Seniority Rules?

I've had this debate with a few friends, but haven't spelled it out here yet so here it goes. Since I'm pro political accountability and rather anti-incumbent there's a few changes I wish to make to the political establishment, specifically in the area of congressional seniority.

Congress has this great scheme going: the longer you stay in office, the more powerful and influential you are, so the more likely you are to be reelected. This is because important congressional chairmanships are meted out based on seniority (well, that and whichever party is in power). The longer you are reelected, the more power you wield, and the less likely you are to be voted out of power. Great for politicians, terrible for political accountability because if replaced by the voters the freshman congressman wields far less power in the name of the state or congressional district.

So lets come at this problem sideways, and change the definition of seniority. I propose changing seniority to how many non-consecutive terms you've served. So instead of measuring years, you measure how many times the candidate has come into power. Specifically, if they've only been elected once, their number is 1. If they've been elected, lost, and been elected again, their seniority is 2. The more times they've been in and out, the higher the seniority they have accrued.

This would mean that politicians don't want a constant grip on power, because they would lose seniority to fellow congressmen who are repeatedly in and out of power. Tag-teams may even form as pairs of same party candidates trade off to gain seniority in tandem. The whole political system would become more dynamic and responsive because of the constant influx of people, willing relinquishing of power, and those who become the most senior and powerful either decide against stepping down and eventually fall behind competitors, or choose to 'rule' for only brief periods. Win-win.

Now this being Congress, rule changes will be really hard to execute. It might be best to begin on the state level. What is needed is to get some low ranking representatives who would have seniority under the new system (being in-and-out a few times) to realize their potential gain in power, and begin to organize a sort of 'coup'. This will slowly snowball as more people come in and out of power naturally, and eventually there will be enough votes to change the system, and the formerly less powerful gain a little more power, and the public gains a heck of a lot more political accountability.



Lurker
(I really need to find a way to get paid for being a political strategist)

Manifest Destiny

I've got this idea for a space epic i've been thinking about for years now. At the moment its called 'Manifest Destiny' and its about the colonization of Earth's Moon and the rest of the solar system, set decades in the future. I want this to be 'hard' science fiction, so I'm unsure about what format to tell the story in.

Idealy it would be a television series, but the problems of reduced gravity present a real film-making difficulty. Not to mention the timescale issues, since live-action series are usually presented in real time (i.e. episodes shown a week apart occur a week apart).

I could do it in book form, or a series of books, but this would be so cool visually and series of short stories with interlocking arcs format never quite works for books.

I present this in comicbook form, but i have no idea how to break into the industry. My rusty skills as an artist make doing this even as a webcomic dificult, especally with the huge scope of this project.


So... thoughts? Suggestions?


Lurker
(wondering how much of Star Trek / Babylon 5 / Seaquest future history I can squeeze in without worrying about trademark infringement. Is the future copyrighted?)

The next step?

I have several reasons for wanting to do the Peace Corps. Firstly, as a recent college graduate, this is an excellent means of going to see the world in real life. I have this goal of seeing every country on Earth, and volunteering is a means to this end.

I’ve also got this idealistic streak in me that wants to try to make the world a better place. The goals of the this organization align closely with my own, and as a patriot and a human being I want to do my part to improve the human condition. Due to financial pressures or struggling to finish my degree, I’ve had little time to volunteer. Now that I am free from commitments I feel that I must.

I also have a practical reason for joining: future employment. As I recently acquired my degrees in sociology and political science, volunteering should exposing me to various government agencies and international organizations that I could potentially work for.

Old Paper from 2002

Student Number 999 04 4487

Friday November 1^st, 2002

Political Science 100 9:00am

Alex L. Avila, Instructor

World War Four

On September 11^th, 2001 four planes were hijacked and flown into a field in Pennsylvania, the Pentagon in Washington D.C., and both towers of the World Trade Center in New York City. In Samuel P. Huntington’s “The Clash of Civilizations,” in Perspectives on American Foreign Policy: Readings and Cases, he would argue that that act of war resulted in the clash of civilizations between the Western and the Islamic worlds. “The fault lines of civilizations will be the battle lines of the future” (Huntington, 2000, 297). Future history will doubtless prove him correct as today’s conflicts are quickly turning into holy wars. When the ‘end of history’ looms near, we will find that it will come down to the Western Powers (US, EU, Australia, and Israel), India, and Japan verses virtually everyone else: the Arab nations, China, Southeast Asia, and probably Africa). It has already begun.

Back in the good old days of the Cold War, things were really easy. There were only three main groups: the capitalists, the communists, and the rest of the world who were being manipulated by the previous two groups or ignored. You could be born in a democratic society and become a communist and back again without too much difficulty. The reverse was also true, though a bit more perilous. The society you were born in had little to do with the world in which you lived in. “In class and ideological conflicts, the key question was ‘Which side are you on?’ and people could and did changes sides” (299). Heck, during this time in the Baltic states, the Bosnians, Croats, and Serbs were slowly forgetting their ethnic hatreds of the past thousand years and were gaining a sense of nationalism. That is, until the USSR fell and the dual system with it. Suddenly, the West was the dominant super-power, and its culture wormed its way across the globe, unopposed.

That is, until some parts of the world became disgusted at the effects of Westernization was having upon them. They began to reject it. Sometimes it happens because of foreign policy, as in the case of the Palestinians. Or because we had become rich and powerful and refused to help those in need, as some parts of Africa think. Lastly, it may be because they find our values totally alien to their way of thinking. ”Western ideas of individualism, liberalism, constitutionalism, human rights, equality, liberty, the rule of law, democracy, free markets, the separation of church and state, often have little resonance in Islamic, Confucian, Japanese, Hindu, Buddhist or Orthodox cultures” (301). They then reject the notion of joining the Western world in favor of returning to their basic, non-western values. They then decide to put up the borders to keep themselves isolated from the West (Saudi Arabia), try to work with the West (Japan), or build up their armies to one day overthrow the West (Iraq, and possibly China). Regardless, “Those countries that for a reason of culture and power do not wish to, or cannot, join the West compete with the West by developing their own economic, military, and political power” (302).

Now the world is divided not by ideology but by civilization. By civilization, Huntington means “…the broadest level of cultural identity people have short of that which distinguishes humans from other species” (298). You are born into a civilization, and it is much, much harder to integrate into another one. There have been thousands of civilizations across the ages, but as of right now about seven or eight major civilizations are taking center stage. “These include Western, Confucian, Japanese, Islamic, Hindu, Slavic-Orthodox, Latin American, and possibly African civilization “ (298). Huntington is ambiguous on Africa because several parts of the continent have degenerated into tribal conflicts, oblivious to the rest of the world. Now these several civilizations are mostly multiple nation-states, feeling similar to each other generally if not linguistically and culturally. A notable exception to this is Japan, an economic superpower, the shining star of the non-Western world. Alone of all other Asian countries, Japan was able to modernize without becoming Westernized.

Of course, at some point these civilizations will come into conflict. The potential for future conflict is already here. Over a million troops are stationed on the border of nuclear equipped India and Pakistan in the region of Kashmir. North Korea has recently admitted to having a nuclear weapons program, giving Japan and South Korea many problems. And the little island of Taiwan may trigger a war between the United States and China. The Islamic world is already at war with the West on some level. Radical Islamic fundamentalists have performed terrorist acts on the United States, Israel, France, and Australia to date. A jihad, or holy war, has been declared against the West by Osama bin Laden. Finally, after September 11^th, the West fought back. Some semblance of order has been restored to Afghanistan. The next step of ousting Saddam from Iraq is soon to happen. Iran and Pakistan won’t be far behind. Eventually Saudi Arabia will be overthrown and opened to the West and the Islamic civilization will be absorbed or destroyed by the West.

However, there is a problem. The Islamic world has allied itself to the Confucian civilization. That means China, North Korea, and much of southeast Asia will rise up and cooperate with the Islamic nation-states if World War Four ever breaks out. “[T]he Confucian-Islamic connection… has emerged to challenge Western interest, values, and power” (302). The quickest ways to bring about this clash of civilizations are the China-Pakistan and Israel-India alliances. China owns part of Kashmir, and has long had a close relationship with its neighbor Pakistan. Despite the current strategic alliance with the U.S.-lead coalition, Pakistan has old cultural ties to now communist China, and would side with them over the U.S without hesitation. Both have nuclear weapons. Israel and India, being the only democracies and non-Islamic nation-states in the Middle East region, have some sort of strategic defense pact. India is a nuclear power and Israel’s status is all but official. If and when Pakistan (Islam) and Indian (Hindu) have their first and last nuclear war, they will drag the Confucian (China) and Western (Israel) civilizations into it and begin the end of history. Mutually assured destruction at its finest.

