An Informed Vote - What You Owe the Country

Some of you may be aware that there's this "election" thing coming up next Tuesday. It's kind of a big deal. Of course, some of you may *not* be aware of it, and that's actually kind of sad (unless you don't live in the US, of course, in which case it's semi-understandable).

Many people are out there encouraging people to vote. "Have your say!" they proclaim, trying to get as many people out there to vote. "You shouldn't complain about how things are going if you don't take the time to vote!" they also say.

While this is all well and good, I would add a caveat to all of that. Yes, voting is important. However, to me it's most important that your vote be an informed vote. Take the time to learn a little bit about the candidates and what they stand for. Listen to them; read about them. This applies whether it's a local election or an election for President.

(This is not a political blog, so I'm not going to advocate one way or the other. Those who know me know which way I lean, of course).

When you consider voting, you should ask yourself why you're voting for that candidate. If your reason boils down to "he's a great speaker!" or "I'd love to have a beer with him" or "he's so cool" or even "old white guys have to stick together," then I'd hazard to say that your vote is not an informed one.

It doesn't have to be a deep understanding of *all* the issues. It can even be one issue that you feel strongly about. At least it's an issue and not something frivolous, though I think that's not seeing the bigger picture if you do it that way. It doesn't even have to be a deep understanding of some of them, as long as it's at least somewhat of an understanding.

For instance, you don't have to have delved down deep enough to say "I'm not voting for Obama because he won't take a stance on how flying unicorns could help the Middle East situation."

But there should be something issue-oriented in there. There should be a reason you're voting for one candidate over the other that is more than something superficial. If you're not at least somewhat informed, I don't believe your vote is helping the country, whichever way you vote.

I would never go so far as to say that you don't have the *right* to vote if you're going to vote superficially. But I do think you owe it to your fellow citizens to have some reason. I would rather have 55% voter turnout where every voter is informed, than to have 85% turnout where most of them are of the "my guy's way cooler than the other guy!" variety.

So yes, get out and vote on Tuesday (if you haven't already). But before you do that, how about doing a little reading up on what's going on first?

Help keep the country from going deeper into the toilet. If the other guy wins (whoever your other guy is), it's already going to be heading down there anyway. You might as well know *why*.

Book Review - Last to Die by Tess Gerritsen

Those of you who know me or who have been reading my stuff for years know that I'm a big Tess Gerritsen fan. I've been a fan of hers ever since the site I review for, Curled Up With a Good Book, received her first five Rizzoli & Isles books. I took a chance and requested all five. If they had been clunkers, I would have been in a world of hurt.

Thankfully, they weren't, though. They were awesome. Luckily enough, Curled Up has received every book since then from the publisher, so I've been almost guaranteed some annual book goodness.

Last to Die is Gerritsen's latest Rizzoli & Isles book, and it's yet another winner.

My review is now up on Curled Up, so I encourage you to check it out.

From the review:

"Three teenagers have more than their new hormones in common: they have all survived the massacre of their parents and guardians. Twice. When Boston detective Jane Rizzoli is called to the horrific scene where young Teddy Clock's foster family has been wiped out, she knows that something is horribly wrong. The feeling is heightened when medical examiner Maura Isles discovers that there are two more children with similar backgrounds at a remote school in Maine called Evensong, a school that takes in children of violence and helps them cope with it. Is there a connection between them? Is there a single killer out there targeting them? For what purpose? Shadows of the past reach forward, forcing Jane and Maura to figure out what's going on before more people die."

Gerritsen's intricate plotting and wonderful character work shine through in this one. I love how she has subplots that carry through all of the books, so Rizzoli's family issues (to name just one thing) aren't resolved in a neat bow in every book. Isles is developing a maternal relationship with the young man who saved her life in Ice Cold.

If you're a fan of mysteries or thrillers, and you're not reading Tess Gerritsen, you should really rectify that soon.

Is venting online really a professionally good idea?

I think it's safe to say that none of us like criticism. If it's constructive criticism, we can accept it and use it to make ourselves perform better. But it still sucks to hear it.

When you get what seems to you to be unfair criticism, it must be very hard to bite your tongue and go forward with the "everyone's entitled to their opinion" attitude. It can be even harder when the criticism is on the Internet, where you feel just a little bit removed from everything even if the criticism isn't from some anonymous troll.

