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It's here, something called Service Nation.  Under the flowery well-meaning rhetoric on this site is a truly Orwellian world where what is "voluntary" is mandatory.  Slavery is Freedom.

Jim Lindgren, posting at the Volokh Conspiracy, lays out the new road to serfdom:

Under the medieval system in much of Europe, serfs or peasants owed obligations of actual physical labor (beyond military service) to their political overseers. As English liberties grew, this obligation of physical labor was replaced by the right to pay taxes instead, with the chief exception being obligations of military service for males. Free men were increasingly free to choose their line of work and pay their political overseers with money, rather than owing an obligation of service to whatever physical tasks happened to be thought important or profitable to the upper and the political classes.

Service Nation is an organization devoted to stripping away this bulwark of Anglo-American liberty, hoping by the year 2020 to require every young American man and woman to be drafted into either military or community service. Their more immediate goals include passing a National Service Act in 2009 (which would probably not require universal service).

But they do not even discuss the Constitutional Amendment that ought to be required before they can mandate community service and take away the hard-won Anglo-American liberty from involuntary servitude. The Constitution gives the Federal Government the power to raise a military, which in the 18th century contemplated an obligation of male citizens to serve in the military. In my opinion, the Constitution does not give the Federal Government the power to compel community service.

Let’s hope that the Supreme Court would not permit Service Nation's move backwards to a more feudal relationship between ordinary people and the people who govern them. One senses that de Toqueville understood American values of volunteerism and freedom of association much better than the people behind Service Nation, an understanding that was also concerned about the tyranny of the majority.

If they can ask for one year of "voluntary" service, why not two?  Three?  Five?  Ten?  A lifetime?  After all, what's the difference, really?

Voluntary service is a good idea.  Compelling it, or providing government "incentives" to "voluntarily" serve, is headed towards a place from which it took a Civil War to free ourselves--quite literally.

Primates are Not Monkeys, and Monkeys are Not Primates!

Something ScienceDaily is confused on, with it's article Female monkeys more dominant in groups with relatively more males.

Lemurs are Not Monkeys. They are Primates.

Photo credit: Wikipedia

Update:  Simians!  I meant Simians!

If you don't run a web site, this won't make much sense.  Actually, it doesn't make much sense to me, either.  Oh, well.

If you do run a web site though . . . here's something I saw on Winds of Change that seemed interesting.  It's billed "an experiment on blog diffusion."  So, I'm diffusing.  It's some wacky Harvard experiment, or something.  The fun is "beneath the fold" (or, click "read more.")

2:  Who's there?

1:  Barack Obama!

2:  That's Not Funny!

Ed.:  Actually, yes it is.

Related:  McCain, 71, nods off on 'Late Night with Conan'.

Both items noted, synchronistically adjacent to each other, on the, um, right wing ("we're CONSERVATIVES, dammit!") Free Republic.

I've spent an afternoon reading the July 2008 issue of Physics and Society--the one where, perhaps, the scientific community begins, ever so slowly, to inch away from jumping off of the political and economic cliff which is "anthropogenic global warming."

The paper by Lord Monckton (which, of course, the publication goes out of its way to say is not peer-reviewed) is of great interest, I think.  He raises a number of specific questions regarding the United Nations' IPCC political group's climate publications.  I've taken the liberty of copying the entire Discussion section of Monckton's paper, which you can read in the Read More section below.  I look forward to discussion, refutation, or validation of Monckton's observations (as opposed to arguments from authority focusing on his lack of a relevant Ph.D., that is.)

Two cool movies from NASA:

First, a red-blue-green ("true color") movie.

Next, an infrared-green-blue view.

Very neat to see the moon cross the Earth's disk, from 30 million miles away.

"Tropes" are

devices and conventions that a writer can reasonably rely on as being present in the audience members' minds and expectations. On the whole, tropes are not clichés. The word clichéd means "stereotyped and trite." In other words, dull and uninteresting.

When you sit down to watch a fiction TV show (or, heck, a reality TV show for that matter) or you sit down with a good book, what plot elements make you happy, satisfied, what do you like to experience in a good work of fiction?