The Federation like that on Star Trek that many dream and hope for is a distant hope. “The very notion that their could be a ‘universal civilization’ is a Western idea, directly at odds with the particularism of most Asian societies and their emphasis on what distinguishes one people from another” (301). The world may be shrinking, but it is not that small. Yet. There the hope that if we survive the impending clash of civilizations, we will outgrow our petty differences and learn to work together. But that day has not come. If the West does not fall in war, it may be overrun from within. As we speak, dozens of Latin Americans are streaming across the US-Mexican border, infiltrating our civilization. If we are not careful, we may be overrun by the masses as Romans were, their civilization falling not to superior armies but superior numbers. Yet to ultimately survive civilizations that seek our annihilation, the West is faced with terrible choice: utterly obliterate civilizations thru total destruction or absorption; ether way those ways of life are lost.

Huntington is right. The next great conflicts are going to be on the borders of civilizations, not nation-states. Where is the most war-torn region in the World? Most would think of the Middle East, especially now. And it makes sense, since the region not only connects the continents of Europe, Asia, Africa, and the Indian sub-continent; it is the interaction point of the West, Islam, Confucian, Slavic-Orthodox, and Hindu civilizations. Peace in the Middle East would truly be a world peace, as all of these civilizations would have to get along with each other simultaneously. It is a worthy, albeit extremely difficult goal. But as we are all stuck on this small planet together, it is definitely worth a try.

Bibliography

Huntington, Samuel P. “The Clash of Civilizations?”. In Perspectives on

American Foreign Policy: Readings and Cases. Edited by Bruce W.

Jentleson. W. W. Norton & Company, Inc. New York 2000, pp. 297-304

Ready or not, here I come?

Hi there. Well, I've finally graduated from ASU (for real this time) with my two degrees in Sociology and Political Science. Yay!

Since my Dad made it safely back from Iraq, and my lease for my apartment expired last month, I'm pretty much free from commitments in Phoenix.

So, I've decided to do a little traveling. I already did a bit of it for last Thanksgiving, and was glad to see many people I hadn't seen in way too long. Right after Christmas I also went out to L.A. to spend time with a couple friends, although I came back to Mesa before New Years.

At present, I'm in Salt Lake City (Utah) visiting some old friends, and contemplating my next move (so to speak).

I'm contemplating using my 6-month grace period to visit friends and relatives, which brings me to the point of this email. I'm fishing for invitations. Since I'm currently rootless, I'd love to catch up with loved ones I haven't seen much lately. And of course, I'd also like to have a place to crash and do my laundry too.

So, email me back if you don't mind some company. Or at the very least send me your address so I can send post cards or something.

Oh, and feel free to pass this along to mutual friends whose email I didn't track down.



Thanks!

Integrating citizenship into other school subjects

Besides classes in citizenship itself, to fully incorporate citizenship as the fourth pillar of education it needs to be woven into many other classes as well. There are three overall methods of doing this. The first is by learning subjects and skills that make better and more informed citizens. The second is by actually injecting necessary citizenship ideas directly into other classes so that students learn two subjects simultaneously. The third is by having classes where citizenship skills are practically required and used to facilitate activities.

Subjects and skills that indirectly help citizenship involving slightly changing the emphasis and curriculum of several classes. English Literature classes in high school can include relevant classics that discuss citizenship values, such as the Faerie Queen. Other skills in English classes, like communications and journalism, also indirectly help citizens.

Computer courses will also be increasingly important in the lives of future citizens. Introducing students to newer forms of social interactions, such as the blogsphere or MySpace, are important new aspect of social networking. Advanced computer programming courses can do world building games like Civilization or Sim City, where large scale planning and organization of communities is vitally important.

Health classes also improve the lives of citizens in many ways. Preventative health care and nutrition can save individuals, insurance companies, and the government countless dollars. First Aid can be a lifesaving skill for fellow citizens. Birth control is a contentious issue, but a very important one for inter-human relationships.

The Mesa Public Schools social studies program has different classes for junior high grades that also can be reemphasized to advocate citizenship. Seventh grade Geography can also teach how to become a state, other countries conceptions of citizenship and government styles. Eighth grade American History can address the Founding fathers principal’s as well as historical works on citizenship like Alexis de Tocqueville’s Democracy in America.

This should spark some controversy...

Here's what my assignment was:
Exam question #1:
Analyze the ideology of your least favorite in regard to the issue of gay and lesbian families


Because of my neutrality on this issue, I decided to explore and pick apart the conservative argument, because I know less about that one. So here it is:



Conservative Arguments Against Gay Families

Gay and lesbian families are a growing phenomenon in the United States. This alternative lifestyle to traditional heterosexual family units is a problem for a multitude of reasons. These difficult problems include legal concerns, cultural issues, and biological consequences that society must thoroughly consider before radically altering the primacy of traditional family structures.

The first arguments against promoting gay families are purely legalistic. Gay marriages are not legal in the vast majority of the United States. This simple fact creates inordinate problems for gay families. Adoption is more difficult than it is for married heterosexual couples. Rarely are both parents recognized as such on birth certificates when one conceives a child. When the biological parent dies the partner has no legal claim on the children, multiplying the trauma for everyone. This lack of legal recognition is a major argument against gay families.

The next arguments involve how gay families go against the culture and traditions of America. Gay parenting is not the usual type of family structure in the culture, with less than a million known households. Most denominations and religions in the US don’t recognize gay marriages or the families, and many strenuously object to this lifestyle on doctrinal grounds. Children of gay parents often experience shame as a result of their parents’ alternative lifestyle. Society also has a long tradition of gender based roles which become confused with same-sex parents and leads to unconventional understandings of gender roles by the kids. Also, there is statistical evidence that gay males are more likely than straights to seek sexual relations outside of their relationships, a cultural phenomenon that has verifiably negative affects for heterosexual couples. Obviously, there is a great deal of cultural resistance to gay families.

And then there are the biological arguments against gay families. Sex between gay males can have serious medical complications. Gay couples by themselves cannot conceive naturally, and need another adult of the opposite sex to create biological offspring. Because of these hurdles to reproduction, fewer children are likely to be born to gay families, decreasing the potential population. Some studies show that children suffer physically without the presence of both male and female parents, but whether this applies to gay parents needs to be explored. There are also statistics that show that homosexuals are more likely to be mentally stable than heterosexuals, and are more likely to be unfit for parenthood. These biological impediments work against the creation of gay families.

Lastly, gay parenting has some significant negative impacts on children. There are some significant concerns regarding pedophilia and gay parents, especially male couples. As they grow older, many feel the need to assert their heterosexuality by becoming more promiscuous. Adolescents are also more likely to explore their sexualities and become gay themselves. Children also face growing up without one of their biological parents (or both in the case of adoptions) and all the complications and feelings of abandonment that situation creates. More specifically, since most gay couples with children are lesbians, gay parenting contributes to the already growing problem of children growing up without their fathers.

The conservative arguments boil down to the fact that gay parenting goes against traditions. Homosexuals have many legal hurdles because of the long standing tradition of straight parenting. Cultural resistance originates from the tradition of having everyone live very similar lifestyles to minimize conflicts, which our current society is much more able to handle. The conservatives do have a point when it comes to the biological impossibility of same-sex couples conceiving on their own, but does not necessarily preclude most adults who prefer their own kind from raising children.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gay_parenting
http://www.religiouscoalitionformarriage.org/html/top_ten.php

Week Need

This paper sets out to examine and advocate change one of the most influential social structures in our society, so universal and fundamental hardly anyone even thinks about it anymore: the Calendar. More specifically, the number of days in a week. Currently, the number of days in a week is seven, a prime number difficult to divide. The concept of a seven day week is a hold over from the lunar calendar days, with about seven days between new and quarter and full moons. The modern form of the seven day week is split between five week-days and the two days of the weekends, and is easily the most important social structure in regards to scheduling the activities of life, from economics to socializing to education. The week has become a fixture of modern life, a bureaucratic monopoly unexamined by society that many historical sociologists would advocate the reform of.

