INTERSTELLAR TRAVEL, GUNS, AND D.C. STATEHOOD

Some stuff to get off my chest...

INTERSTELLAR TRAVEL

Check out a guy named Cameron Smith on YouTube. 

Here's a link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CprziVZHqBk 

Settle in. It's over an hour long and he's not the most dynamic speaker. But if you want to think seriously about how the human race might colonize planets in solar systems other than our own, this guy has done the initial serious thinking for you.

 

Some of my favorite science fiction stories have been concerned with generation ships, interstellar conveyances that recognize that sub-light travel between solar systems requires planning for, at the very least, hundreds of years of travel. These works of fiction vary widely thematically. Many end badly or, if they end well, are initially presented to the reader as being a failed project that required saving. Regardless, I think that one of the reasons that I enjoy these stories is that, in order to be serious, they have to take the time to create scenarios that explain the effect on culture of living as isolated populations of humans in a hostile environment. 

There are, of course, differences within the genre. In Rendezvous With Rama by Arthur C. Clark, we're not talking about humans at all, but rather an apparently uninhabited generation ship from an alien system that enters our solar system, slingshots around our sun, and leaves for interstellar space without seeming to pay too much attention to either our solar system or the humans that were attempting to explore it. Cities in Flight by James Blish avoids the question of evolving cultures almost entirely by simply putting bubbles around Earth cities and having them leave Earth and bop around space as a backdrop for relatively mundane economic and political story lines. Mundane for hard science fiction fans, anyway. Perhaps the first book that I read that attempts to seriously approach the question of culture on a generation ship is Starship by Brian W, Aldiss. Oddly enough, it's not the work on which the Jefferson Starship based their first album, but my love of acid rock is another story entirely.

Back to Cameron Smith. This guy has given serious thought to a project that he admits is a century away from viability. Given the requirements of establishing a human outpost without the prospect of communication with the home world more quickly than at intervals of light years apart, there is much to consider, from genetic diversity to language and governance and viewscapes and so much more. 

 

Did you know that on a space station with low air pressure and high oxygen content, humans lose the ability to whistle?

 

Smith posits that in order to ensure success, a generation ship should carry 40,000 humans plus all of the necessary plants and animals to approximate human cultural norms. Because, he says, that's one of the main reasons to embark on such an adventure, to preserve human culture. As I said, he's not a very dynamic speaker, but I find the subject matter fascinating. See if you do, too.

GUNS

People who don't see the logic of banning high caliber, rapid firing, large magazine rifles are not the type of people to be swayed by logical argument. I therefore try to use their own twisted logic against them. I tell them that their two most sacred mantras in favor of their idea of Second Amendment rights are actually the most persuasive arguments for gun control.

 

They say: Guns don't kill people. People kill people.

I say: Then explain to me as if we're in kindergarten why you want to make it easier for people who want to kill people to get their hands on the means to kill as many people as they could possibly want to kill. I'll wait.

They say: If you criminalize guns, only criminals will have them.

I say: Good, then the alienated teenager won't have one and the deranged fired worker won't have one and the abusive husband won't have one and toddlers won't have one to accidentally kill a playmate with. If criminals are the only ones with guns, we'll all be safer. Real criminals don't shoot up suburban malls for no good reason. There's no money in it.

There's a logical reason that stricter gun control can be demonstrated to be Constitutional, too. If you happen to be debating about the subject with someone who might be susceptible to a flash of reasonableness now and then, try this...

 

They say: My Second Amendment rights are enshrined in the Constitution.

You say: Explain to me, like we were in kindergarten, why the right to keep and bear arms is not a part of the First Amendment. Let me suggest that the Founders didn't find it necessary to define or add modifiers to First Amendment rights. Freedom of Speech. of Press. of Religion. By right. Every other right does need and receive appropriate modification. No billeting troops in private homes EXCEPT in times of war. No searches and seizures WITHOUT a warrant. Trials for major crimes can ONLY take place AFTER an indictment. And that's why that pesky phrase about militias is in the Second. It was meant to be there. It modifies the right. Otherwise, that right would be in the First, unmodified. Do you think that the Founders just threw the phrase about militias in the Second for the fun of it? Show me another place in the Constitution where they did something like that. I'll wait.