As I'm an aspiring fiction writer (science fiction and, perhaps, fantasy fiction, specifically) I have a list of tropes which I'm looking at incorporating.  I have two, perhaps three main fiction universes under development and for which I'm trying to write stories.

The first is called the "Guider Universe."  It's a science fiction story, a huge space opera spanning the entirety of human civilized life on Earth, and beyond. 

The second is tentatively named "U.S.S. Deadaliens" where this regular guy gets abducted by your stereotypical little Gray aliens, but wakes up on their ship to find all of the little gray guys mysteriously dead and actually kinda stinky, and the ship a barely functioning wreck. 

The third is a fantasy, based in the great magical city of Arapan (which might be familiar to you who, twenty to thirty years ago, played D&D with yours truly).  It's actually the least developed of the three fictional world concepts of mine, so far.  And, as a twist, it might actually turn out to be somewhere in the Guider Universe.  Or, possibly, all three of the storylines might somehow wind up being in the same fictional universe.  You just never know.

Anyway, I was thinking about what tropes I want to include in my stories, and which ones I'd just as soon avoid.  I decided to throw it open to you, the three readers of Medary.com, for comment and discussion.

Here's my incomplete list of tropes I plan to work with:

• Faster-than-light interstellar starflight
• Life is common in the Universe
• Ancient technology--exotic future physics/science unknown to current human science
• Evolution of humanity towards something better
• Humanity as a young upstart race among older, more powerful races in the galaxy
• Integration of humans with computing technology
• Use of genetic and nano-technology to lengthen life and enhance abilities of humans, animals, and aliens
• Fully intelligent, self-aware machines
• Aliens among us today and have been on Earth throughout human history
• Big starships/starship fleet battles
• Little guys vs. amoral/evil governments/aliens/bad guys
  
• Pre-starflight humans living elsewhere in the galaxy, with or without knowledge of Earth as their real origin

And here's the list of tropes that I currently wish to avoid:

• Time travel
• Alternate dimensions
• "Luke, I Am Your Father"
• "Ascension" into energy beings -- it's been done, and while I may do something similar, I want to avoid the glowing cloud-of-light, Human turns to energy-being-in-front-of-the-gaping-group-of-heroes type of Stargate SG-1 thing.
• Productive sex between alien species
• Intergalactic travel--the Milky Way galaxy is big enough for now, thanks.
• Cliched dwarf-elf-wizard Tolkien/D&D rip-off fantasy
• Humorless, overly serious writing...be serious but lightheartedly so...don't be a downer...should feel good after finishing the piece, not worse for doing so.

Agree?  Disagree?  Like something else, more, or different from your fiction?  Let me know--send me your favorite tropes!  Use the following electronic mail address (you'll have to type it into your mail program, I'm not providing a link 'cause I don't want to make it too easy for spammers:

This is, by the way, my preferred address for medary.com-oriented correspondence . . . if you want an account to post articles or comments here, or if you think you have an account here, or if I've previously told you you have an account here but have forgotten what it or the password is, you can contact me via this address--or my personal address which, if you need to know it, you already should have it.  Or if not, drop me a line at the medary address and we'll get synched up.

Let the fun begin!

U.S. Supreme Court rules, in unequivocal language, that Dick Heller must be issued a gun permit by the District of Columbia:

Assuming he is not disqualified from exercising his Second Amendment rights, the District MUST PERMIT Heller to register his handgun and must issue him a license to carry it in the home.

(Emphasis added.)

District of Columbia, dutifully submitting to the authority of the U.S. Supreme Court, promptly denies a gun permit to Dick Heller.

USA TODAY's Kevin Johnson reports that the District of Columbia refused this morning to register a handgun on behalf of the security guard whose legal challenge resulted in last month's landmark Supreme Court ruling on the Second Amendment.

Dick Heller was one of two applicants who were waiting at police headquarters when the doors opened to prospective gun owners at 7 a.m. ET. Officers wouldn't let him register a semi-automatic handgun because local laws still ban such weapons.