Is it really a good idea to respond to it, though? Other than a "thank you for your thoughts" or something like that? And if you do respond (say the person criticizing actually gets something factually wrong in the course of expressing their opinion), wouldn't it be a good idea to be professional about it?

If you're a volatile chef in a fancy-shmancy restaurant (yes, that is a cut above just a fancy restaurant), then the answer to that question is obviously "no."

According to the Telegraph newspaper in the UK, a Milan chef vented his wrath at what he thought was a stupid review by food blogger Samantha Wood of his new venture in Dubai.

Probably not a good idea.

"For more than a century, Giannino restaurant in Milan, with its three Michelin stars, has drawn the great and the good, with its rustic charm and sepia-tinted photographs. But when a British food blogger reviewed the restaurant's new offshoot in the newly-opened exclusive Meydan Beach Club on Dubai's Jumeirah Beach, she felt the full force of the Milan restaurant's chef, after complaining about the prices and service."

She thought it was vastly overpriced, may not have been authentic Italian food, and thought the prosecco wasn't served properly (and if you're wondering what the proper serving is for prosecco, or even what prosecco is, join the club!).

The chef, Andrea Brambilla, replied by telling her to put a condom on her tongue to "contain the orgasm of your ignorance".

Ouch! I don't think any of my book reviews have been met that harshly, though I sometimes wonder what Harry Turtledove would say if he ever read one of them.

Anyway, he proceeded to correct her on the correct way to serve prosecco (who knew?) and then vented about her reaction to the prices and whether some of the food was authentic.

Most of that was nice correction of fact, but then it turned ugly. I encourage you to go read the article for the full force.

Commenters on her post were appalled, of course, and the head of the restaurant said that "His opinions are his own and are in no way representative of our team."

Of course he'd say that. And it's probably true, too.

I just don't get these people. You're supposed to be a professional. There are paying customers out there who pay attention to you. Why would you be an asshole about something like this?

Authors have to put up with bad reviews all the time. Some of mine have been pretty scathing. I've never received an email from one complaining about what I said (or least nothing that was anger-filled like that). You're driving away business, and the Internet is forever.

Don't think you can just delete what you said and it will all go away. It's out there, and it's permanent.

I guess we all let things get away from us at times. It would just be nice if when that happened, we were far away from the keyboard.

Something tells me this guy has too much pride to apologize, but we'll see whether anything comes of it. This story is almost a week old, so maybe that's happened by now.

What do you think? Would seeing a reaction like this cause you to not patronize an establishment, even if it wasn't directed at you?

Star Trek: DS9 - Ep 1 - The Emissary

What a waste it seems sometimes that I have all seven seasons of Deep Space Nine on DVD but haven't watched them all again. It's my favourite of the Star Trek series, after all. So now that's going to change.

I remember when the first Deep Space Nine episode, “The Emissary,” came on to my screen. What a Trek concept! A station rather than a ship, a weird planet that we had never seen before (though we had seen a few of its inhabitants in The Next Generation). With a few beginning scenes, we are shown that the Bajoran religion is going to be a big part of the series. Religion? In a Trek series? Wow. Was this going to work? Within a few weeks, Deep Space Nine had become my favourite Trek series of the three (at the time). Gene Roddenberry had proclaimed that humanity has learned to get along, so there would be little to no conflict between fellow Starfleet officers. While this is quite idealistic, it doesn’t make for very good drama. The producers of Deep Space Nine got around that by making half of main cast aliens, with conflicting viewpoints. Yay, conflict!! And interesting conflict it was. These characters showed that they could be friends and loyal to each other, yet still argue and come at problems from different, often conflicting sides. 

All of these attributes are brilliantly shown in the premiere episode, “The Emissary.” The episode begins with a special FX extravaganza, featuring the Borg (led by a borg-ified Captain Jean-Luc Picard) attack on a bunch of Starfleet vessels at Wolf 359 (as seen in the Next Generation episode, “The Best of Both Worlds Part 2”). Commander Benjamin Sisko (Avery Brooks, who some of you may remember as Hawk from the Spenser for Hire series), first officer of the Saratoga, is one of the few remaining bridge crew after a direct hit to the bridge. He manages to get his son, Jake (Cirroc Lofton), out, but his wife, Jennifer (Felecia M. Bell), lies dead underneath the rubble in their quarters (which really makes you wonder about the logic of having civilians on Starfleet ships that are supposed to be going out into the dangers of the “unknown,” but that’s a rant for another series). As Ben and Jake’s escape pod moves away from the Saratoga, it explodes in a fireball, taking all of Sisko’s dreams with it. 

