End Game for Ender's Game?

I first heard of Orson Scott Card in 1977. That fall an acquaintance of mine came into the office of the magazine I worked on in college and announced that he'd had his first story published in the August 1977 issue of the science fiction magazine Analog. It was a novelette called "Ender's Game."

I congratulated my friend, who we'll call "Plucky." I remembered the story and had been unimpressed: it was a kid story, and I hated kid stories. It was typical adolescent wish fulfillment, which I found uninteresting and unmemorable. Not wanting to offend, I wracked my brain to find something inoffensive to say and came up with, "Wasn't that published under the name Orson Scott Card?"

Yes, Plucky said, and he launched into the story of how he came up with the pseudonym. He'd met with Ben Bova (the editor of the magazine at the time) in the Analog offices in New York. Bova reached into a desk drawer and pulled out some cards and pieced the name together. Voila! Instant pen name.

Several months later the nominations for the 1978 Hugo Awards were published in Locus magazine, along with pictures of the authors. It turned out Plucky had lied about the whole thing: he wasn't Orson Scott Card. When I mentioned this story to others who knew him they said, "That's why his nickname is Plucky."

"Ender's Game" didn't win the Hugo that year. But the novelization did in 1986. It was optioned by various movie studios, and finally Ender's Game is a major motion picture, starring Harrison Ford, to be released this fall.

Which has caused Orson Scott Card to reappear on my radar. It turns out that Card is a Mormon and staunch opponent of gay marriage. He's been railing against homosexuality for years. And now people who object to Card's never-ending vilification of the gay and lesbian community are calling for a boycott of his movie. Card's response:

By Monday evening, Mr. Card was issuing a public plea for tolerance of his views — “with the recent Supreme Court ruling, the gay marriage issue becomes moot,” he noted in a statement to the Entertainment Weekly Web site — in response to a planned boycott that had burst into prominence only the day before, when The Huffington Post published an article about a Web site called Skipendersgame.com.

Card sure does have a lot of gall. In an impassioned diatribe against gay marriage, abortion, no-fault divorce, adultery, and RICO laws applied to anti-abortion terrorists, he wrote in 2008:

Because when government is the enemy of marriage, then the people who are actually creating successful marriages have no choice but to change governments, by whatever means is made possible or necessary.

It sure does sound like Card was calling for the violent overthrow of the government should gay marriage be legalized. It was just fine for Card and the Mormons to spend millions of dollars to write their intolerance of gays and lesbians into the California constitution. But now that Card stands to lose millions of dollars if the movie flops, he pleads for tolerance of his reactionary views. Because five geezers in Washington made the very core of his moral and religious beliefs moot.

But everything about the Mormon high-horse about homosexuality rankles: a major pillar of Card's Deseret diatribe was his impassioned defense of monogamy. But the very basis of the Mormon faith is polygamy. Many Mormons still practice polygamy, with some taking child brides and going to jail for it. There are even TV shows about it.

Polygamy is required to maximize the number of descendants males can have so that they can achieve maximum godhood. More descendants = more power. The Mormon Church was forced to redact all that when the big bad federal government made polygamy illegal. But that's why Mormons have scoured genealogical records the world over for people to baptize, going so far as to posthumously baptize Jews killed in concentration camps. Why? So that Mormons can get their own planets to be gods of. According to the Mormons, God was just a regular Joe from a planet named Kolob. We can all be gods (well, at least us men) if we knock up enough women. Screwing your way to godhood!

Now that sounds like the plot of another award-winning science fiction adolescent wish-fulfillment novel.

Will He Get Any Credit?

Through the first eight months of the budget year, the deficit has totaled $509.8 billion, according to the Treasury Department. That's nearly $400 billion lower than the same period last year.In fact, the federal government on Thursday reported a rare surplus of $116.5 billion in June, the largest for a single month in five years. The gain kept the nation on track for its lowest annual deficit in five years. I guess that's what happens when reduced spending and increase taxes. Huh...

The deficit reached a record $1.41 trillion in budget year 2009, which began four months before Obama took office.The president promised that he would cut the deficit n half during his first term. That didn't happen largely because of the economic downward spiral as well as GOP adolescent foot stomping and stubbornness (we can't let him succeed.....wahhhhhh!!). But now he has achieved his goal and fulfilled his promise.

I wonder if he will get any credit for it....

Great Photo

For those of you who are old enough to remember...