Wait, what?

What do you think "must permit Heller to register his handgun" is supposed to mean?  "Oh, sorry, Mr. Heller, not the handgun the Supreme Court was talking about . . . some OTHER handgun.  Yeah, that's the ticket!"

In case you're wondering, a "semi-automatic" weapon is one where a round is automatically chambered after the previous round is fired.  This is opposed to a single-fire weapon, where each round must be chambered (think of the ominous shink-shink of shotguns in an action movie) or a full-automatic weapon, where rounds are chambered and fired continuously when the trigger is pulled.  Most firearms in private use are semi-automatic.

A quick story, with the ring of truth, from the Mises Economics Blog:

While on an evening bike ride with my oldest son, we reminisced about one of the first government meetings we attended together -- an annexation hearing before our county commissioners. Looking back, we agreed that the meeting turned out to be an invaluable opportunity to witness government in action.

At the hearing, the attorney for the petitioner -- a single property owner seeking to be annexed by the local city -- presented first. The attorney stood at the podium holding a small folder. He began, "We present the completed application and forms as required by law. We believe that we have met all legal requirements. We therefore ask that you grant the petition as filed." He sat down.

Next, a long line formed to speak against the annexation. For the next hour, as the commissioners quietly watched, my son and I listened to folks demand a claim to the petitioner's property. Not one speaker questioned the legality of the petition. We left.

Days later, I read in the paper that the hearings were scheduled to continue for two weeks. In the end, the petition -- which everyone agreed was legal -- was denied.

This singular experience showed us that government is not based on laws, it is based on arbitrary power. And that ownership of property is a dead concept in these times of positive rights.

(Emphasis added.)

I'm reminded once again of the George Washington quote:

"Government is not reason, nor eloquence. It is force. And like fire, it is a dangerous servant and a fearsome master."

A quote which is not perhaps nearly as famous as it should be.  Elections are about who should be best entrusted to the gun of government force which is perpetually being held to your head.  Bear it in mind as you decide who you should vote for.

Pushing politics and religion aside, and pushing the science back to the front where it should be, The American Physical Society re-opens the question of anthropogenic global warming:

With this issue of Physics & Society, we kick off a debate concerning one of the main conclusions of the International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the UN body which, together with Al Gore, recently won the Nobel Prize for its work concerning climate change research. There is a considerable presence within the scientific community of people who do not agree with the IPCC conclusion that anthropogenic CO2 emissions are very probably likely to be primarily responsible for the global warming that has occurred since the Industrial Revolution. Since the correctness or fallacy of that conclusion has immense implications for public policy and for the future of the biosphere, we thought it appropriate to present a debate within the pages of P&S concerning that conclusion. This editor (JJM) invited several people to contribute articles that were either pro or con. Christopher  Monckton responded with this issue's article that argues against the correctness of the IPCC conclusion, and a pair from Cal Poly San Luis Obispo, David Hafemeister and Peter Schwartz, responded with this issue's article in favor of the IPCC conclusion. We, the editors of P&S, invite reasoned rebuttals from the authors as well as further contributions from the physics community. Please contact me (jjmarque@sbcglobal.net) if you wish to jump into this fray with comments or articles that are scientific in nature. However, we will not publish articles that are political or polemical in nature. Stick to the science! (JJM)

This is exactly what SHOULD be happening--what should have been happening for the past decade.  Vigorous, acrimonious, honest scientific debate, bringing the most talented scientific minds on Earth to bear on the subject.  Not global politicians and bigwig-wannabe's jetting to exotic locations to plan the world's economy, but scientists going at it tooth and nail on Internet forums and in scientific journals, hammering out exactly what it is we know, what we don't know, what we think we know that is wrong, and what at the last, everyone . . . EVERYONE can agree is actually so.

The topic is too important to leave to the politicians.  We KNOW where the politicians' interest lie . . . in more money and power arrogated to themselves, and to hell with everyone else.  I'd rather trust in scientists who hold to a higher standard--objective truth, proved through the scientific method.