This sequence has some of the most amazing television special FX that I have seen that weren’t computer-generated. It also contains one flaw that runs throughout the entire seven-year run of the series. As much as I love Avery Brooks as Sisko, he can tend to overact some of the more emotional moments. This was one of them. As he has to be dragged away from his dying wife, I think it he could have saved her by chewing away the scenery wreckage that was on top of her. Thankfully, this bit of overacting only lasted for a few seconds, so we are saved. Until the next one, of course (and there would be many). 

Three years later, Sisko is assigned to command a space station orbiting the planet Bajor after it was abandoned by the Cardassians after sixty years of brutal occupation. Newly christened “Deep Space 9,” the station was a Cardassian mining station. Now, Sisko is charged with aiding the Bajorans in whatever way necessary to help guide them toward the ultimate goal: Federation membership. Sisko, however, doesn’t want to be here, and he blames Picard (Patrick Stewart) for his wife’s death. So to add the ultimate bit of salt into the wound, Picard is the one who gives Sisko the assignment. There is some nice tension between the two as Ben lets his disgust with Picard be known, and Picard lets him because he completely understands where Sisko is coming from. 


After visiting the Bajoran spiritual leader, Kai Opaka (Camille Saviola), Sisko is charged with finding the Celestial Temple before the Cardassians do. He is given an orb, one of the gifts from the Prophets (inhabitants of the Celestial Temple). The other 8 orbs have been captured by the Cardassians. After some extensive research by Dax (Terry Farrell), she and Sisko take a runabout to look for it. Instead, they find a stable wormhole, a passage that ends up in the Gamma Quadrant, more than 70,000 light years away from Deep Space 9 (wormholes are notoriously unstable and disappear as fast as they come, which makes this unique). Sisko meets some strange beings inside, aliens who do not live in linear time, seeing every moment the same as every other moment. They have no concept of past, future, death, life, or anything else. Can Sisko convince the wormhole aliens that humanity means them no harm? And can he do so before the Cardassians, convinced that he has discovered something important, reduce the station to molten metal? 

There are the obligatory introductory scenes, as with any series premiere. Relationships are established, characters are showcased and they tell us about themselves. One wonderful exception is Odo (Rene Auberjonois), who instead of telling us what he can do, shows us what he can do. We know nothing about him at the start, and when he stops a robbery on the Promenade, he uses his shape-shifting abilities to allow a weapon to pass right through his head. This was a much better introduction then most characters are given. One thing about the introductions that I really enjoyed (much better than Next Generation’s “Encounter at Farpoint”) is that while we are given some information on each of the characters, we don’t suffer from massive infodumps. We are allowed to get to know these characters over time, and are only given enough to make them interesting. 

Even better, most of the character information is doled out as part of the plot, or in natural conversation. The best example of this is Dr. Julian Bashir’s (Siddig El Fadil) first meeting with Major Kira (Nana Visitor). Bashir goes on and on about wanting to practice “frontier medicine” and how he had his choice of assignments but he wanted to be out in “the wilderness.” Since this happens to be Kira’s home, she sarcastically brings him down to earth. This shows Kira’s Bajoran pride as well as her abrasiveness. It also clearly shows Bashir’s arrogance and his inability to think before he says things sometimes. 

There are many other strengths here, most of which carry throughout the series. I loved the strong acting by the entire cast (bar Brooks’ occasional McScenery Meal). Especially notable is Marc Alaimo as Gul Dukat. Dukat becomes a recurring character in the series, and he more than earns it in this episode. He is the former prefect of the station, before the Cardassian withdrawal. He has one scene with Sisko, and it is crackling. Both Dukat and Sisko are hiding behind words, fencing fiercely (Dukat to find out what Sisko is up to with the orb and Sisko to deny him that knowledge). The dialogue is superb and Alaimo delivers it with an underlying menace beneath all the charm. 

There were two character aspects I didn’t like, one of them being acting based and one being writing based. First, Felecia Bell is pretty wooden as Jennifer Sisko. Sure, she has to be when she is a wormhole alien (they take on various aspects of Sisko’s past when they talk to him), but she’s equally wooden as Jennifer herself. There is little chemistry between Brooks and her, and I saw no reason why Ben would be attracted to her other than the fact that he stumbled onto her when she was lying face-down on a beach towel with her bikini top unfastened. 