Dynamite Hill

I was at a Fourth of July picnic when, out of the blue, two middle-aged middle-class whites just started talking about how they didn't understand why blacks think society owes them so much. They thought that blacks should just suck it up and work harder to make a better life. One of the conversationalists is an unabashed liberal on most issues, and the other an archconservative.

I pointed out that poverty and lack of education are the real causes of social immobility. American slaves were bought and sold like cattle, frequently forbidden to learn to read, to marry, and even keep their own children. It takes generations to overcome that kind of history. When blacks finally got schools, they were separate and vastly inferior (something that still hasn't been satisfactorily addressed). And these days poor whites, especially in the south, are falling prey to out-of-wedlock childbirth, divorce and other historically black social disorders at ever increasing rates. Poverty and ignorance, not ethnicity, keeps people down.

A couple days later I heard a story about "Dynamite Hill" on the radio. This was a neighborhood in Birmingham, Alabama. From the 1940s to the 1960s blacks who did better would buy houses on the "wrong" side of the street. They were greeted by bullets and bombs.

So, when blacks in Birmingham did exactly what my white friends insisted they should do -- work hard, earn more and improve their lives -- they were greeted by terrorist death threats.

Some of that ended 50 years ago with voting rights and affirmative action legislation (which was just overturned by the Supreme Court). But just because you outlaw legal discrimination doesn't mean that the people who threw the bombs had changed their hearts and minds.

The people who committed those acts of terrorism did so with the tacit consent of the police. In many cases they were the police. Since then blacks have lived among people who had once tried to kill them. How easy was it for them to get jobs from those people at decent wages? To get a loan from a bank run by a bomber? To buy a house through a real estate agency owned by one of the shooters? To get fair treatment at a traffic stop from the cop who looked the other way when white men threw bombs through their front window?

Most of those terrorists are dead now, fifty years on. But their sons and grandsons have inherited their businesses. How many have also inherited their fathers' hatred and racism?

White Southerners are still carping about the Civil War (they call it the War of Northern Aggression), which ended almost 150 years ago. Yet somehow my friends think blacks should forget the institutionalized racism and police-condoned terrorism that occurred within their own lifetimes, at exactly the same time the hard-won legal protections of the civil rights era are being completely dismantled by the Supreme Court.

At Least It Makes Sense To Them

You Are Not That Conservative (or liberal for that matter)

Tom Jacobs has a great piece over at Pacific Standard that analyzes a recent study on just how conservative and liberal people are these days.

In three experiments described in the journal Social Psychological and Personality Science, researchers found “a systematic bias among young adults to perceive themselves as somewhat more conservative than they actually are.”

And the reasoning behind this is simply that the word "conservative" brands better than the world liberal. I've often thought this because when you really start asking people, who self-identify as conservative, where they stand on issues, they really aren't that far right at all. They just don't like the word liberal and are embarrassed to label themselves as such. This is largely due to the immensely successful job the Right has done at negatively marketing that word.

In the first group, “liberal Democrats significantly overestimated their liberalism,” the researchers report. “However, moderate Democrats, Independents, and Republicans significantly underestimated their liberalism.” A very similar pattern was found in the other groups, with an underestimation of one’s liberalism “more pronounced” among self-described conservatives.

Here is the quiz that was taken. How did you do?

Back To Benghazi

You don't hear much about Benghazi these days as all of the so-called "scandals" have fizzled (except inside the bubble, of course, where they are alive and well). In fact, I think most people missed this book when it came out last February as it didn't fit in with all the established narratives. From the review...

They also state that President Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton learned of the situation too late to do anything about it. I’ve dealt with the State Department and Department of Defense bureaucracies long enough to believe that. They also point out that the consulate in Benghazi was not a true consulate, but a temporary facility. Again, I buy that at face value. In addition, the unselfish heroism of CIA contractors in giving their lives to attempt to save other Americans is not disputable. They were true American heroes. The controversy is that the contractors initiated the rescue mission from the CIA compound despite the guidance of the CIA boss. 

Apparently the book lays quite a bit of the blame over security failures at the feet of the CIA. This is likely why we have not heard much about went wrong at the compound and who was responsible for both the attack and the intelligence. The CIA is very secretive to begin with and are not very keen to mea culpa.

It might be years before we find out what exactly was going on at Benghazi and with the new revelations that Ambassador Stevens may have turned down calls for extra security himself, it may even be more muddy.

No Waving it Around!

Yep

Yes, Ma'am!