Marx
The concept of time touches heavily on many themes in sociology. Marx would focus on how the owners of the means of production demand workers be at their job for a huge majority of the time, exploiting their labor during the weekday and distracting them with religion during the weekend. The idea of a five day work week where owners expect laborers to work a minimum of eight hours per day plus overtime is clearly surplus labor for which the owners are making a profit and the laborers didn’t actually need to do to earn their keep. The five day work week is an oppressive structure designed for maximum extraction of work so that laborers not only give more than they receive but also have no time to work for themselves. Or that the overworked and underpaid laborers are forced to take second jobs to make ends meet, and all the time out of the social structure of the week is squeezed out with barely enough time for sleep.
And then there are the weekends. Sunday, Saturday and Friday nights out of the seven day cycle are reserved for recreational activities and religion. Religion is the primary source for the idea of the week, so that every seven days people have a day of rest that they use to fulfill their religious duties. The owners of the means of production are more than willing to let workers have some time off for religion for several reasons. Having a repeated religious day every week is a constant distraction for the worker, focusing them on the rewards of the afterlife instead of the here and now. They are further distracted from forming class consciousness by the rampant consumerism of the economy, focusing on sports and video games and entertainment when they should really be organizing to overthrow the ownership society and the exploitive concept of the ‘week’.
Marx would challenge the very idea of having a structure like the weekday; instead he would advocate individuals working their own hours for their own benefits. He would want self-employed laborers to work as much or as little as they themselves needed, improving only their own lots in life. Weekends, with the distractions of religion and consumerism, would be also cast out, totally eliminating any need for the concept of a special seven day block of time between the patterns days and months. With the weekday/weekend dichotomy nullified and the 7 day period made arbitrary, true reform of the week structure can begin.

Weber
Weber would focus on the social reality of the weekday, how this arbitrary abstraction has become totally ingrained in modern civilization as a traditional source of power and ultimate bureaucratization, as well as promoting the Protestant work ethic by having most of the time devoted to work with religious days for rest. The concept of the week has a great deal of power. This power is legitimized by traditions going back centuries, but also by rational-legal means, expressed in countless legal documents and recognized by law. The week has become entrenched in bureaucracy, organized by formal rules and influencing nearly every aspect of the culture. This bureaucratic form of control is going to be nearly impossible to get rid of because of all these entanglements in all corners of life, despite being a completely man-made creation.
The concept of a week is the ultimate form of formal rationality because it is not based on any cycles in nature. The concept of years and days mirror the revolutions and rotations of the Earth, respectively, and are thus easily rationalized. The concept of a month is derived from the lunar cycles, although no longer accurately reflects them. But the week is an abstraction totally separate from these patterns, and its constant misalignment with these cycles in addition to the occasional presence of the leap-day leads to fourteen different calendar configurations and constant headaches. This is a clear indication of Weber’s iron cage, where a meaningless social structure has become totally engrained within a culture and is impossible to ignore or work around, and becomes nearly hardwired in human beings conceptions of time.
The protestant work ethic also has a great deal of influence on the idea of the week. Instead of working just enough to accomplish tasks and get by, work itself was idealized as a nearly pious duty, driving people to work far more than necessary. Success was a sign that people were predestined to be saved (especially if they went to church on Sundays) and the idea that people should be working a majority of the time supports the idea of having a short weekend, and probably encourages shortening it even more so people can get even more work done.
Weber would point out the difficulties in trying to reform the concept of the week, with the heavily entrenched bureaucracy reified in countless legal documents and every organization in the culture. But he would be in favor of reforming it because of the negative effects of having an unexamined and arbitrary structure having so dominating an influence on human life, and examination and reform are a way to escape the iron cage of bureaucratization.



Durkheim
Durkheim would focus on the idea of the week as a remnant of mechanical solidarity and also the societal sacredness of the weekend because of the complex abstract rituals based around it. The concept of the week is an old, sacred idea where each day is named after a deity. The idea of the week arose so that people could all perform rituals to their gods in a common pattern; in the modern context those rituals are performed on Sundays (for Christians) and Saturday (Sabbath). The sacredness of the weekend is also reinforced by the collective recreational activities western cultures perform on these days. Of course, having sacred weekends makes weekdays almost profane, and creates near indignation in the collective conscious when work intrudes on this special time.
The week as a pattern is obviously a throwback to the mechanical solidarity days, when people lived in low density environs and everyone needed to think and act along the same lines. And work as well; the fact that people generally wake up and go to work at about the same time five days a week is not a sign of organic solidarity. Advanced divisions of labor would definitely advocate an even numbered week, so that half the time one half of the laborers would be working, and the other half resting. Or more likely a 2 to 1 rotating schedule with six day weeks where people work 2/3rds of the time with constant overlap between shifts. Or any other arrangement of patterns besides the arbitrary 7 day week would be more organic and adaptable than the status quo.

Veblen
Veblen would focus on the leisure class mentality that has become built up around the weekdays (to earn $) and weekends (to show off $). The concept of people working more days than necessary for surplus income rather than necessity is indicative of the long work week. Self-esteem, class, and social status is driven as much by how much you can earn as how much you can spend. The weekends become a sign of status, because they are designated periods of non-working, scheduled leisure time that feeds into the idea of a conspicuously consuming leisure class. So not only is the week contributing to people working and earning more than they need, it is also contributing to people spending more than they earn. So this setup contributes in a very real manner to the idea of the consumer economy, with all the entanglements that implies.
The cultural lag of the concept of a day itself, with technology allowing round the clock work and worldwide communication, is in some serious need of reexamination. Markets are poised to buy, sell, and trade twenty four hours a day, because there is a world-wide demand for trade across every time zone. Technological advances like satellites and the internet have almost made local time obsolete, more so than even the concept of the week. To continue to uses this cultural belief when technology has made it obsolete is a prime example of cultural lag.
Cultural borrowing of the concept of the week goes back thousands of years in western civilization. With colonialism, the idea of the week has been borrowed and used by nearly every culture on earth, for the most part replacing previous short term patterns of days in favor of the Gregorian calendar. Most interestingly are the parallels between many, many cultures conceptions of the days of the week, hinting that this sort of borrowing has been going on for a long time.
Veblen would advise researching other cultures conception of the week, and borrowing one of those and adapting it to suit modern needs. He would probably advocate a shorter week, reducing time for both extraneous working and for leisurely weekends. This adaptation would face head-on the cultural lag behind modern economic and technological realities. The weekday/weekend split would also be closely reexamined because of its relation to overzealous consumerism, and steps taken to reduce harmful patterns.

Mannheim
Mannheim would acknowledge the week as a social constructed idea and that it is an ideology originating in the past and the capacity for intellectuals in a planned society to construct a more rational approach. He would be focused on the societal context of the week and how the Weltanschauung of the week is incredibly complicated, tied to most aspects of society. The ideology of the week is set in the distant past, with few justifications for keeping other than tradition and the difficulty in changing.
However, the reinterpretation of the week for modern and future needs can be classified under his terminology as utopian in nature. Week reform can be seen as part of his intellectually planed society, where concepts are meant to transcend present realities to bring about a better future.

Gramsci
Lastly, the universality of the concept of a seven day week is a striking example of hegemony in Gramsci’s terminology, not only because of the lack of challengers to this power structure, but every culture on earth as to deal with this dominant timeframe in one form or another.
This system of control, is propagated by the state primarily due to the education system, but also all the other government infrastructure, including the postal system. The dominance of the week in language is extremely important, as scheduling is often referred to by the name of the weekday so many weeks from now, instead of using exact numbers of days.
The ideology of the week goes unchallenged at every level of society, including the intellectual elites, who even while beginning to organize calendar reform ideology still cling to the idea of having a seven day week. The consciousness of the working class and the working class all follow this ideology of the week because they have been presented with no alternatives and the constant support by the media and civil society as a whole makes change virtually unthinkable.



Berger
Peter Berger contributions to sociology deal directly with the concept of the week. Most habits, when not daily, are performed on a weekly basis and dominate the behavior patterns of billions of people. These habits have come to give significant meaning to many days of the week, with Mondays being unpopular, Fridays as the gateway to the weekend, and so on. The structure of the week has come to dominate the consciousness of everyone with repeatable habits. Society has settled into an embedded routine of working on weekdays, and seeking entertainment on weekends. The weekend has become institutionalized into our culture, written into law and come to be expected as a natural course of events, absolutely reified. So much of our language has become embedded in the institution of the week that the pattern seems more natural than it is.
However, Berger shows how these institutionalized ideas can fade away as they become obsolete. Previous conceptions of the week have already dissolved into the background or been added to the already extensive framework of the week, as seen in the names of the days of the week. With the changing nature of time due to interconnected worldwide civilizations and the meaninglessness of earth timescales in space, the language of the week may eventually become archaic and the structure will diminish by itself.



Solutions
For the numerous reasons listed above, I propose changing the number of days in the week to six, by dropping Tuesday. We now have a week easily evenly divided in halves and thirds. With a six day week, we can have five weeks a month for a total of thirty days, a very normal length of time for a month, with minimal alterations to the current calendar required, and every day of the new week is uniformly the same with every other month, so that it may be ignored all together if so desired. However, we still have those pesky five and a quarter days in the year. Let’s have those days be extra floating holidays, outside the week formula and no body works on them or have that be the current nonproductive week between Christmas and New Years, or sprinkle them across the calendar year.
Now the whole point of this is efficiency and relaxation. Currently there are 52 weeks and 104 weekend days in the year. My idea would make 60 weeks and 120 weekends in the year, reducing the excess work of the population. Or to improve organic solidarity, we can also have jobs where people work 3 days on and 3 off, enabling the widened economic possibilities of regular three-day weekends and enabling someone else to work your exact position while you are gone, simultaneously increasing job output and quality of live. Even better, peoples weekends in whatever form can be staggered, enabling people on their time off to have access to the goods and services of those still working. The economic potentials are enormous!
No matter what solution is chosen, the power structure known as the week needs to be challenged and minimized as mindless bureaucratic structure. Its dominance in our lives affects in every aspect, from work to religion to medications. Fortunately, as the structure is tied into the concept of the day, as the importance of the day decreases due to the shift towards organic solidarity in the economic structure and the expansion of the human race exposes us to extraterrestrial rotational cycles, the concept of the week may fade away entirely, leaving humans with something akin to the Star Trek notion of the Stardate.