Secondly, the good-bye scene between O’Brien (Colm Meaney) and Picard seemed very forced. They have served together for six years, and O’Brien really respects Picard. Yet other than Picard saying that he called down to the transporter room as if O’Brien were still the chief, there is no real personal connection between these two men. O’Brien doesn’t tell Picard that he respected him, or even that it was a pleasure serving under him. The words weren’t there, and Meaney and Stewart’s acting in the scene reflects that there is no real meat to it. I love Meaney’s acting, and he often ends up being the best actor on the show, but even he (along with a stellar actor in Stewart) couldn’t save this scene. It’s a shame, because it really served as a “changing of the guard,” much like Dr. McCoy’s appearance in “Encounter at Farpoint.” 

My final complaint, and one that brings this episode down to 4 stars, is the wormhole aliens themselves. It seemed like every time Sisko said something, they would respond with “What is this?” Sisko would mention “time,” and they would say “Time. What is this?” It got really annoying really fast. The aliens’ remoteness required a certain amount of wooden acting, but that part did become irritating as well. Brooks did his best with these scenes, but it was like playing tennis with the wall. Necessary, but not a lot of fun to watch. 

None of this prevents “The Emissary” from being the best Trek premiere up to that time (I thought Voyager’s “Caretaker” was better, though the series went downhill after that). It had a lot of interesting ideas, wonderful acting, the introducing of characters without the viewer being hit on the head with information, and enough tidbits to keep us watching subsequent episodes. It was also nice to see that the Bajoran religion would be a major part in the series, with everything we learned about it in this episode being intriguing. 

A great start to a great series.

Memorable Quote:

"Most people in my experience wouldn't know reason if it walked up and shook their hand. You can count Gul Dukat among them." - Odo

4 STARS

The Future of Magazines - Electronic?

Needless to say, none of these magazines are actually mine.

A long time ago, I used to be a magazine reader. I had three or four magazines that I received every month, and also one weekly magazine (Maclean's) that I inevitably fell behind on.

Which is one reason why I have slowed down extremely on my magazine-reading: they just started piling up, unread. Why spend the money on them, and waste the paper resources that you just have to throw in the recycle bin, when you're not going to read them?

So I slowly let them lapse. Maclean's was pretty much the last one, and I let that die about a year ago. The conservative magazine National Review subscription died a number of years ago, and I briefly flirted with reading the digital edition online at their site, but let that one lapse too.

Maclean's still sends me the occasional "we miss you!" email and letter, which bear an uncomfortable resemblance to most of my dating life when I was younger. You can almost smell the scent of desperation and neediness. "Please, come back! Our life is not complete without you in it!" Not creepy at all.

I mean the magazine, not me.

But I digress...

That is slowly changing, however. It's all because of my iPad. Most of my magazine reading time was when I was eating dinner, sitting on the couch, and it was hard to be able to see the text in the magazine as it draped over my leg. I constantly had to shift it, and the print was sometimes pretty small and hard to make out and it just became too much effort for what little I was getting out of it.

The iPad can just rest comfortably in the crook of my leg as it's crossed over, the bright screen illuminating all the words and turning the page consisting of a simple swipe from right to left (or left to right if I'm going backwards). I can increase the font size if I need to, but I haven't had to do that yet.

It's like a renaissance for me. I now subscribe to three magazines: National Review, Playstation: the Official Magazine, and Game Informer through the Apple Newsstand. The only paper magazine I subscribe to is Xbox: the Official Magazine, and that's only because they refused to transfer my print subscription to the electronic version. Once it expires next Summer, I'm letting it lapse and going digital. Needless to say, I'm two issues behind on that one.

You're hearing more and more how magazines are going digital-only. Newsweek did it a week or two ago. There have been more before, and there will be more as time goes on. I think between the ease of use and the extreme waste of paper, dead-tree magazines may be dying sooner rather than later. Sooner than books, anyway.

Magazines are ephemeral creatures. They are consumed very briefly and then they are thrown away. Hopefully in a recycling bin, but they are thrown away. Books, you can make the case for having them on your bookshelf, available for re-reading. Who's going to re-read a magazine, unless it's a magazine of stories or something? They are one-shots ready to be turfed as soon as they have been used.

Yes, there's still that tactile feeling of having something in your hand, but while that sentiment has been expressed lovingly by book aficionados about that 300-page conglomeration of paper and ink, has anybody ever said that about a magazine?