The Second guarantees that the federal government will not prevent states from forming militias. That was a non controversial statement not so long ago. I believe that it is, to coin a phrase, Original Intent.

D.C STATEHOOD

Speaking of the Constitution, these days it seems as though the Constitution is like the Bible. The folks who talk about it loudest are folks who haven't read it or don't want you to read it. 

The Constitution did not create Washington, D.C. The Constitution didn't even require that a federal district be created that would be the seat of American government. The Constitution says that Congress MAY create a federal district. MAY isn't SHALL. It was up to Congress. 

 

And Congress did. And once Congress had, the Constitution says that Congress has EXCLUSIVE authority over ALL of the District. Article 1, Section 8 doesn't require D.C. and does not prohibit Congress from using its legislative authority to make that district a state. That’s what Congress does...legislate. And what Congress giveth, Congress can taketh away.

 

GUNS IN AMERICA

Another month. Another mass shooting. What's going on? What do Americans think about it? How do Americans propose to deal with the situation?

We need more guns, Some People say. More good people with guns will stop more of the bad people with guns. Odd, isn't it, that even with 300,000,000 guns in the US, it seems as though the good people are never around while the bad people are shooting? Wait a minute, Some People say. Good guys shot the bad guy at that Texas church, didn't they? Well, yeah. After the bad guy killed 26, wounded 20 more, and decided to leave the church. OK, Some People say. That means we need more guns in churches. And that gives you a clue about the brand of Christianity espoused by Some People. Beat your swords into AK-47s.

OK, Some People say. How about the latest shooting in California? California has strict gun laws. That didn't stop the shooter. But Some People forget that California's gun laws are only as strict as the Supreme Court allows. And California is bordered by Arizona and Nevada, two of the least restrictive states in the country with no permits, no registration, and no magazine restrictions.

That's really the story of the gun culture in the US. In order to justify their inordinate, almost religious love of firearms, the opponents of proposals to register and/or ban certain types of firearms and to prohibit certain classes of people from ownership are forced to wander farther and farther afield from logic and reason. They will say that the rifles of Revolutionary times were as far advanced from their predecessors as an assault rifle is from 18th Century technology and that the Founders understood this. As if the Founders had anticipated a guy walking into a church with a weapon capable of killing an entire congregation in the time that it would have taken them to fire one bullet and maybe have time to reload fire one more. They will say that the Second Amendment guarantees an absolute right to firearm ownership when every other freedom guaranteed under the Bill of Rights has been limited in one way or another from the beginning and over time as circumstances have changed. 

When it's pointed out that cars are registered, inspected, and insured and their drivers tested and licensed, Some People reply that we don't blame cars when there are fatal accidents, we blame the driver. Why should guns be different? But guns are different. Guns are different because, when used as designed, cars are not deadly weapons. When guns are used as designed, people die. And the more guns that there are, the more that people die. The most recent studies show that for every one percent increase in gun ownership there is a 0.9 percent increase in the rate of deaths by firearm.

At this point, Some People start throwing out statistics of their own, demonstrating that Some People are the Same People who find statistical anomalies to demonstrate that global warming isn't really happening, much less that there is a degree of human liability. Some People insisted that global warming had paused since 1998, an outlier year that was hotter than blazes. At least, Some People were touting a global warming pause until the last four years proved to include three of the hottest ever recorded. Some People apparently do not live in Miami where downtown streets flood every time there's an onshore breeze at high tide. Some People apparently don't live in Houston where there have been twelve catastrophic flooding events in just the past three years.

Some People are like Those People who were tobacco executives and stood in front of Congress and raised their right hands and swore under oath that there was no proof that cigarettes cause cancer. 

It's time that we let Some People know that we're mad as hell and we're not going to take any more of their pious rantings. The Constitution is not a suicide pact. And it certainly wasn't meant to prevent us from considering the safety and well-being of our children who, by the way, are shooting each other with regularity because Some People can't keep their guns out of their children's hands.

My posts of a political nature are collected HERE.