Works Cited

Lemert, Charles. Social Theory : The Multicultural and Classical Readings, 3rd
Edition. Westview Press, 2004
Ritzter, George and Goodman, Douglas J. Classical Sociological Theory, 4th
Edition. McGraw-Hill, 2004

Why Islam Needs Science Fiction

Science fiction is one of the most amazing genres in literature, mostly because all the rules of normal realty are open to manipulation and examination. This is the perfect setting for exploring a post-colonial Islamic identity, because of the very nature of the deep questions Muslims can ask themselves while presenting their unique viewpoints to the rest of the world. Nearly every aspect of SF poses deep questions about the modern Muslim identity, from time-travel to catastrophes, colonization of worlds to extraterrestrial aliens; this literary genre is required to chart the course for the next centuries.

Alternate Timelines
The first trope of science fiction that comes to mind is time-travel, with exploring the past, creating alternate versions of the present, and speculating about the future. The ethics of time travel are interesting enough in western fiction, but the implications of an Islamic authored story about visiting the time of Mohamed is so contentious and interesting that it begs to be told. This is also one of the means of achieving the post-colonialist goal of reclaiming ones history from the Europeans, by using time-traveling stories to the past to touch on some of the most important parts of western history (Old Testament, Jesus, etc) in a genre that may be read worldwide.
Alternate histories are some of the oldest sources of fiction, showing how history may have turned out differently with the slightest changes. Time-travel interventionist stories can explore what might have been if the Ottoman Empire had not lost WWI, and how the world would be different if the borders of the Middle East hadn’t been rewritten. Likewise the Mongol disaster would have been prevented if Genghis Kahn was slain as a boy, or the split between Shiite and Sunni might have been prevented if Ali had survived assassination. Alien invasions and other hypothetical science fiction elements in historical contexts are also enlightening, and reveal as much about the authors as they do about the subject matter. The possibilities are endless, and definitely worth exploring.
The greatest possibilities for Islamic authored science fiction involve the future, and the myriad of possibilities that civilization has not yet begun to consider. The easiest to envision are the extrapolations of the present into the future. If one of the goals of Islamic civilization is worldwide conversion, what happens when they achieve it? Then what? Or if technological trends continue, how does Islam keep up with contentious issues such as cloning, cross-breeding humans, virtual reality, interstellar travel, telepathy, and artificial life? What insight can they provide to the western world? There are several prophesies about the future, and exploring what might actually happen is one of the greatest strengths of science fiction.

Loss of Homelands
One of the most terrible and creative exercises in fiction is projecting what happens when homelands are lost. Could Islam survive the loss of Mecca and/or other important historical locations? How would the religion and identity change with the natural (through sea level rise) or artificial (thermonuclear) destruction of their great holy places?
More common to sci-fi and history is the loss of homeland to exile, as is Star Trek: Voyager and Battlestar Galactica. It would be very interesting to see how Islamic authors would handle a Lost in Space scenario or some other method of removing access to the homeworld. Destroying the Earth is also a common trope, and it would be very interesting to see how authors would tackle this radical idea, and how to survive with the consequences. For peace activists, this is the perfect means of mirroring the destruction of the temple and Diaspora of the Israelites.
Most extreme is exile to another dimension, an idea more commonly explored in fantasy novels. But removal to an environment where absolutely nothing is recognizable would be a fascinating read to explore the principals behind this great religion, and still be analogous to the changes of modern realities.

Off-World Colonies
Space colonization is a major theme of science fiction, and the one most analogous to post-colonial thought just by its very structure. Potential Muslim authors can recreate all sorts of contentious modern post-colonial issues using just such a method, including the occupation of Palestine using veiled analogies that Westerners, Israelites, and the international community as a whole would understand. A great example of how this might be done is in Dune by Frank Herbert, where nomadic tribes on a resource rich dessert world seek to rid their world of exploitive overseers.
Off-world colonization is also the ultimate form of self-determination and independence, where landless refugees claim their own homelands without interference from earth governments. Peoples like the Kurds can leave Earth and escape persecution, as African Americans did in Bradbury’s Martian Chronicles. Any nationalist author can use this technique to envision their own future nation with minimal controversy.
Leaving Earth also presents new problems for hypothetical future Muslims. It is somewhat humorous to surmise how one can kneel and pray in a zero-gravity environment. Also, direction of prayer is defiantly an issue in space, as the direction Mecca becomes indistinguishable from Earth, which itself gets lost on the sun’s glare, which eventually becomes lost in the galactic spiral, becoming little more than a vector. Issues of time are also important, because other worlds have different length days and years, challenges few western authors have attempted to address. Another issue is that of the Hajj or the pilgrimage to Mecca: would light-years of separation make this Pillar of Islam inconsequential, make those who still manage it much higher in status, or effectively prohibit off-world colonization? To say nothing of new Meccas…

Consciousness
Sci-fi also allows the most flexibility when tampering with the concept of the mind and consciousness. Of course, the exploration of the implications of artificial intelligence is paramount in regards to a post-colonial exploration of identity. The idea of combining theocratic guidelines for life with computer programming is rarely touched upon in sci-fi literature, but would be a tantalizing subject for Muslim authors to tackle. Also the idea for mind transference from one body to another is an old one, as is the idea of digital reincarnation, but both could present interesting takes if authors tackle these issues.

Gender Modification
Muslim feminists have a great opportunity to advance their cause using science fiction. The easiest means of doing this are to play with proportions, and have stories that wipe out most of the men or women. Fictionalized gender imbalances can play havoc in science fiction worlds, just as understudied imbalances do in the real world. Other methods of playing with sex and sexuality are featured in Samuel R. Delaney’s Trouble on Triton, where not only sexual orientations are reprogrammable, but sex changes are easily performed. Such a book would have scandalous repercussions if released in the Islamic world, where they are just starting to reexamine the traditional views of gender and sexuality.
And of course the use of sapient non-humans is the best opening for feminists to lay out their case for reexamining the current gender arrangement. The most intriguing means to do this is via stories like Octavia Butler’s Lilith’s Brood, where aliens with very different notions of sexuality not only disturb the surviving humans on a post-apocalyptic world, but also force changes to the very nature of interactions between the human sexes.

Aliens
It is the subject of aliens that are the most important reason Islam needs science fiction. For with aliens the most important and disturbing aspect of post-colonialism can be addressed: hybridity. Again, Lilith’s Brood addresses this issue head on half-human/half-alien hybrids that struggle to find their place in xenophobic human societies. Half-human aliens are excellent allegories for many middle-easterners, with identities split between something old and something new.
Hybridity can also be showcased when exploring the idea of aliens converting to Islam. This idea has very serious ramifications, especially if the religion is modified in the translation. The most disturbing idea, however, is the potential mixture of Islam with alien religions, especially when it begins to pull away humans. The analogy of course is the Baha’i and other faiths which combine Islamic and other elements in a new form, which are not tolerated very well in modern Islamic society.
Domination by aliens is also a great way for potential authors to write their own experiences in forms westerners will understand. Stories like H.G. Wells’ War of the Worlds are prime examples of the colonization experience, and will do a great deal to spread understanding of the Middle Eastern experiences with Europeans. One prime example may be drawn form the experience of Iraqi’s long violent history with the U.K., highlighted especially well in Young’s Postcolonialism- A Very Short Introduction. However, more passive colonization like the overlords from Arthur C. Clark’s Childhood’s End might be a much more enlightening read, as the justifications of the resistance are very analogous to the modern world and much less understood by western audiences.


In summary, modern Muslims need science fiction to not only enlighten the world with their own points of view about postcolonial realties, but also to pave the way for the ethics and modalities of the future of Islamic civilizations. Science fiction will enable Islam to change from looking back and idealizing the past to looking ahead and working towards a brighter future and hopefully enable the breaking down the conceptions of the ‘other’ that they and the west have mutually built around the other, and unite as human beings against our galactic overlords and set out to conquer the universe together.

