DShomshak

A New History of Life by Peter Ward and Joe Kirschvink. A good and as readable as possible (i get lost at times in the rapid-fire comparisons of geologic periods whose names I am unfamiliar with) up-to-date recap of what it says ... Includes a discussion of the origin of life and how we know what we do, and then the chemical and biological development of the Earth's near-surface. Changes in atmosphere composition, primarily oxygen but also CO2, are hugely important for the evolution of life throughout life's history, and that includes the single-celled domains and the macroscopic animals and plants of the last 600 million years.
 
If you are a top-down simulationist who toys with creation of sci-fi game worlds and intelligent races ... you really want to read this. Lots of grist for the mill here.
 
Oh, and the anthropogenic modifications of the atmosphere are not dwelt upon here but the are mentioned, and the ramifications are more terrifying than you are used to thinking even for the greatest pessimists.

As far as the false equivalency thing, I do think that is a fair statement, while also recognizing that it doesn't exonerate the Democratic party of its own flaws, I just do not see strong evidence that they are wholesale the same flaws outside of those areas where elected officials' decisions are hemmed in by the structure of the state, the military, or the current states of the global balance of power.
 
Other than the beginning of Obama's presidency, left leaning publications and figureheads of the left made public statements against his policies and approaches. A simple search will show many figureheads of the left criticizing the ACA as too little, his military choices as a betrayal of his election promises, and, most especially, his actions intended to give GOP legislators room at the table that they then repeatedly chose not to take as pointless. One can find scores of articles from the mainstream press of the left on every one of these topics, and from Daily Show to Real Time, almost all those shows routinely criticized the Dems and Obama for these policies and for their seeming ineffectual actions in electioneering.
 
The difference is, the left, as far as major news sources, had and have to compete with each other, and thus have no one monolithic message that can reliably be cited without ignoring countless articles disagreeing from others on the left with equally large followers.
 
The right, conversely, has one major cable news provider, that serving a party whose political strategies are not the same as the Dems. The GOP has, for years now, based most of its actions on winning elections over establishing long-term policies that are different than the Dems. Yes, especially in regards to trade and the use of the military, both are not particularly different, but this more often than not has ties to the fact that, when dealing with the rest of the world, there are not as many options as people like to believe. North Korea and the current situation is a perfect example.
 
I happen to know one of our country's foremost experts on that topic, especially as it relates to China. There is not an expert worth dealing with on the topic that now buys into the 'crazy Kim' propaganda in the way both sides present it. North Korea has repeatedly worked on development of nukes, followed by slowing that work in response to sanctions and aid following said sanctions. While the press and leaders have repeatedly used that as evidence to prove the 'crazy Kim' thesis, neither U.S. nor Chinese experts have considered it anything other than the actions of rational actors, even if we don't like those actions. The recent attempts to change how we deal with it have only shown how thoroughly planned out those actions were compared to new attempts to stop it by way of bombast.
 
This is not to say that the Kim's are or were admirable leaders, but that they established a long term goal, and have largely completed that goal against huge resistance by meticulously sticking with a plan for specific results geared toward ensuring sovereignty even against three major powers, two sharing borders. Treating it as anything else has proven to be a recipe that pits those powers more against each other than against North Korea. But, this is the result of elected and appointed leaders buying the propaganda we ourselves put forward to our voters, and having to act as though it were all as simple as that propaganda portrays it to be.
 
You'll note that the exact same 'crazy Kim' approach was seamlessly followed from the father to the son. This policy had its virtues, but the current administration has spent a lot of the capital those virtues gave.
 
For dems, this was less of an issue, being a bigger tent party these days, there is not as often one issue, aside from equality, that all dems seem to consider deal breakers, and so playing the realpolitik of the situation was an option. For the GOP, it's become a huge issue, because, focusing on election wins more than long-term policy wins, they had to increasingly play to populist issues, and so 'we need to deal with Kim' has lead into the realization that it was never as simple as it was portrayed to be.
 
Whereas many dem voters might support increased gun control, most elected officials on that side avoided pushing that at all, while the GOP has put big dollars behind pushing forward statewide laws that they knew would not stand the constitutional test, because it played to their base, and the ability to push those messages by way of one single major cable network and smaller news sources acting as an echo chamber and source for reading the pulse of populist messages meant that there was not competition at the top to counter such policies. The RINO label is almost exclusively applied to the remnants of the camp that Buckley would most recognize, people who actually recognize politicking a two party system as being way more complex than simply always supporting one's party.
 
It is the nature of the different structures of the two parties and the press serving their views that the dems and the left leaning press outlets will have less party unity, and that the GOP with one monolithic cable presence and a focus on election wins over anything else will lean towards similar iterations of the same populist messages. The idea that these different structures yield the same uniformity of message is an uphill claim against the structural reality in place. MSNBC, for instance, tends to be less centric than CNN, whereas FOX must put it's dollars more behind the most popular view in place in the GOP, and will have less programming dedicated to programs that focus on views that may be more valid, but less popular.
 
Quite literally, in the last thirty years, the Dems have not had the capacity to have one monolithic message, the GOP has increasingly moved toward purity tests(RINO) and similar messages, and these two are the results of the goals and structures of the two parties and the media associated with them.

Now, socialism. Warning: long and a bit dry, but let us see what the Dictionary of Political Thought has to say in defining socialism, without trying to argue whether it’s good or bad.
 
As a purely economic doctrine, I’ve been told that socialism simply means that the state exerts some control over the means of production and distribution. One should probably add: For conscious pursuit of social or political goals. After all, in Medieval Europe the feudal aristocracy controlled the principle means of production — land — but this was not for some conscious program of social engineering, so I don’t think it would be fair to call manorialism “socialist.”
 
Scruton notes that, as with so many political terms, “socialism” is a wide term. He sees two principle, though related meanings:
 
First, “In Marxian theory and official communist language… the means of production are taken into social ownership, and the state persists as an administrative machine, upholding a new order of legality, and a new system of rights, in such a way as to permit the emergence of true common ownership, and the eventual abolition of the state.” I.e., the state owns everything in the name of the workers and peasants, with the promise that it will eventually become superfluous and the workers and peasants will own and control everything themselves — but in common, not individually.
 