Probably not.

So I have joined the digital revolution when it comes to magazines. I can also say that I am totally caught up, and I usually am caught up within a week of getting the magazine (I haven't subscribed to a weekly yet, and probably won't, with National Review just being bi-weekly).

I have to say that it's a really nice feeling.

How about you? Do you buy magazines? Paper or electronic? Do you find yourself moving away from paper now?

Tell us what your magazine-buying and reading habits are.

Podcast Stuff - Ep 46 of Down the Hall

It's Halloween!!! Ok, in a few days, but this is our last episode before the holiday, so it's time for a scary good episode of Down the Hall!

Because you know you've missed it, right?

In this episode, Fiona and I talk about Halloween traditions and history. As well, I interviewed two graduates from the Master of Educational Technology program who were part of the Jamaican cohort of teachers who went through the program together. We talk about online learning, life as an international student in an online program, what they've done with their degree, and much more.

It's a fun episode, and I have to credit Fiona for making it even more fun than it already was. All of the sound effects and everything? All her idea. Thanks to my co-host for making it such an awesome episode!

Episode 46 can be found here.

Also, I realize that any who just follow my blog and nowhere else have missed a few episode too (the last one I posted on here was Episode 37). You can find all past episodes of Down the Hall here.

And why not "Like" us on Facebook too? Show us some love, eh?

A Triumphant Return - Blogging, Star Trek, and Others

Ok, not sure about triumphant, but guess what? I'm back!

Yeah, I know I went down to the corner store for some milk and, um, got lost. I ended up Brazil, had a harrowing journey down the Amazon (let's just say that thankfully, piranhas don't seem to find me very tasty), then I stumbled upon a seer in the Andes who placed his hands on my head, closed his eyes, scanned my aura, and told me that I was far from home.

Either he scanned my aura or he saw the Iowa State shirt that I was wearing. Come to think of it, he did seem a bit shady. But he did have tons of watches to buy! So I bought you one.

Yes, all of you.

So I finally made it home after a few months and, well, I don't know how to tell you this, but...I forgot the milk.

Sorry.

Anyway, now that I'm back, I intend to keep this blog going, and I've come up with some ways to do that. Here's what's going to be coming on the blog that will help me keep it regular (no, not that kind of regular, thank you very much).

First, I'm going to have some regular content that I can schedule well in advance, making sure that there is stuff coming down the pipeline that's not time-sensitive. Don't worry, I'll still post timely opinion pieces and other stuff like that which will be what some of you are coming back for. But the regular stuff will make sure that there's steady content even when I don't have anything else to say.

This content will include:

1)Star Trek episode reviews.

I have all seven seasons of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine on DVD sitting on my shelf. When I was reviewing for Epinions, I made it a goal to go through all of them and write reviews of the episodes. One of my favourite things when the episodes were fresh was reading the reviews of Timothy W. Lynch on Usenet. He reviewed every episode, and they were quite well done.

That inspired me, and I made it through quite a few episodes. But I stopped doing that.

I have a healthy backlog of these reviews, though, and I'm going to post them once or twice a week on here. These will be gussied up with pictures as well as edited in case there are any references that don't make sense now.

Of course, once I catch up, I will be doing original ones again.

2)Book Reviews

I've missed quite a number of book reviews in my absence, so I'll be posting the backlog periodically as well. I'm going to try and spread them out a bit, though, making sure that they last at least a little while.

I haven't decided yet, but I may also post some original book reviews here too. These would be ones where I didn't really have enough to say for a full review on Curled Up With a Good Book, but I do have a few thoughts. They probably won't be as formal as the other ones are. We'll see whether this happens, though. No guarantees on this front.

3) Anything else I can think of.

I haven't come up with anything to replace the "one-hit wonders" posts, and I'm not sure I want to do something that heavy right now. Yes, the posts were very funny (well, I thought so, anyway), but they were a lot of work! Not sure I want to do that again right now.

But I am open to suggestions on something that I can do, maybe on a weekly basis, that isn't quite that time-consuming. Maybe a weekly top 5 or something like that.

As I said, I do plan on "regular" opinion posts as well. These will be slotted in between the other weekly stuff as they occur to me.

I think this is a good plan for me to keep the blog going again. Because I really do love it. Whatever writing funk I've been in, it's been a long-lasting one where I briefly break out of it and then get sucked right back in.

It kind of sucks.

Hopefully this will work.