Future American Citizenship

Social Citizenship as a concept is almost totally absent in America today. Many Western democracies have accepted the premise that public welfare is a central component to citizenship, but something about American political realities have prevented a similar understanding. However, there may be a way to incorporate the important concepts of social citizenship in such a way that will not offend American sensibilities.

Section 1.
First off, Desmond S. King & Jeremy Waldron endorse nationwide welfare as a component of citizenship for a multitude of reasons in their article “Citizenship, Social Citizenship and Welfare Provision”. They define social citizenship as “more than a simple safety-net; it refers to the universal provision of education, health, social security and welfare benefits (financed through a system of redistributive taxation) available as attributes of citizenship” (418) available to everybody. Social citizenship’s significance is reducing economic influence and social status while enhancing other aspects of citizenship: “securing basic social standards does in fact promote the existence and exercise of other citizen rights” (420) by giving citizens an informed voice, indirectly providing them with time to participate, promoting community identity and a sense of belonging, and fulfilling already established social contracts as in the U.K.
By “providing minimum standards in these areas the state offsets the vagaries of market processes and corrects the gross inequalities of distribution arising from the market” (419) and reduces the punishment of economic failure, something the American public is less than enthusiastic about. This economic inequality has understandably undesirable political entanglements, because ideally “no one must be rich enough to be able to purchase the dependence of another, and none poor enough to be bought in that way…. a citizen should be the one who is in a position to bring his or her own judgment to public issues” (427) and be independent. Economic inequality is also destabilizing in a society, especially in a democracy, because “hungry people must not be let loose in the political forum, for their needs will impel them to make demands that subvert and short-circuit the leisurely course of citizens’ deliberations” (429) and upset the balance of the entire political structure.
Originally, citizens under the Hellenistic republican model “could not act as citizens at all, or could not expect to act well in the political sphere and to make adequate decisions, unless some attention was paid to matters of their wealth, their well-being and their social and economic status” (426). The original Greek citizens had all the petty details taken care for them by their numerous family members and servants, allowing them to dedicate their waking hours to being active participants in the governance of the city-states. This freedom of time was essential to the very concept of citizenship, indeed it was a prerequisite. Obviously, this ideal cannot be justifiably replicated in modern times, but the principal still holds. Citizenship requires a certain amount of freedom from immediate and demanding commitments; be they economic, familial, or otherwise… so that civic duties may be carried out without influence or distraction by trifle economic realities. To further emphasize the importance of equality, the authors quote Marshall who says that social services provide “a general enrichment of the concrete substance of civilized life, a general reduction of risk and insecurity, an equalization between the more and the less fortunate at all levels” (423) and elevate lifestyles across the board without implementing the restrictive social systems of the ancients.
Social services are catalyst for the other essential components of citizenship, maximizing the potential implementation of rights and duties. King and Waldron use education as an example, not only because it contributes “to a person’s own well-being, free education is a social good; in its contribution to her or his political status and capabilities, it is a political right and, indeed, a political duty” (420). Social services prepare and enable citizens to exercise their political rights with informed choices, speak and with minimal influence by others, and lead fully active and healthy lives in their communities.
King and Waldron, when speaking of Britain, argue that “welfare guarantees have been established in this society (for whatever reason) to the claim that they are now part of what we understand by citizenship” (432). Oddly, this is a conservative argument, that the status quo should not be changed abruptly because of tradition. This expectation of welfare provisions is now taken for granted, and “people are willing to take much greater risks when they know that there is a safety net” (434), and adjusted their behaviors accordingly. Because large amount of planning and expectations have hinged upon these public institutions, to drastically change them overnight would be a violation against British citizens and a breaking of a social contract with the government. Any drastic changes would have to be slowly phased in to minimize disruptions and make citizens feel that government is upholding its end of the bargain.

Section 2.
Nancy Fraser and Linda Gordon examine the American political climate in their article “Contract versus Charity: Why Is There No Social Citizenship in the United States?”. In the contemporary United States “the word public is often pejorative” (114) and the conceptions of “welfare are so negative weak and degraded that ‘social citizenship’ here sounds almost oxymoronic” because of the association with people of low civic status.
The American emphasis on civil citizenship overshadows social citizenship entirely, as citizens “pride themselves on a commitment to civil liberties and civil rights” (114) and the attempts to make all citizens equal in the eyes of the law. In fact, “U.S. thinking about social provision has been shaped largely by images drawn from civil citizenship, especially images of contract” (114-115) with the reciprocal exchange and absence of entitlement that contractual agreements bring to mind. In a world of “discrete contractual exchanges of equivalents” (115), the conception of charity arose as freely giving goods or services with no-strings-attached, completely non-contractual. Fraser and Gordon maintain that conception of social citizenship is obscured by the ideas that financial interactions between people are either in the form of contractual exchanges or in the form of charitable gift-giving, and this mindset and language has prevented the idea of welfare rights from taking hold.
The problem is the destruction of the idea of entitlement: “No descent welfare policy can emerge without a vision of honorable entitlement for those who require help” (115). The United States does not recognize this concept, in large part because of its historical lack of aristocracy, considerable work ethic, and the enshrinement of only civic and political rights in the founding documents like the Constitution, especially in regards to property rights. The closest conception to entitlement in the American psyche is the former slave system in the south, where slaves were entitled by their masters to food and shelter. The only other analogue seems to be family life, where ‘dependents’ are entitled to a considerable amount until they are set loose upon the world. All other forms of material gain have fallen into the contract-or-charity dichotomy.
The conception of welfare in the presence of this dichotomy results in the conceptions that either people invest in a system and later get it back (ala Social Security) or “public assistance, where they have no such right, since they are thought to ‘get something for nothing’” (115). So, hostility exists towards the idea of social citizenship because of “the idea that welfare recipients are getting something for nothing while others must work, hence that they are violating standards of equal exchange” (117) and welfare becomes in essence forced charity, or as King & Waldron put it “compulsory charity” (417) The modern conception of charity is as “a pure, unilateral gift, on which the recipient had no clam and for which the donor had no obligation” (123); in fact the recipient was stigmatized for giving nothing back and the donor exalted for requiring nothing in return. Forced charity legitimizes inadequacy and takes away all of the esteem and credit of voluntarily sacrificing, hence the unwillingness to adopt the idea in American society.

Section 3.
Now for the tricky part: how to incorporate welfare provisions into the American citizen identity? The answer is easy: don’t… at least not in commonly understood manner. Social citizenship as currently understood will not be adopted by the American public anytime soon, due to the reasons above. There is too much of a perception of government ineptitude and inefficiency (not unjustified) for welfare to be entitled to all citizens. Not only that, but there is a proud culture and tradition of private charitable organizations in the United States that would be profoundly undermined if social citizenship were enacted, and these charities are far more flexible, reactive, and innovative than public programs can ever hope to be.
Mainly, the problem is taxes. Most Americans don’t like paying taxes, and recoil in horror at the proportionately higher rates that European countries are contributing. Americans see poor quality public services and see them as a waste of money, which leads to under-funding and becomes a self-reinforcing cycle. American emphasis on freedom includes freedom from excessive taxation, and the freedom to choose politicians who promise to lower said taxes. Any proposed solution will have to take this into account.
Then there is the problem of passivity that some argue social citizenship encourages. The argument of recipients being dependant spawning welfare queens is an old one, but in all likelihood many people would be satisfied with the minimum standard of living, becoming less likely to try and improve themselves. This perception, no matter its basis in reality, is too well ingrained for Americans to rapidly accept permanent, unlimited social citizenship entitlements. Passivity is also a risk on the other end of the scale, as paying taxes may be seen completing one’s civic duty and totally fulfilling social obligations. This passivity, the idea that everything else can be taken care of by somebody who is paid to do it, encourages bureaucratic specialization and diminishes all other aspects of citizenship.
So, what welfare provisions are attainable and compatible with American ideals as well as social citizenship? Refer to the old adage: think of the children. They are both future citizens as well as dependants, surely the most deserving of the ideals of social citizenship, indeed usually the targets. Programs demanding ever-increasing high minimum standards of education are hard to disagree with. Creating the civic duty of educating the next generation either publicly, privately, or whatever, would enhance all other aspects of citizenship by giving future citizens intelligent contributions to public policy, future means of supporting themselves, and a community based responsibility that spans the private lives of all procreating adults. This aspect of social citizenship is already well established in America, without stigma, and needs to become a prime focus involving the majority of citizens.
Next to implement would be the right to health, entitling the future adult citizen the healthiest intact body attainable. This would prevent a lifetime of difficulties later on, and is therefore economically justifiable as well as the smart thing to do. Vaccines and other public health requirements have already been institutionalized with minimal outcry, but need to be expanded to ensure the maximized survival, health, and development of the youth into adulthood and citizenship. Also in this component is the food and nutritional needs of the young, slightly dangerous due to fears of overpopulation, but absolutely essential to health. Making eating vegetables part of one’s civic duty seems somewhat ironic, but very practical.
This next welfare provision will easily be the most controversial: that of providing a large, one-time entitlement of tens of thousands of dollars to young adults upon attaining citizenship. Instead of guaranteeing a lifetime minimal standard of living, which Americans would oppose, providing the money upfront allows the new citizens to apply their education for anything they see fit. The one-time entitlement can be used to drive the consumer economy, saved and used slowly over a lifetime, invested in creative and hopefully profitable ways, used for further education, or given away by the wealthy or pious. This is the perfect union of American ingenuity and the idea of social citizenship: maximizing the choice and freedom of the individual while equalizing the distribution of wealth without creating lifetime dependants.
Now that all the needs of the upcoming citizens have been taken care of, what of the worse off of the adult citizens? The American intolerance towards entitlement already established, some public help along these lines should be maintained and expanded. Minimum wages should be connected to inflation and otherwise left alone. Free vaccines and other preventive health measures should be provided to minimize costs further on. The right to cheap public transportation should be written into law so people can explore opportunities everywhere. Service in the military, in whatever form, should be open to everybody as a means of employment. And of course private assistance from family and charities should also be encouraged as a duty not enforced by law but by public sentiment.
Also, don’t forget the impact that having the educational, nutritional, and health care needs of the young provided for takes a great deal of pressure off of the public. Adoption as a practice is certainly much less of a burden, as is the strain of losing ones job or spouse. In fact the whole focus of social citizenship lands squarely on where it belongs: preparing a temporary class of dependants for the duties and responsibilities of citizenship. This touches the lives of everyone while they’re young and anyone involved in raising a child. The number people contributing financially to the system will always be larger than the recipients (barring unprecedented population growth or disaster). And everyone will have a decent chance at success, which is the whole point of social citizenship.