(Scruton wrote his dictionary in 1982. Leaving aside the morality of socialism as practiced by the USSR and others, we may say this “hard-core socialism” has not fared well in experimental trials.)
 
In a second meaning, socialism is a philosophical and political doctrine that includes “a broad and comprehensive outlook on the human condition.” It’s also conceived as permanent, rather than a transitional stage to some future utopia. This broader interpretation of socialism is based on three postulates:
 
1) Equality: Equal opportunity as well as equal rights under law, with an eye toward equalizing outcomes for individuals. “The main consideration is that human beings have equal rights, since they are equal in every way relevant to those rights.”
 
2) The state as administrator: “The state is seen, not as the legal and ceremonial representation of civil society, but rather as a complex administrative device, designed to guarantee individual rights, and to distribute benefits among the citizens in accordance with those rights.” It must “provide and maintain the institutions which ensure that human goods — food, medicine, education, recreation — are made available to everybody on terms hat are as equal as possible.” But the state is not an end in itself; and it should not be used to propagate “religious doctrine, or nationalist ideology.” It is a powerful tool, but just a tool.
 
3) Elimination of systems of control. Class systems, hereditary privileges, and other means by which people control and compel each other violate the principle of equal rights, and so are unjust.
 
Private property receives special mention: “Private property is permissible, but only insofar as it does not amount to a system of control.” While “Type 2 Socialists” reject the hard-core Marxian condemnation of all private property as a means of privilege and control, and may believe that private property is a legitimate expectation of citizens in a well-ordered society, socialists do think that vast concentrations of wealth and property can harm the interests of society and the citizens. “Hence, the state must always be ready to nationalize major assets, and should curtail or forbid the transactions that lead to large-scale private accumulation — such as gifts and inheritance.”
 
As Scruton notes, socialism has a long and natural affiliation with labor movements, “for the obvious reason that, while it promises very little and threatens much to the class of property owners, it promises much and threatens little, or seems to threaten little, to the workers.”
 
He also notes that under Western parliamentary government, socialism has shown it can be implemented pragmatically, democratically and with compromise, without attempting to impose any of the three underlying principles in pure form. Some even say “this ‘parliamentary road to socialism’ is in fact a creature so different from the socialism of the communist state as to be only misleadingly called by the same name.”
 
Criticisms of “Type 2 socialism” reject one or more of its postulates, or see contradictions between them. For instance, some people insist that 1) is wrong and all people are not and should not be equal under law.
 
Some thinkers argue that the state must be treated as an end in itself in order to obtain the loyalty of the people: As a pure service-provider “it comes to seem arbitary and dispensable, and therefore holds increasing power with increasing instability.”
 
Other critics see a conflict between 2) and 3), arguing that the all-pervading power of the state merely creates another self-interested élite. It is also argued that the ideal of “social justice” that runs through 1) and 3) is “incompatible with the assertion of natural rights and freedoms.”
 
I don’t see anything monstrous in this “type 2 socialism.” Arguable, either in theory or practice, but nothing outside the normal bounds of rational discourse. In fact, I accept postulate 1) without reservation; and I agree with postulate 2) with reservations (I see the state as a rational machine for achieving practical goals, but accept to achieve those goals it may need to pretend to some greater majesty. One may also question the implicit assumption that the state is the *only* institution to fulfill this distributive and administrative function). 3) seems to be where the practical difficulties seem greatest, though I appreciate the goal. It’s a bad joke to talk of “rights” and “freedom” to people who are externally constrained by poverty, racism, etc. from being able to exercise them.
 
So that's Scruton. I don't claim any special authority for his dictionary, but it's the one I found for cheap at Goodwill so it's the one I use.
 
Dean Shomshak

Now, socialism. Warning: long and a bit dry, but let us see what the Dictionary of Political Thought has to say in defining socialism, without trying to argue whether it’s good or bad.
 
As a purely economic doctrine, I’ve been told that socialism simply means that the state exerts some control over the means of production and distribution. One should probably add: For conscious pursuit of social or political goals. After all, in Medieval Europe the feudal aristocracy controlled the principle means of production — land — but this was not for some conscious program of social engineering, so I don’t think it would be fair to call manorialism “socialist.”
 
Scruton notes that, as with so many political terms, “socialism” is a wide term. He sees two principle, though related meanings:
 
First, “In Marxian theory and official communist language… the means of production are taken into social ownership, and the state persists as an administrative machine, upholding a new order of legality, and a new system of rights, in such a way as to permit the emergence of true common ownership, and the eventual abolition of the state.” I.e., the state owns everything in the name of the workers and peasants, with the promise that it will eventually become superfluous and the workers and peasants will own and control everything themselves — but in common, not individually.
 
(Scruton wrote his dictionary in 1982. Leaving aside the morality of socialism as practiced by the USSR and others, we may say this “hard-core socialism” has not fared well in experimental trials.)
 
In a second meaning, socialism is a philosophical and political doctrine that includes “a broad and comprehensive outlook on the human condition.” It’s also conceived as permanent, rather than a transitional stage to some future utopia. This broader interpretation of socialism is based on three postulates:
 
1) Equality: Equal opportunity as well as equal rights under law, with an eye toward equalizing outcomes for individuals. “The main consideration is that human beings have equal rights, since they are equal in every way relevant to those rights.”
 
2) The state as administrator: “The state is seen, not as the legal and ceremonial representation of civil society, but rather as a complex administrative device, designed to guarantee individual rights, and to distribute benefits among the citizens in accordance with those rights.” It must “provide and maintain the institutions which ensure that human goods — food, medicine, education, recreation — are made available to everybody on terms hat are as equal as possible.” But the state is not an end in itself; and it should not be used to propagate “religious doctrine, or nationalist ideology.” It is a powerful tool, but just a tool.
 
