl]
[No. -mrl]
==================================================================
Mark Leeper
mleeper@optonline.net
Most men worry about their own bellies, and other
people's souls, when we all ought to be worried
abut our own souls, and other people's bellies.
-- Rabbi Israel Salanter
(1810-1883)