Conclusion
Social citizenship is an important component missing in American politics. The need for education, healthcare, and financial assistance is paramount to the practice of the rights and duties of citizenship. The American obsession with contractual and charity-based economy transactions needs to be adjusted to reemphasize the entitlements of children by adults, perhaps along the lines of nation-wide greater familial responsibilities. Social citizenship can best be adopted by the American public when it focuses on the one universally accepted dependant population of minors, and gives them the best tools available to become healthy, informed, and entrepreneurial adults committed to raising the next generation.

Works Cited




King, Desmond S. Waldron, Jeremy. “Citizenship, Social Citizenship and the
Defence of Welfare Provision” British Journal of Political Science, Vol.18, No.4


Fraser, Nancy. Gordon, Linda. “Contract versus Charity: Why Is There
No Social Citizenship in the United States?” The Citizenship Debate: a reader

Crazy Scheme #47

I have this crazy idea that the Unided States should keep expanding its number of state, because our system is one of the least terrible in the world, and because the more states we have the fewer potential enemies we have. Ultimately I'd like to see the UN replaced by the United States of the World.

So, I've come upon this idea that the next state (the 51st) should be our strongest ally in the world: England!

http://www.bbc.co.uk/dna/actionnetwork/G1772

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/51st_state#United_Kingdom

Oh, the ultimate irony of absorbing our former colonial masters into our union. Notice how I said England, not Brittain or the United Kingdom. First off, swallowing the whole population as one state would drastically rewrite the House of Reps. And by first taking England as the 51st state, the option is then given to Scotland to also join or gain its independence. Same to Wales, Northern Ireland, et cetera.

Think about it. Brittain doesn't really want to be part of the European Union, and already fights beside the US in practically every fight we pick. I'm sure they'd love the chance to actually vote and help determine the politics and direction the US takes. Depending on how it works out, the monarchy may end up being officially desolved.

With the absorbtion of the head of the Commonwealth, all of the current and former colonies would also be invited. All of them speak english to one degree or another, and are culturally very similar to America already. Obviously, Canada is the next most obvious, with no real distinctions anymore without the UK affiliation. And Quebec can gain its independence if the rest goes with US. One less border to worry about.

Australia is also a close millitary ally, and probibly would also like more say in American politics as well. Probiby to be split into half a dozen states, but we could absorb it all as its only the size of Texas or NY in population.

New Zealand is also the next natural choice as part of the Commonwealth and close ally of Australia.

Bahamas, Belize, and so on. Countries on the world island of Afro-Eurasia proper should come last, with the most military and political difficulties. Absorbing India would have immense consequences. Probibly best to tackle spanish speaking South America first.


So there you have it, a plan for world domination with minimal bloodshed, and maximum cultural compatability. Actually sounds plausible, don't it?



Lurker
(Moving, moving)

Congressional district reforms

I can't stand congressional districts. They're completely arbitrary, subject to gerryandering and biased rearrangements every 10 years, require plurality vote for reelection, and are accountable only a small fraction of the state.


So, I propose the following reforms:

Have all the districts merge so every congressman is voted statewide.
Voters are given as many votes as there are congressional seats.
Voters distribute all their votes between the various candidates as they see fit, up to the total.

Top candidates get the seats (7 seats, top seven win). This puts all the congressmen in competition with one another, and allows third party candidates to scrape up enough votes statewide to have a decent chance.

Trying to think of a way to incorporate political party voting, but the percentages and cuttoff points seem arbitrary and open to corruption. More to think on.



Lurker

Self-Determination

One of my fundamental beliefs that drives my poltical ideology is that of self-determination. This is a very dangerous and very American ideal because it makes the assertion that people should be able to pursue their own destinies with the least amount of interference from governments, parents, other people, and maybe even economics.

This applies on both an individual level as well as internationally. I have no problem with independence movements as long as they are democratic. If Quebec, Scottland, Palestine, Kurdistan, Taiwan, or Texas were able to get a majority of its population to vote for independance, I'd be all for supporting them, even millitarily.

The American Civil War would still be a tough case using this ideal, because while the Confederate states chose to leave, slavery goes completely against the idea of self-determination. I'd probibly still have invaded and emancipated the slaves, but I don't think I would've forced the confederacy to rejoin the union. But I digress.

On a less grand scale, I'm all for issues like school vouchers, legal immigration, and things like that. Oddly the environmental issue kindof fits in this catagory, with people having a right to clean air and the like.

I'm also against religeous indoctrination (though not moral) of children, because they aren't old enough to fully grasp the concepts. I would probibly push the the confirmation dates up to the age of adulthood, but since religions are unregulated I'm not sure how to enforce that.

On the individual level, I'm all for people getting the full rights of citizenship earlier, like 17 or whenever they graduate from school, when enthusiasm is still pretty high and the mind is mature enough nowadays to make rational decions (not that they always will). So lower all the drinking and gambling ages and legalize everything for adults . But since tatoos and piercings are permanent and the effects of drugs on youths are very damaging, I would heavily enforce these prohibitions until the age of consent, because future adults deserves to have their naturally developed bodies to do with as they see fit. I still remember my sister screaming when she got her ears pierced when she was way too young. This would end contraversial practices such as circumcision and drugging kids with ritalin and other actions with long-term consequences that only the future adult should make.

I'm still working out the abortion angle, but right now it would be free and universal availability of the "morning-after pill" to prevent implantation and give women full short-term control. Successfull implantation implies consent and the woman should carry the baby to term and give it up to adoption if she doesn't want to keep it.




Lurker
(must create Revolutionary Party)

A planet by any other name....

Those of you who know me are expecting me to comment on the Pluto planet "demotion" fiasco. I actually commented on this whole issue of planethood way back in last September (check out the archives!).

I liked the original idea of calling a planet anything massive enough to make itself round and reinstating Ceres into the planet pantheon. However, I'm a minority of one when I say I think JUPITER, SATURN, URANUS, and NEPTUNE should be stripped of their planetary status. They're gas giants. If you can't land on it it's not a planet in my book.

I also didn't really like the idea that the object has to be dominant in it's region (which is what demoted Pluto and quashed Ceres' chances again) or the fact that it has to be orbiting a star (which screws up the status of exoplanets and massive objects like Titan and Earth's moon Luna).

I DO like the fact that astronomers are trying to sub-catagorized the idea of planets. Personally, I think they should use and expand on the Star Trek classifications, since a majority of them are Trekkies anyway, but thats just me.

So, here are what I consider to be the 'planets' of the Sol system:
Earth / Luna
Venus
Mars
Mercury
'Xena' 2003 UB₃₁₃
Pluto / * Charon
'Santa' 2003 EL₆₁
90377 Sedna
50000 Quaoar
1 Ceres

Planets of the Jupiter (Jovian) system:
* Ganymede
* Callisto
* Io
* Europa

Planets of the Saturn (Saturnian?) system:
* Titan
* Rhea
* Iapetus
* Dione

Planets of the Uranus styem:
* Titania
* Oberon
* Ariel
* Umbriel

Planet of the Neptune system:
* Triton


There we go. The Solar system has 8 planets plus 2 double-planets, and 4 sub-systems with four planets each (except Neptune, it only has one) giving us a grand total of 25 at the moment.