3) Elimination of systems of control. Class systems, hereditary privileges, and other means by which people control and compel each other violate the principle of equal rights, and so are unjust.
 
Private property receives special mention: “Private property is permissible, but only insofar as it does not amount to a system of control.” While “Type 2 Socialists” reject the hard-core Marxian condemnation of all private property as a means of privilege and control, and may believe that private property is a legitimate expectation of citizens in a well-ordered society, socialists do think that vast concentrations of wealth and property can harm the interests of society and the citizens. “Hence, the state must always be ready to nationalize major assets, and should curtail or forbid the transactions that lead to large-scale private accumulation — such as gifts and inheritance.”
 
As Scruton notes, socialism has a long and natural affiliation with labor movements, “for the obvious reason that, while it promises very little and threatens much to the class of property owners, it promises much and threatens little, or seems to threaten little, to the workers.”
 
He also notes that under Western parliamentary government, socialism has shown it can be implemented pragmatically, democratically and with compromise, without attempting to impose any of the three underlying principles in pure form. Some even say “this ‘parliamentary road to socialism’ is in fact a creature so different from the socialism of the communist state as to be only misleadingly called by the same name.”
 
Criticisms of “Type 2 socialism” reject one or more of its postulates, or see contradictions between them. For instance, some people insist that 1) is wrong and all people are not and should not be equal under law.
 
Some thinkers argue that the state must be treated as an end in itself in order to obtain the loyalty of the people: As a pure service-provider “it comes to seem arbitary and dispensable, and therefore holds increasing power with increasing instability.”
 
Other critics see a conflict between 2) and 3), arguing that the all-pervading power of the state merely creates another self-interested élite. It is also argued that the ideal of “social justice” that runs through 1) and 3) is “incompatible with the assertion of natural rights and freedoms.”
 
I don’t see anything monstrous in this “type 2 socialism.” Arguable, either in theory or practice, but nothing outside the normal bounds of rational discourse. In fact, I accept postulate 1) without reservation; and I agree with postulate 2) with reservations (I see the state as a rational machine for achieving practical goals, but accept to achieve those goals it may need to pretend to some greater majesty. One may also question the implicit assumption that the state is the *only* institution to fulfill this distributive and administrative function). 3) seems to be where the practical difficulties seem greatest, though I appreciate the goal. It’s a bad joke to talk of “rights” and “freedom” to people who are externally constrained by poverty, racism, etc. from being able to exercise them.
 
So that's Scruton. I don't claim any special authority for his dictionary, but it's the one I found for cheap at Goodwill so it's the one I use.
 
Dean Shomshak

Now, socialism. Warning: long and a bit dry, but let us see what the Dictionary of Political Thought has to say in defining socialism, without trying to argue whether it’s good or bad.
 
As a purely economic doctrine, I’ve been told that socialism simply means that the state exerts some control over the means of production and distribution. One should probably add: For conscious pursuit of social or political goals. After all, in Medieval Europe the feudal aristocracy controlled the principle means of production — land — but this was not for some conscious program of social engineering, so I don’t think it would be fair to call manorialism “socialist.”
 
Scruton notes that, as with so many political terms, “socialism” is a wide term. He sees two principle, though related meanings:
 
First, “In Marxian theory and official communist language… the means of production are taken into social ownership, and the state persists as an administrative machine, upholding a new order of legality, and a new system of rights, in such a way as to permit the emergence of true common ownership, and the eventual abolition of the state.” I.e., the state owns everything in the name of the workers and peasants, with the promise that it will eventually become superfluous and the workers and peasants will own and control everything themselves — but in common, not individually.
 
(Scruton wrote his dictionary in 1982. Leaving aside the morality of socialism as practiced by the USSR and others, we may say this “hard-core socialism” has not fared well in experimental trials.)
 
In a second meaning, socialism is a philosophical and political doctrine that includes “a broad and comprehensive outlook on the human condition.” It’s also conceived as permanent, rather than a transitional stage to some future utopia. This broader interpretation of socialism is based on three postulates:
 
1) Equality: Equal opportunity as well as equal rights under law, with an eye toward equalizing outcomes for individuals. “The main consideration is that human beings have equal rights, since they are equal in every way relevant to those rights.”
 
2) The state as administrator: “The state is seen, not as the legal and ceremonial representation of civil society, but rather as a complex administrative device, designed to guarantee individual rights, and to distribute benefits among the citizens in accordance with those rights.” It must “provide and maintain the institutions which ensure that human goods — food, medicine, education, recreation — are made available to everybody on terms hat are as equal as possible.” But the state is not an end in itself; and it should not be used to propagate “religious doctrine, or nationalist ideology.” It is a powerful tool, but just a tool.
 
3) Elimination of systems of control. Class systems, hereditary privileges, and other means by which people control and compel each other violate the principle of equal rights, and so are unjust.
 
Private property receives special mention: “Private property is permissible, but only insofar as it does not amount to a system of control.” While “Type 2 Socialists” reject the hard-core Marxian condemnation of all private property as a means of privilege and control, and may believe that private property is a legitimate expectation of citizens in a well-ordered society, socialists do think that vast concentrations of wealth and property can harm the interests of society and the citizens. “Hence, the state must always be ready to nationalize major assets, and should curtail or forbid the transactions that lead to large-scale private accumulation — such as gifts and inheritance.”
 
As Scruton notes, socialism has a long and natural affiliation with labor movements, “for the obvious reason that, while it promises very little and threatens much to the class of property owners, it promises much and threatens little, or seems to threaten little, to the workers.”
 
He also notes that under Western parliamentary government, socialism has shown it can be implemented pragmatically, democratically and with compromise, without attempting to impose any of the three underlying principles in pure form. Some even say “this ‘parliamentary road to socialism’ is in fact a creature so different from the socialism of the communist state as to be only misleadingly called by the same name.”
 