To Keystone or Not Keystone

President Obama's recent remarks on climate change contained a comment about the heavily politicized Keystone Pipeline project that many found surprising. Mr. Obama said he would approve the remaining portion of the 1,700-mile pipeline from Alberta to Gulf Coast refineries only if it would not “significantly exacerbate” the problem of carbon pollution. He added that the pipeline’s net effects on the climate would be “absolutely critical” to his decision whether to allow it to proceed.

What's interesting about the debate over this project is that it doesn't really take the usually left-right argument. There are people on the left that support it for the increase in jobs as well as people who are against it for environmental concerns. There are people on the right that support it for oil profits as well as people that are against it for reasons of eminent domain. It's a mixed bag.

It's also important to note that the State Department’s most recent environmental assessment of Keystone concluded that the pipeline would not result in a major increase in carbon emissions. The report said that the oil would be extracted whether the pipeline was built or not, and that it could be transported by other, more carbon-intensive means like trucks or rail cars in the absence of Keystone.

Critics say that is an unrealistic conclusion, citing studies saying Canada does not currently have the rail or highway capacity to move the 830,000 barrels of oil a day that Keystone XL is designed to carry. Factcheck has a great piece on how this surplus in oil will actually be a surplus on top of surplus. Just because we build more mailboxes doesn't mean we are going to get more mail.

Given all of this, it's easy to see that there is much to weigh here before making a final decision. I don't envy the president and think it prudent to not rush in like an (ahem) adolescent and support this just CUZ IT'S OIL AND MONEY AND SHIT, FUCKERS!! At the same time, I don't think having a knee jerk reaction against does anyone any good either.

A thorough cost-benefit analysis is the order of the day and I will reserve my judgement until that process plays out.

The Puppet Masters

Amen.

Worldscope: Brazil

It's interesting to note how protests get started. Sometimes they can be something as innocuous as the closing of a park as in Turkey. Other times they can be something huge like the clear intent of theocracy as in Egypt. With the protests in Brazil, it started as public transit fare increases. Now, it has ballooned into a referendum on corruption, high cost of living, the precarious public transport system, Brazil’s red tape, politicians in general, the absurd amounts of taxpayers’ money being spent to host the FIFA World Cup next year and against more, much more.

Brazil’s president, Dilma Rousseff has attempted to placate the protesters across the country (now in well over 300 cities) by offering a plan to curb corruption, invest in public transit, and have a more fiscally responsible government. The people think the steps are nice but they aren't satisfied yet. Her approval rating has sunk 27% points. Further, the people that are protesting overwhelmingly back no political party and are highly educated. Many are young and first time protesters. That means Rousseff is going to have to be more aggressive if she is going to save her government.

It's amazing to me that there are so many places in the world now where people simply are not going to put up with bullshit any longer. I wonder if we will start having more active involvement here in our own country. Can we get off the couch to seriously affect change as they are in these other countries?

Happy 4th of July!!!

I guess the spirit of freedom is alive and well all over the world today, especially in Egypt. 

WOW!

Good Move

The Obama administration has delayed the employer mandate contained the Affordable Care Act for one year in order for smaller businesses to have more time to prepare for the changeover. Even though the adolescents on the Right are calling this a "victory" and are vowing to now repeal the law (the 38th time is the charm:)), I think it's a good move.

It demonstrates that the president is sympathetic to the concerns of small business in a time of economic recovery. This was a legitimate beef with the law. How does an employer of 51 people end up covering everyone without causing problems on his or her margin? Now, they have some more time to sort it out. We are also going to be able to see just how many small businesses that are around this size do not offer health care to their employees. That is also a good thing.

Republicans are vowing to use the ACA as a major talking point in 2014. I hope they do. If I were a voter, I'd wonder what else they were doing aside from voting to repeal Obamacare.

Right-Wing Group Simply Lied on Tax Forms

A right-wing group that ran attack ads simply lied on its IRS forms:

The group that put out the mailer [that attacked Texas Democrat Pete Gallego], A Better America Now, reported to the Federal Election Commission it had spent about $65,000 for the mailer and TV advertising in the hard-fought race to represent Texas’ 23rd district.

But in a tax return recently filed with the IRS, the group claimed it did not spend any money at all on “direct or indirect political campaign activities.”

This group admitted to the left hand of government that it was running political ads, and then lied to the right hand of government and said it wasn't.

Maybe this is why these Tea Party groups got additional scrutiny from the IRS.