Sounds way more complex and terribly unlikely at the moment, but it gives the solar system a grand scope of uncharted mystery, don't it?



Lurker
(Must take over space program)

Zee Plan

During my party last week I made an anouncement: I will be taking one last semester of school as an undergraduate. I'll be taking at least 6 credit hours, and probibly doing 12 just for the heck of it.

Now my appartment contract runs out on Halloween, six weeks prior to the end of said semester. So I'm going to have to find some sort of alternate housing plan or perhaps get an extention on the lease.

Also, I think I'm going to get a job. This may be shocking to hear, as I've been a full time student for about a year now. The reasons are mostly financial, but if I'm graduating I want to have the jump into the formal job market a little less jolting. I don't know where I'll be working yet, but I'm thinking of going back to my prior place of employment or working on campus.


So, by the end of the year, I'll have graduaduated with both my degrees, be homeless, have some $ saved up (if I don't use too much to go see girlfriend), my Dad'll be back from Iraq, and maybe I'll have advanced another degree in Judo. Busy year.

After that, I'm moving. Out of state. To parts unknown. I'm going to try to con my way into graduate school to get my masters degree. If that doesn't work (or get's vetoed by GF), I'll still be moving to start my career someplace. Maybe Washington DC or LA or wherever I can find a job that helps me 'save the world' and still gives me $.


So, thats the plan. I should probibly get a more permanent means of trasportation too.


Lurker

Why we're in Iraq

The Middle East sucks. It's hot, arid, and quite inhospitable in parts. Its full of corrupt governmental leadership with no real democratic proces to remove those governments from power. Not only that, but the region is experiencing a population boom (due to uneducated women) and consequently high unemployment for youths. The religeon and culture focuses agression away from internal stresses and instead on external infidels. Combined with a Middle-ages mindset where the afterlife more important than life and charity economics fostering competition between extremist islamist groups, and you've got a very nasty situation.

So, you need a paradigm shift, where peoples ideas about government and religion are radically adjusted to reflect a new reality. You need tolerance and hope.

Iraq was our big shot at pulling this off. It was ruled by a non-theocracic dictatorship with no real allies, no country would really stand in the way of overthrowing the government. Iraq was fairly technologically advanced, with an educated population, and the highest profile females in the middle east. It also had sizable populations of both branches of Islam, sunni and shiia, as well as a sizable ethnic minority, the Kurds. If there was any place in the middle east to quickly foster a democratic movement Iraq was it.


Buuuut.... It's not working very well. Saddam wasn't oppressive enough to quell all the tribal, ethnic, and religeous rivalries... so the country seems to be sliding in the direction of Yugoslavia. Even worse for the Iraqi's: all the muslim extremists are heading there in hopes of getting Americans, which is good for us in that they're fighting there rather than here but it sucks for them.

So the US is kind of stuck: do we stick it out and help the Iraqi's thru this or do we pull out and hope the violence decreases in our absence? Oddly, in a civil war our presence or absense is almost irrelevant. Bottom line: the US should not leave until exiting makes the situation better than our presence. Since this won't be the case for quite some time, we should remain until that qualification is met, reguardless of the circumstances.



Lurker

Language code in progress

Here is my work-in-progress language/alphabet I call Zeroplus (because the last symbol looks like a zero with a plus sign).

Two hundred and fifty-six symbols in total, encompasing the sixtyish phonetic sounds, numbers, punctuation, mathematical/logic symbols, and most common words and concepts. Not everything is asigned though, still working on that part.

The whole purpose of this is trying to make a universal written language. The current alphabet has ambigous pronounciation, so Zeroplus is going to be very precise. By covering the most common words and concepts in language using a few symbols (or combination of symbols, still working on that too), people can put down their ideas in symbols and be understood, reguardless of what spoken language they use.

Also its purpose is to speed up communication. Typing is never quite as fast as speaking, but by making a messege more compact with fewer symbols and less ambiguity, communication will be much better.


So here it is, one of my many, many side projects....



Lurker
(of course, system excellent for encoding too...)

New Post!

Wow, sorry for the lapse there. I've been busy with finals, traveling out of state, seeing my Dad during his two week break from Iraq, and summer school. Yeesh.

Lets see, there've been several potential topics percalating in my mind in the ensuing time. I wrote a paper on why India should invade North Korea (earn international respect and scare the heck out of Pakistan). I'm a month a way from being done with my two degrees (holding a graduation party the first weekend of August!). I'm contmeplating about whether to continue school, work, or volunteer and if I should move to do so (suggestions and contacts welcome!).

So, yeah... lots of things to talk about...


Lurker
(misses girlfriend)

New Voting System

I wrote a 15 page paper on political voting systems and accountability this last weekend. I didn't find one that really held incumbants to maximum level of accountability, so I'm designing my own system here.

Alright, the first step is a strait up reelect or remove vote for incumbants. If an incumbant fails to get at least 50% then they are removed from office.

Now for the interesting part. Voters choose wether or not to keep their guy in office. Then, no matter which they chose, they vote for which political party/parties they want to get the seat if the guy is kicked out. They just pick the party, not the individual candidate, they want to get the seat.

And they may pick more or one. I'm proposing giving each voter to get a small number of votes, like ten, to distribute however they wish between the parties. If they want to give them all to one party, fine. Distribute between a few, fine. Give 'em to all but one to act as a spoiler, fine. Whichever party has the highest # of votes, then their candidate gets the office.

I also wants to run the primaries at exactly the same time! Voters fill out the main ballot with all their choices, and they also get one party ballot to pick their guy.

This would have the effect of having all the candidates of a party running against the incumbant
while promiting themselves. They would'nt want to attack others running in for their party nominantion for fear of getting fewer votes.

The party of the incumbant also holds its primary, but the incumbant is excluded from running. The party will promote thier guy "just in case" the incumbant is booted.


So thats the system. I think this will make elections much more accountable against incumbants, so if they screw up everyone will point it out and run against them!




Lurker
(Politics is fun!)

Re-editing Lord of the Rings

Finally! I've found a way to remake the Lord of the Rings trilogy more like the book version! I won't be able to put in Tom Bombadil, but i can take out alot of the fluff Peter Jackson put in!

Let me start by saying I own all three extended editions. But with me knowing little about how to capture video, I downloaded copies of the movies (which I already own) in AVI form.

But, Windows Movie Maker wouldn't recognize the codecs, and wouldn't let me down load them.

So, I searched the internet and downloaded many, many codecs. I think the key one was DivX. I'm not sure, I don't want to uninstall anything to find out.

Anyway, I'm currently working my way up the movie timeline. I'm not yet to Rivendell. I've dramatically shortened the party scene, and took out the prologue (i'm moving it to a better place, trust me). And I've already stolen a scene from TTT and used it so far. This is going to be so cool!

So all you LOTR fans and potential movie editors out there, it is possible! My goal is to trim down the whole trilogy to under 8 hours. I think it can be done and be much closer to the book version than Peter Jackson. We'll see!


HAHAHAHA!




Lurker

Ice Age Map

I want to own a globe of the world as it looked during the last ice age: significant glaciers, lower sea levels, radically different coastlines. The world of the previous age of mankind, where most of our history occured and little save cave paintings record it.

Just think for a minute what the world would look like. Would the Gulf of Mexico be an inland sea? How far south would the glaciers reach for the North American interior? What drowned lands would then be above sea level? Would the Black Sea (or even the Mediteranian for that matter) connect to the oceans? Would the deserts of our day be the forrests of previous era?

And would this global map look at all familiar?

Would we find lands now reduced to fiction and legend?


Any help, insight, research, or opinions would be apreciated....


Lurker

Atlantis in The Odyssey

For those of you who don't know what the heck I'm talking about go read the Odyssey:
http://www.sacred-texts.com/cla/homer/ody/index.htm

And the part of the Dialogues of Plato about Atlantis:
http://www.sacred-texts.com/atl/critias.txt

With those bits of info out of the way, here's my 'grade A' paper for my classical literature class. Sorry about the �'s.