Criticisms of “Type 2 socialism” reject one or more of its postulates, or see contradictions between them. For instance, some people insist that 1) is wrong and all people are not and should not be equal under law.
 
Some thinkers argue that the state must be treated as an end in itself in order to obtain the loyalty of the people: As a pure service-provider “it comes to seem arbitary and dispensable, and therefore holds increasing power with increasing instability.”
 
Other critics see a conflict between 2) and 3), arguing that the all-pervading power of the state merely creates another self-interested élite. It is also argued that the ideal of “social justice” that runs through 1) and 3) is “incompatible with the assertion of natural rights and freedoms.”
 
I don’t see anything monstrous in this “type 2 socialism.” Arguable, either in theory or practice, but nothing outside the normal bounds of rational discourse. In fact, I accept postulate 1) without reservation; and I agree with postulate 2) with reservations (I see the state as a rational machine for achieving practical goals, but accept to achieve those goals it may need to pretend to some greater majesty. One may also question the implicit assumption that the state is the *only* institution to fulfill this distributive and administrative function). 3) seems to be where the practical difficulties seem greatest, though I appreciate the goal. It’s a bad joke to talk of “rights” and “freedom” to people who are externally constrained by poverty, racism, etc. from being able to exercise them.
 
So that's Scruton. I don't claim any special authority for his dictionary, but it's the one I found for cheap at Goodwill so it's the one I use.
 
Dean Shomshak

Looked up "Rights" in Scruton's A Dictionary of Political Thought. (Topic is a bit late, but whatever.)
 
Scruton concludes that nobody has adequately defined "Rights," so it's probably a primary concept -- one you use to define other things, but impossible to define itself without going circular.
 
He does mention, however, that legal philosophers list it among fundamental "jural relations." I didn't understand the entry for that, but the key word, I think, is "relations." A right cannot exist without other people. If you are alone on a desert island, you have no rights in any meaningful sense because there is no one else to respect them or infringe them.
 
So no, you do not have the right to believe what you want in the privacy of your own head. Until that belief is expressed or acted upon or in some way leads to interaction with other people, "right" is an irrelevant term.
 
"Natural rights" is even slipperier. These are rights that any reasonable person must concede in order for a society to exist. Like, the right to life: If anyone can be killed by anyone else at any time, you won't have a functioning society. Property is another: The bounds of personal property, family property or community property can vary from culture to culture, but everyone grants the basic truth that some stuff is yours, or your groups, and other people can legitimately use it only with your permission. But how do you define a reasonable person?
 
Next, unless I am asked to refrain: What is socialism, really?
 
Dean Shomshak

So I was reading Scruton's A Dictionary of Political Thought to brush up on the actual meanings of some of the Big Emotive Words that have been mentioned recently -- rights, socialism, that sort -- and found something else that seemed insightful.
 
Sentimentalism is an attitude in which objects, concepts or other entities are valued for the opportunities they give to feel and express "heroic, dignified or tender emotions." To use Scruton's example about love, the true lover thinks, "X deserves my love." The sentimental lover thinks, "I am admirable for loving X."
 
Or I would add: "See how admirable I am for how much I love X."
 
Sentimentalism is fundamentally self-regarding, or with an eye on an audience.
 
What does this have to do with politics?
 
For one, politicians use sentimental emotion a lot to motivate/bamboozle their audience. Associate oneself with things people feel abloiged to express approval for, inn hopes the approval rubs off on you. If anyone is so crass to point out the phoniness of your flag-waving, baby-kissing display, you can accuse them of hating the flag and babies.
 
Scruton also notes other sentimental emotions with strong political aspects. Conservatives often make a show of sentimental grief at how their country has fallen from ancient virtues and holy tradition. Sentimental anger is also common -- a deliberate search for injustices, real of imagined, so mone can feel righteously outraged by them. And, I'd add again, to show one's righteousness to others.
 
A good deal of modern politics and culture wars seem driven by sentimental anger. On the Right, you have the War On Christmas and similar frauds, in which conservative Christians are invited to search the world for any sign of loss of cultural and political dominance. On the Left, you have campus obsessions with absurdly tiny microagressions and trigger warnings for every conceivable circumstance that might hypothetically, upset someone. (My "favorite" is the students who wanted trigger warnings on The Great Gatsby, on grounds that students from less affluent backgrounds might feel humiliated and traumatized by its descriptions of rich people. Not that they were traumatized, but, you know, someone might be.) But it's easy to condemn The Great Gatsby than to do something about actual poverty, or to wax wroth about not being able to put a manger scene in the town square than to address the closing of factories. It's all posturing for the crowd.
 
Dean Shomshak

One of the PCs from my Planetary Romance campaign was, I supposed you'd call her, a geisha-assassin. She carried an electronic musical keyboard. Since music was part of her schtick, I thought I should come up with some background about the music of the planet Sard. I tied it in with the planet's pre-human inhabitants, the Monopods. -- DS
 
THE MUSICAL MONOPODS
 
It’s common knowledge that the Monopods were highly musical. Their languages were all tonal: Words changed their meanings depending on changes of pitch. Every time capsule contained lots of Monopod musical scores, and archeologists are quite sure the abstract, contrapuntal music held far greater meaning for Monopods than humans can perceive. The Monopods’ visual art also seems to incorporate musical concepts such as harmonic ratios, syncopation, counterpoint and polyrhythm.
 
Most of the time capsules held copies of a musical collection dubbed the Great Canon. A canon is an instrumental version of a round, like “Row, row, row your boat.” Different voices might play at different pitches or tempos, or the principal theme might be played backwards or inverted so low notes become high and high notes become low. The fugue is a looser form of canon.
 
Fugues and canons were the Monopods’ favorite musical form. As J. S. Bach showed, however, this extremely formal and mathematical form can also be a vehicle for intense and profound emotion. Bach’s supreme explorations of the form, The Art of the Fugue and The Musical Offering, had less than two dozen fugues each and none for more than six voices (the most achieved by any human composer). The Great Canon consists of 64 fugues, including one written for eight voices, a feat no human has equaled. Even more remarkably, the Great Canon shows the Monopods had emotions much like humans (which cannot be said for every alien race). Some sections of the Great Canon leave humans cold: They seem to portray emotional states humans don’t understand. Most parts, however, portray feelings humans can appreciate.
 