Worldscope: Turkey

I've always been fascinated by Turkey. A country with a rich history steeped in a magnificent culture. I think it was the transformation from being the center of all the religious wars in the world to a secular country. Sadly, in 2013, that has now changed.

Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan has been moving the country into a more religiously conservative direction since the Islamist-leaning Justice and Development Party (AKP) took power more than a decade ago. What began on May 28th as a simple "occupy" protest against the closing of Gezi Park (a highly symbolic and historic park in Istanbul) has now mushroomed into large protests against current Turkish leaders all over the county with thousands injured due to police overreaction.

Gezi stands as a monument to modernity in Turkey and the plan to demolish it was angered the secularists in the country and is seen as a move backwards. Indeed, the government plans to build an Ottoman style barracks and mosque on the site so it's understandable that the people are upset. Like the Egyptians protesting in Cairo, these young Turks are young, secular-minded women students to football fans, from the urban middle class to "the typical urban poor youth", according to the BBC's Paul Mason, who has been reporting from Istanbul.

I find it very heartening that the people in Turkey and Egypt are not putting up with any sort of shift  to religious conservatism. They want democracy, liberty and freedom and they are getting it, interestingly, with the help of social media. Prime Minister Erdogan has been attempting to shut down Twitter feeds, calling them "a scourge." He, like many other leaders trying exert more control on their people, are stymied by American technology. Love it!

BBC has a nice Q & A on the situation in Turkey. Check it out!

The Rich Getting Richer off the Poor

An article in The New York Times describes how many employers pay workers with payroll cards instead of cash or paper paycheck:

[...] Employees can use these cards, which work like debit cards, at an A.T.M. to withdraw their pay.

But in the overwhelming majority of cases, using the card involves a fee. And those fees can quickly add up: one provider, for example, charges $1.75 to make a withdrawal from most A.T.M.’s, $2.95 for a paper statement and $6 to replace a card. Some users even have to pay $7 inactivity fees for not using their cards.

Not only do these people get screwed for taking their money out, they also get screwed for saving their money!

These fees can take such a big bite out of paychecks that some employees end up making less than the minimum wage once the charges are taken into account, according to interviews with consumer lawyers, employees, and state and federal regulators.

Devonte Yates, 21, who earns $7.25 an hour working a drive-through station at a McDonald’s in Milwaukee, says he spends $40 to $50 a month on fees associated with his JPMorgan Chase payroll card.

Many of the people who are paid with these cards are at the bottom of the economic ladder: they work part-time for McDonalds, Wal-Mart, Taco Bell, and so on.

The banks get employers to coerce employees into using the cards by giving them kickbacks:

In the case of the New York City Housing Authority, it stands to receive a dollar for every employee it signs up to Citibank’s payroll cards, according to a contract reviewed by The New York Times.

The richest banks in the country are using their economic muscle to bribe employers into participating in a scam to nickel-and-dime the poorest people in the country to the tune of hundreds of billions of dollars a year.

Just another example of the rich getting richer off the poor.

Worldscope: Egypt

Over the next few days, I'm going to be highlighting areas of the world that have been bustling with activity-both good and bad. First up today is Egypt. Take a glance over in the news feeds to the right of this post and   take note of the latest events. In a nutshell, Egyptians are having buyer's remorse.

The people are not happy with the Muslim Brotherhood and have attacked and looted their headquarters. Eight people died in a night of fighting around the Brotherhood building, where guards fired on youths hurling rocks and fire bombs. A Brotherhood official said two of its members were injured. As of right now, the streets are quiet as another wave of protests gears up.

At issue is the leadership of President Mohamed Morsi. The opposition does not trust the head of the Islamist movement, which critics accuse of using a series of electoral victories to monopolize power. They want a total reset of the rules of a democracy imperfectly worked out over the past two years. Morsi became Egypt's first freely elected president a year ago when he won 51 percent of the vote. But Saad said Morsi has damaged Egypt so much in one year, that it was impossible to wait another three to vote him out of office. "They want to kill us," said another man when asked why he wanted to break into the headquarters. "They're choking us."

This shift towards theocracy is playing out in other areas of the world such as Turkey and the people are not happy about  it. The United States has urged Morsi and his supporters to share power with the secular opposition. Thus far, he has refused and Egypt is essentially right back where it was two years ago-a bloviating strong man wielding the power of the state.

One would think he would learn his lesson after what happened to Hosni Muburak but Morsi has adopted many of the same tactics and discourse. Keep an eye on the headlines over the next few days as the situation in Cairo will likely grow more destabilized.