Homer�s Odyssey told of the godlike, sea-fairing Phaeacians who lived on the remote isle of Scher�a. As the setting for seven books of the Odyssey, Homer devoted almost as many scenes to this lost idyllic paradise as he did to Ithaca. Given their advanced seafaring technology, their physical remoteness, and their close relationship with the Greek god Poseidon, one cannot help but compare the Phaeacians to another lost advanced island-nation� Atlantis.
Odysseus�s first glimpse of Scher�a from afar, which looked �like a shield on the misty sea,� (Book V, line 281) was comparable to the plain Plato described as �smooth and even, and of an oblong shape� (Plato). He had great trouble making landfall due to the �jutting cliffs,� very similar to Atlantis where �the banks were raised considerably above the water�. He eventually made landfall at the broad mouth of a river, of which Atlantis had several, unlike most Aegean islands.
Odysseus�s first encounter with the culture of the Phaeacians was with Nausicaa, daughter to the king Alcinous. Her description of the lifestyle of the island gave a picture of �security, ease, and elegance of Phaeacian life� (Dimock, 1989). Indeed Homer depicted various scenes featuring locals involve feasting, giving gifts, dancing, singing, and playing sports. Citizens of Atlantis were said to have had more restraint, and �thinking lightly of the possession of gold and other property� and that �they possessed true and in every way great spirits, uniting gentleness with wisdom�. Regardless, both societies were presented as the epitome of culture and as virtual utopias.
The origin of the people on Scher�a was very similar to that of Atlantis, where �Poseidon, receiving for his lot the island of Atlantis, begat children by a mortal woman, and settled them in a part of the island� (Plato). In the Odyssey it was revealed that �Nausithoos, the king who brought the Phaeacians to this remote island� was a �child of Poseidon and Periboia� a mortal (Dimock, 1989). There were differences between the stories, Plato named the girl Cleito, but the similarities were uncanny. Phaeacians were constantly referred to �distant relatives� to the Greek gods and called �kin� just as the Atlanteans are themselves described to have been of �divine nature� due to their ancestor Poseidon.
The Isle of Scher�a was very remote. It took Odysseus eighteen days to reach from Calypso�s Isle by raft. Being so far removed from Greece, their concept of geography was understandably very different. �No place can have seemed more central than the island of Euboia� to the Greeks, which the Phaeacian sailors claimed was the most distant land known (Dimock, 1989). The only hint of location in the Atlantis text is the mention of the island being �outside the Pillars of Heracles� thought to refer to the Atlantic instead of the Mediterranean, certainly far enough removed to justify this altered outlook.
But the speed at which the Phaeacians traversed this distance was unprecedented in its day. The ships described by the Odyssey are practically magical in their abilities: �Phaeacian ships do not have pilots, nor steering oars, as other ships have. They know on their own their passengers� thoughts� (VIII, 603). �Their ships are very fast, fast as a flying bird, or even a thought� (VII, 37-38). Few details are given about Atlantis� ships save that they have twelve hundred in their navy and many goods were transported domestically and from the �foreign cities over which they held sway�.
Some of the most impressive features of Scher�a were her developed harbors. Odysseus �marveled at the harbors and the shapely ships, at the meeting grounds and the long walls capped with palisades� (VII, 47). Massive harbors and extensive waterworks were also hallmarks of the Atlantean infrastructure, albeit with far more allusions to channels and bridges.
The palace of Alcinous surpasses all other mortal structures of the time. Every surface was coated in bronze, silver, or gold. It was filled with priceless godly artwork, glorious furniture, and fifty highly skilled slaves. The courtyard orchard has multiple varieties of fruit that �Never Perishes nor fail, summer or winter� (VII, 125). Two springs run in this courtyard, one to water the crops and the other for public drinking, whereas the Critias has �two springs of water from beneath the earth, one of warm water and the other of cold, and making every variety of food to spring up abundantly from the soil�. Both the Odyssey and the Critias both went to great lengths to describe the bounty and fertility of their respective islands, contrasting greatly to most of Greece. Both describe endless groves, incredible varieties of fruits and game, and cultivation aided by two divinely created springs which only further enhanced the fertility of the land.
The Phaeacians, while peaceful, are no strangers to war. The servant �Eurymedusa had come from Apeire in the curved ships, long ago, and had been chosen from the spoils of war for Alcinous� (VII, 7). This is a reference to a land lost to time, but along with hinted conflicts with the Cyclops and the ferocious speed of their navy, they could have been a truly powerful offensive country. Of course, the military forces described by Critias are far more menacing, with thousands of chariots and an entire warrior class.
The Phaeacians have a prophecy foretelling that Poseidon would �encircle our city within a mountain� (VIII, 615) for giving safe transport to passengers. This is eerily similar to the geography of Atlantis formed when Poseidon �inclosed [sic] the hill in which she [Cleito] dwelt all round, making alternate zones of sea and land larger and smaller, encircling one another�. Or perhaps their prophesy referred to the sinking of the island by an earthquake, the ultimate end of Atlantis that buried her forever.
The Phaeacians prepared to sacrifice bulls to placate the ocean god, just as the Kings of Atlantis sacrificed bulls to at their temple of Poseidon. In fact, both islands describe their temples to Poseidon being centermost in their respective cities, and the most highly decorated. Even their ceremonial equipment was similar when Plato tells of how �they drew from the bowl in golden cups and [of] pouring a libation on the fire� for Poseidon, while the king Alcinous gave Odysseus a similarly described �beautiful cup, pure gold, to remember me by all of his days as he pours wine to Zeus and the other gods� (VIII, 468).
There were other details that wouldn�t quite fit. �Twelve honored kings are lord in Phaeacia� with Alcinous being the 13th (VIII, 422), while Atlantis had ten kings, whose lines started from 5 pairs of male twins. The few names and genealogies given don�t work out either. Neither do the timelines for both stories, with Atlantis being at least nine thousand years ago and Homer�s works less than half that.
But both islands have the same otherworldly feel to them, of some high civilization that was lost to the mists of time and only barely recorded, reduced to the status of a myth. �Neither Homer no the oldest member of his audience can have met in real life a race of people for whom reality was suspended to the degree that it was for the Phaeacians. Therefore, if they ever existed, they must have disappeared long ago� (Dimock, 1989). Both were fertile Utopian societies with advanced seafaring capabilities, descended from Poseidon and ultimately destroyed for displeasing him, reduced to mere echoes across time.

Works Cited


Dimock, George E. The Unity of the Odyssey The University of Massachusetts Press, 1989

Homer. Odyssey. Translation by Stanly Lombardo, Hackett Publishing Co, 2000

Plato, Critias. translated by Benjamin Jowett
http://www.sacred-texts.com/atl/critias.txt

United Nations replacement

First off, it should be democracies only. If a government is not voted in by frequent and fair elections, then it shouldn't be alowed to join.

That said, I would have it grow organically like the EU or the United States, voting to uphold some universal values and not to war with member states.

Primary concerns would be trade, environment, conflict resolution, space exploration, and other concerns of a global nature. And thats it. At every turn power must be minimized, capped, and otherwise stunted, for there is no escape from a runaway world government. No place to run.

The New United Nations (NUN) would function like a super-congress, with representatives elected at large from the regions they hail from. There should be no presidential position, for this would be way too dangerous.

I would also put it near the middle east, close conection between Africa and Europe and Asia, because that is where most of the action is.


Lurker
(eh, I'll finish this later)

Tuesdays no more.

I want to change one of the most influential social structures in our society, so fundamental hardly anyone even thinks about it anymore.

The Calender.

More specifically, the number of days in a week.

Curently, the number of days in a week is seven, a prime number difficult to divide. The concept of a 7 day week is a hold over from the lunar calender days, with about 7 days between new and quarter and full moons. Heck, our current weekday names are an amalgam of Norse (Thor's Day, Woden's Day) and other european cultures! Very archaic.

I propose changing the number of days in the week to 6, by dropping Tuesday. I have nothing against that day in particular, but it is statistically the least likely to be somebody's favorite day of the week (and why would it?).

And ta-da! We have a week easily evenly divided in halves and thirds. I did toy with the idea of making a twelve day week, but I think thats messing with peoples concepts of time a little too much.

With a 6 day week, we have 5 weeks a month (6*5=30). And twelve times 30 is 360! A very neat and useful figure. However, we still have those pesky 5 and a quarter days in the year. Lets steal a page from Tolkien and have those days be extra floating holidays, outside the week formula and no body works on them. Now I'm torn whether to have that be the current nonproductive week between Christmas and New Years, or sprinkle them across the calender year.

Now the whole point of this is efficiency. and relaxation. Currently there are 52 weeks and 104 weekend days in the year. My idea would make 60 weeks and 120 weekends in the year! Or, even morefun, we can have jobs where people work 3 days on and 3 off, enabling the widened economic possibilites of regular threeday weekends and enabling someone else to work your exact position while you are gone, simultaneously increasing job output and quality of live. Even better, peoples weekends in whatever form can be staggered, enabling people on their time off to have access to the goods and services of those still working. The economic potentials are enormous!

A couple of problems might be legal documents like the constitution which refer to tuesdays. I'm fine with removing a day with less impact, the concept still holds. Another problem is inertia and practical problems with changing the week, like calenders and watches and computer programs and the like. No prob, we make a date set in stone like 2020, and give people plenty of notice.


So much to do and so little time...


Lurker