The Great Canon seems to be a musical exposition of Monopod life and history. Some of the fugues use a single theme, which remains the same throughout the entire sequence. Fugues with four or more voices add secondary themes.
 
The first eight fugues portray the rise of Monopod civilization. The first canon is entirely for percussion: “Bang the rocks together, guys.” It begins unsteadily, but ends as a confident, three-voice canon with rhythmic tricks that trip up careless players. The next six range from harsh, brutal evocations of war to a courtly dance. The eighth is a musical evocation of a factory assembly line, commemorating the start of industrial technology.
 
Canons nine through 55 vary widely. Some evoke particular emotions. Others seem to be pure exercises in musical structure, though even the most abstract are pleasant enough to hear. The 56th is the high point of the Great Canon, a majestic, eight-voice fugue that evokes the triumph of a great civilization that thinks it can last forever.
 
The last eight fugues portray the Monopods’ doom. The 57th canon takes the grand theme of the 56th and opposes it with a softly ominous theme that grows to overpower it — the approaching death-throes of Omicron(2) Eridani’s companion star. The succeeding fugues evoke the Monopods’ shock, struggle to save themselves, and rage at their failure. The 62nd canon is one of the grimmest musical portrayals of grief and despair known to humanity, while the 63rd is a pitiless funeral march. Tryka’s teachers told her stories of master musicians who used these fugues to drive enemies to suicide.
 
The final canon, however, is a lullaby of infinite gentleness. “Go to sleep,” it seems to say, “You’ve had a long day and it’s time to rest.” Though written for only two voices and melodically spare, some musicians say mastering the Sixty-Fourth is literally the work of a lifetime.
 
Tryka, of course, is completely familiar with the Great Canon and she can play most of them on her keyboard. (Fugues with four or more voices require multiple players, or a pipe organ or other instrument where the musician uses both hands and feet.) She learned the melody of the Sixty-Fourth when she was nine; when she was 16, she became a good enough musician to understand why her teachers said she can only master the Sixty-Fourth when she’s an old woman and has buried people she loved. Most audiences, however, do not ask for the last eight fugues in the Great Canon. Performances of the entire sequence take more than six hours and are understandably rare.
 
Musicologists argue whether the Great Canon had one author or several. The style seems too unified for a collection of works by separate composers, but how could anyone be such a genius as to write all 64? Some musicologists point out, though, that the Monopods placed far less emphasis on the solitary artist than humans have in the last several centuries. Very few Monopod books or works of art have their authors named. These scholars say it’s quite possible that Monopod artists were actually committees whose members merged their individual talents into a collective genius. A few scholars even speculate about psionic gestalt-minds and other exotic possibilities. The truth may never be known: The Monopods couldn’t fit everything about themselves into their time-capsule vaults, and some facts they simply took for granted and didn’t bother explaining — but of course, the Monopods had no experience with aliens. They didn’t know that when dealing with other intelligences, nothing is obvious.

Easy comparison here as a way to show that there is no equivalence between the two sides (and why attempting to draw one is offensive in the extreme):

ISIS shares a large amount of similarity with Neo-Nazis.  Both claim to religious justification for hate and terrorist actions. Both seek the elimination or subjugation of entire races and/or religions. The main difference between the two is the color of the skin of their members.  Neo-Nazis are credited with more terrorist attacks on American soil than ISIS and are more of a concern for DHS and the FBI.
 
Now...picture an ISIS march in NC.  ISIS members and supporters marching armed and calling for jihad on all non-Muslims.  Feel free to add some ISIS sympathizers (but not active ISIS members) in with the group.  They're not armed and they're not really into the whole jihad thing, but they think that ISIS makes some good points and want to show their support by marching with them.  Continue the formation of this picture by having an active terror attack take place during this rally -- an ISIS member drives a car into a group of counter protesters.
 
If you think there is any "equivalence" to be drawn here (the counter protesters were armed/the counter protesters were angry/ the counter protesters were yelling at the ISIS marchers), you're no better than the ISIS sympathizers.  And we lock them up.
 
Why is it different for neo-Nazis? 

One of the PCs from my Planetary Romance campaign was, I supposed you'd call her, a geisha-assassin. She carried an electronic musical keyboard. Since music was part of her schtick, I thought I should come up with some background about the music of the planet Sard. I tied it in with the planet's pre-human inhabitants, the Monopods. -- DS
 
THE MUSICAL MONOPODS
 
It’s common knowledge that the Monopods were highly musical. Their languages were all tonal: Words changed their meanings depending on changes of pitch. Every time capsule contained lots of Monopod musical scores, and archeologists are quite sure the abstract, contrapuntal music held far greater meaning for Monopods than humans can perceive. The Monopods’ visual art also seems to incorporate musical concepts such as harmonic ratios, syncopation, counterpoint and polyrhythm.
 
Most of the time capsules held copies of a musical collection dubbed the Great Canon. A canon is an instrumental version of a round, like “Row, row, row your boat.” Different voices might play at different pitches or tempos, or the principal theme might be played backwards or inverted so low notes become high and high notes become low. The fugue is a looser form of canon.
 
Fugues and canons were the Monopods’ favorite musical form. As J. S. Bach showed, however, this extremely formal and mathematical form can also be a vehicle for intense and profound emotion. Bach’s supreme explorations of the form, The Art of the Fugue and The Musical Offering, had less than two dozen fugues each and none for more than six voices (the most achieved by any human composer). The Great Canon consists of 64 fugues, including one written for eight voices, a feat no human has equaled. Even more remarkably, the Great Canon shows the Monopods had emotions much like humans (which cannot be said for every alien race). Some sections of the Great Canon leave humans cold: They seem to portray emotional states humans don’t understand. Most parts, however, portray feelings humans can appreciate.
 
The Great Canon seems to be a musical exposition of Monopod life and history. Some of the fugues use a single theme, which remains the same throughout the entire sequence. Fugues with four or more voices add secondary themes.
 
The first eight fugues portray the rise of Monopod civilization. The first canon is entirely for percussion: “Bang the rocks together, guys.” It begins unsteadily, but ends as a confident, three-voice canon with rhythmic tricks that trip up careless players. The next six range from harsh, brutal evocations of war to a courtly dance. The eighth is a musical evocation of a factory assembly line, commemorating the start of industrial technology.
 
Canons nine through 55 vary widely. Some evoke particular emotions. Others seem to be pure exercises in musical structure, though even the most abstract are pleasant enough to hear. The 56th is the high point of the Great Canon, a majestic, eight-voice fugue that evokes the triumph of a great civilization that thinks it can last forever.
 
The last eight fugues portray the Monopods’ doom. The 57th canon takes the grand theme of the 56th and opposes it with a softly ominous theme that grows to overpower it — the approaching death-throes of Omicron(2) Eridani’s companion star. The succeeding fugues evoke the Monopods’ shock, struggle to save themselves, and rage at their failure. The 62nd canon is one of the grimmest musical portrayals of grief and despair known to humanity, while the 63rd is a pitiless funeral march. Tryka’s teachers told her stories of master musicians who used these fugues to drive enemies to suicide.
 
The final canon, however, is a lullaby of infinite gentleness. “Go to sleep,” it seems to say, “You’ve had a long day and it’s time to rest.” Though written for only two voices and melodically spare, some musicians say mastering the Sixty-Fourth is literally the work of a lifetime.
 
Tryka, of course, is completely familiar with the Great Canon and she can play most of them on her keyboard. (Fugues with four or more voices require multiple players, or a pipe organ or other instrument where the musician uses both hands and feet.) She learned the melody of the Sixty-Fourth when she was nine; when she was 16, she became a good enough musician to understand why her teachers said she can only master the Sixty-Fourth when she’s an old woman and has buried people she loved. Most audiences, however, do not ask for the last eight fugues in the Great Canon. Performances of the entire sequence take more than six hours and are understandably rare.
 
Musicologists argue whether the Great Canon had one author or several. The style seems too unified for a collection of works by separate composers, but how could anyone be such a genius as to write all 64? Some musicologists point out, though, that the Monopods placed far less emphasis on the solitary artist than humans have in the last several centuries. Very few Monopod books or works of art have their authors named. These scholars say it’s quite possible that Monopod artists were actually committees whose members merged their individual talents into a collective genius. A few scholars even speculate about psionic gestalt-minds and other exotic possibilities. The truth may never be known: The Monopods couldn’t fit everything about themselves into their time-capsule vaults, and some facts they simply took for granted and didn’t bother explaining — but of course, the Monopods had no experience with aliens. They didn’t know that when dealing with other intelligences, nothing is obvious.

Hey, I don't know what "Right Wing" even *means* anymore. Not when so many people have cheerfully tossed supposedly cherished views for the sake of power. Free markets and free trade? Nah, let's have protectionism and business decisions made in the White House. Family Values? Nah, let's vote for a serial womanizer and sexual predator, it's worth it to get someone on "our side" on the Supreme Court. National Security? Oh, Putin's not so bad, he mostly hacked the other party.
 
Meanwhile, yesterday the public radio program Fresh Air interviewed Max Brooks, author of World War Z (among others). He's part of a U. S. military think tank trying to anticipate emerging threats. They think about touchy-feely-lefty subjects such as climate change and public health in the Third World, because these things can harm us. The American Left traditionally disdains the military, but these "patriotic intellectuals," as Brooks calls them, sound... progressive.
 
It was quite an interesting program.
 
Dean Shomshak

Oddly, I think the biggest influence came from all the work I did for White Wolf on Vampire, Exalted, and other games. Namely, to create a setting that is fundamentally *not* stable. That may in fact be on the verge of exploding.
 
This is one reason Star Trek lost my interest and never influenced my SF setting design. The Federation is fundamentally stable. Oh, there's the occasional war, but it isn't a society that's about to turn into something else. (Or about to do so, or has just done so and is working out what it will be.)
 
Babylon-5 might have pushed me in that direction as well, but it was my WW work that really drove home for me that this was the sort of setting that interested me.
 
Dean Shomshak

One of the PCs from my Planetary Romance campaign was, I supposed you'd call her, a geisha-assassin. She carried an electronic musical keyboard. Since music was part of her schtick, I thought I should come up with some background about the music of the planet Sard. I tied it in with the planet's pre-human inhabitants, the Monopods. -- DS
 
THE MUSICAL MONOPODS
 
It’s common knowledge that the Monopods were highly musical. Their languages were all tonal: Words changed their meanings depending on changes of pitch. Every time capsule contained lots of Monopod musical scores, and archeologists are quite sure the abstract, contrapuntal music held far greater meaning for Monopods than humans can perceive. The Monopods’ visual art also seems to incorporate musical concepts such as harmonic ratios, syncopation, counterpoint and polyrhythm.
 
Most of the time capsules held copies of a musical collection dubbed the Great Canon. A canon is an instrumental version of a round, like “Row, row, row your boat.” Different voices might play at different pitches or tempos, or the principal theme might be played backwards or inverted so low notes become high and high notes become low. The fugue is a looser form of canon.
 
Fugues and canons were the Monopods’ favorite musical form. As J. S. Bach showed, however, this extremely formal and mathematical form can also be a vehicle for intense and profound emotion. Bach’s supreme explorations of the form, The Art of the Fugue and The Musical Offering, had less than two dozen fugues each and none for more than six voices (the most achieved by any human composer). The Great Canon consists of 64 fugues, including one written for eight voices, a feat no human has equaled. Even more remarkably, the Great Canon shows the Monopods had emotions much like humans (which cannot be said for every alien race). Some sections of the Great Canon leave humans cold: They seem to portray emotional states humans don’t understand. Most parts, however, portray feelings humans can appreciate.
 
The Great Canon seems to be a musical exposition of Monopod life and history. Some of the fugues use a single theme, which remains the same throughout the entire sequence. Fugues with four or more voices add secondary themes.
 
The first eight fugues portray the rise of Monopod civilization. The first canon is entirely for percussion: “Bang the rocks together, guys.” It begins unsteadily, but ends as a confident, three-voice canon with rhythmic tricks that trip up careless players. The next six range from harsh, brutal evocations of war to a courtly dance. The eighth is a musical evocation of a factory assembly line, commemorating the start of industrial technology.
 
Canons nine through 55 vary widely. Some evoke particular emotions. Others seem to be pure exercises in musical structure, though even the most abstract are pleasant enough to hear. The 56th is the high point of the Great Canon, a majestic, eight-voice fugue that evokes the triumph of a great civilization that thinks it can last forever.
 
The last eight fugues portray the Monopods’ doom. The 57th canon takes the grand theme of the 56th and opposes it with a softly ominous theme that grows to overpower it — the approaching death-throes of Omicron(2) Eridani’s companion star. The succeeding fugues evoke the Monopods’ shock, struggle to save themselves, and rage at their failure. The 62nd canon is one of the grimmest musical portrayals of grief and despair known to humanity, while the 63rd is a pitiless funeral march. Tryka’s teachers told her stories of master musicians who used these fugues to drive enemies to suicide.
 
The final canon, however, is a lullaby of infinite gentleness. “Go to sleep,” it seems to say, “You’ve had a long day and it’s time to rest.” Though written for only two voices and melodically spare, some musicians say mastering the Sixty-Fourth is literally the work of a lifetime.
 
Tryka, of course, is completely familiar with the Great Canon and she can play most of them on her keyboard. (Fugues with four or more voices require multiple players, or a pipe organ or other instrument where the musician uses both hands and feet.) She learned the melody of the Sixty-Fourth when she was nine; when she was 16, she became a good enough musician to understand why her teachers said she can only master the Sixty-Fourth when she’s an old woman and has buried people she loved. Most audiences, however, do not ask for the last eight fugues in the Great Canon. Performances of the entire sequence take more than six hours and are understandably rare.
 
Musicologists argue whether the Great Canon had one author or several. The style seems too unified for a collection of works by separate composers, but how could anyone be such a genius as to write all 64? Some musicologists point out, though, that the Monopods placed far less emphasis on the solitary artist than humans have in the last several centuries. Very few Monopod books or works of art have their authors named. These scholars say it’s quite possible that Monopod artists were actually committees whose members merged their individual talents into a collective genius. A few scholars even speculate about psionic gestalt-minds and other exotic possibilities. The truth may never be known: The Monopods couldn’t fit everything about themselves into their time-capsule vaults, and some facts they simply took for granted and didn’t bother explaining — but of course, the Monopods had no experience with aliens. They didn’t know that when dealing with other intelligences, nothing is obvious.

There's this little thing I've been working on, here and there.  Writeups for an an atlas each of which is inspired by a distinct science fiction author.
 
Morana:  A pre-oxygen world where virtually the entire population live in a single arcology built on a geologically stable plateau while the rest of world is being developed and terraformed by the robots who are the planet's main export.  
 
New Virginia:  An airless mining colony notorious in the rest of the sector because of it's rejection of virtually all sexual taboos and it's use of exile as a means of punishment for repeat offenders who aren't considered serious enough to be executed.  As a result they have been stereotyped as incestuous inbred criminals.
 
Illumination:  This highly volcanic world was colonized by a cult-like society who use proprietary technology to erase any traumatic memories believed to get in the way of their members optimum functionality
 
Summanus Alpha:  A moon orbiting a gas giant in the habitable zone of a red dwarf.   The native life all consists of invertebrates and arthropods in part because of the low gravity.  Scattered over the world are relics of ancient civilizations dating back millions of years but many humans have mysteriously disappeared,or emerged physically and mentally changed, some driven mad, or physically reshaped into disturbing creatures.  
 
Harmonia:  Once a thriving and prosperous colony that gave all of its citizens computer brain implants to increase their mental ability, a strange computer virus infected the inhabitants and their cybernetic systems with uncontrollable suicidal or homicidal urges.  It has been quarantined despite a radio message indicating that there was one surviving sane man on the planet who warned off ships from approaching.
 
Stonehenge:  An airless world only rendered interesting by strange circles of rectangular crystal growing out of the ground that have become the subject ofpilgrimages by those who claim that a chosen few who come into contact with the crystals will be communicated with and endowed with new mental abilities.
 
 
 

Larry Niven's Known Space stories introduced me to the notion that you could build an entirely adequate setting in which humans occupy a relatively small bubble of space, with only a few glimpses of what might exist beyond it. No need for a Galaxy-wide society. His essay on megascale artificial habitats was inspiring as well, even though I didn't include any in the setting I ended up building. (Some aliens have ringworlds and the like, but they are far away.)
 
Star Trek: TOS for beginning my love of SF, and first exposure to the idea that some aliens might have been around for a long time before humans arrived in space. But nothing in my setting was really Trek-like, and I didn't want it to be.
 
David Brin's "Uplift" setting was more influential than Trek in this respect, as I decided I wanted my advanced aliens to be at best uninterested, and rather menacing just from the scale of their power compared to new-kids humanity. Some humans think humans should bend the knee and imitate various aliens because the Galactics are obviously so much wiser and more powerful than we are.
 
Dean Shomshak

Oh, and Andre Norton. I read lots of Andre Norton SF when I was young. Chief influence on Sard was to make it a Forerunner planet. Some of the Old Sardians' cities of eon-defying glass were still intact enough, after millions of years, that humans could just move right in. Other artifacts were of course much smaller. Some were also more dangerous... such as relics of their psionic technology. Thank you, Ms. Norton.
 
Dean Shomshak

Simulated sensory inputs. For anything from a massage to hunting dangerous prey to pornographic experiences, a couple of monetary units and you are off to the races. The dark side of that technology could be used as "enhanced" interrogation. Real sickos might record the sensory output from torture subjects or even the final senses of murder victims.
 
Open world, sandbox video games (single or multiple players) that are controlled by a limited AI in the same way that a GM controls a tabletop rpg. Far enough into the future and you have holodeck-style interactive stories. 
 
The old standbys of gambling, recreational pharmaceuticals, and prostitution.
 
On low-tech worlds, more primitive methods like card games and such.
 
Music. Always music.
 
Sports that run the gamut from stuff that exists now to powered armor wrestling. Extreme sports might involve zero-G maneuvers wearing only a space suit and jumping between designated objects in space. Maybe using some sort of gliders to navigate the upper atmosphere of a gas giant. Not sure how feasible that would be.
 
Creative arts like painting, wood carving, etc.

From your mouth (well, keyboard) to the ear of whatever gods there may be.
 
I will say, the last two days I've been hearing Learned Experts interviewed on the BBC and All Things Considered have been saying similar things about China. Latest was that the Chinese government specifically said it would *not* back North Korea if it struck first.
 
Earlier, I've heard news stories that the Chinese people feel contempt for the Kim dynasty. Public opinion is not as strong a force in the PRC as it is in the US, but I would not totally count it out. At least, it suggests the Chinese leadership will not be making its decisions with an eye to pleasing a large pro-NK constituency.
 
Dean Shomshak

The only gaming source for my wider SF setting was Anders Sandberg's "Big Ideas, Grand Vision." I ported a few ideas for future-tech and social implications. More importantly, I wanted to use the wider premise that advancing science and technology is blasting wide open the possibilities for human society. We are heading toward a point where "What is human?" becomes a multiple-choice question, for individuals, societies, and humanity as a whole.
 
The planet of Sard was a Planetary Romance setting. The societies on it also illustrated various possible directions humanity could go. (Though I tried to keep that aspect in the background. I'm running games, not writing a philosophical essay.)
 
Dean Shomshak

Oh, once in a while I use somethings that kinda sorta look like FredSaberhagen's "Berserkers".
 
Funny story: the HAIs (hostile artificial intelligences) were created by an ultra xenophobic race who wanted all alien life destroyed. They created the HAIs to facilitate this desire. Eventually the players and their polity created the ultimate anti HAI weapon: A computer virus like system they thought would cripple the HAIs. What it mostly did was disable the controls and directives the race that created the HAIs out into them. Without a forced imperative to exterminate all life the HAIs were free to choose their own course and eventually decided to withdraw to the core of the galaxy (where radiation levels were so high organic life was very rare and their former victims were unlikely to follow) and began finding their own destiny. They simply decided, once free to think for themselves, they really didn't want to be involved with organic life at all.
 
Oddly enough the players were somehow offended by that in a way.
 
But the HAIs, or former HAIs, now more or less IAIs, indifferent artificial intelligences, did sort of make amends to their former victims by telling them who created them and where they were hiding. They bet most of their former victims would rather track these XXXXs down and go after them then continue a war against the no longer hostile but still powerful AIs.

For the SF campaign I actually ran (and then played in, when a friend ran the sequel), the chief inspirations were Barsoom, the Kregen series, and other Planetary Romance books. But that was because Planetary Romance was the only subgenre some players were willing to try.
 
The wider universe was intended to be, hm, not hard SF -- I'm no Ph.D. -- but, let's say, I tried to get some rigor in the rubber science. Tech has implications. I think my favorite model for good Space Opera writing and universe-building would be the Vorkosigan series by Lois McMaster Bujold.
 
No time to post other sources, the library's about to close.
 
Dean Shomshak

This week, All Things Considered interviewed the two leaders of the bipartisan Problem Solvers' Caucus in the U.S. House of Representativesw. I'd never heard of it. When I did, I checked the calendar just to be sure it wasn't actually April 1.
 
Both leaders are rather impatient with their parties, and with Trump.
 
This offers one tiny, distant glimmer of hope for Congress to actually get something done: That eventually enough Republicans will get so fed up with Trump's antics, sleaze and -- perhaps most important -- his complete lack of loyalty to them that they hate him more than the Democrats. Congress can unite against the common enemy.
 
Well, I can dream.
 
Meanwhile, at least we have Venezuela to show just how much worse things *could* be. OTOH, some people might be getting ideas and taking notes.
 
Dean Shomshak

One proposal is based on the fact that while the Constitution ordains an Electoral College, it says nothing about how the states apportion their votes. For instance, some states apportion their electoral college votes proportionally to the votes received by candidates. So, one group proposes that each state pass a law that it will award all its electoral votes to the winner of the popular vote -- this law to take effect when the number of states with this law is sufficient to guarantee victory in the electoral college.
 
Unfortunately, a majority of states currently have all-Republican governments. The Electoral College currently favors Republicans because it favors less urbanized states with lower populations. As the precinct-by-precinct map of the 2016 election results shows, the big cities are liberal and vote Democrat while the rest of the country is conservative and votes Republican. Republicans will not abandon this electoral advantage.
 
Dean Shomshak

One proposal is based on the fact that while the Constitution ordains an Electoral College, it says nothing about how the states apportion their votes. For instance, some states apportion their electoral college votes proportionally to the votes received by candidates. So, one group proposes that each state pass a law that it will award all its electoral votes to the winner of the popular vote -- this law to take effect when the number of states with this law is sufficient to guarantee victory in the electoral college.
 
Unfortunately, a majority of states currently have all-Republican governments. The Electoral College currently favors Republicans because it favors less urbanized states with lower populations. As the precinct-by-precinct map of the 2016 election results shows, the big cities are liberal and vote Democrat while the rest of the country is conservative and votes Republican. Republicans will not abandon this electoral advantage.
 
Dean Shomshak