Archive for the ‘Opinion’ Category

Wincing at “Wink of an Eye”

If today is Thursday, then this must be the Star Trek Re-watch! Over at TOR.COM, fellow Trek-nerd Dayton Ward and I sharpen our rhetorical knives and carve a few chunks out of the third-season original series episode Wink of an Eye.” You remember: pretty people in silver pajamas, led by a gal in half a dress, who live in hyper-time and sound like mosquitoes.

I won’t lie to you, friends—this was not a highlight of the series. If you don’t believe me, you can watch it for free on the CBS website (U.S. residents only, sorry).

On the other hand, if you like people in silver pajamas who slip roofies into your drink, then you’re gonna LOVE this…

For those of you just joining our train wreck of a weekly column, here’s a recap of what Dayton and I have recapped and analyzed so far:

  1. Spock’s Brain
  2. The Enterprise Incident
  3. The Paradise Syndrome
  4. And the Children Shall Lead
  5. Is There in Truth No Beauty?
  6. Spectre of the Gun
  7. Day of the Dove
  8. For the World Is Hollow and I Have Touched the Sky
  9. The Tholian Web
  10. Plato’s Stepchildren

Remember to leave a comment on the TOR.COM articles to let us and our corporate masters benefactors know you were there. They like that sort of thing.

Until next week, beware of Scalosian blondes who slip roofies into your coffee.

Disowning “Plato’s Stepchildren”

We’re back, Trek fans! Alas, it’s to bring you our Star Trek Re-watch recap and commentary on one of those episodes that most acolytes of The Great Bird of the Galaxy like to pretend didn’t happen: Plato’s Stepchildren.” Yes, the one where a dwarf rides Kirk like a horse and Spock sings “Maiden Wine.” I think Kirk’s expression in the photo below sums up our reaction perfectly:

Aw, go on, click the link and read the recap and analysis. You know you wanna. And in case you haven’t been keeping up, here’s the quick list of the weekly third-season recaps and analyses written by Dayton Ward and yours truly for the fine folks at TOR.COM

  1. Spock’s Brain
  2. The Enterprise Incident
  3. The Paradise Syndrome
  4. And the Children Shall Lead
  5. Is There in Truth No Beauty?
  6. Spectre of the Gun
  7. Day of the Dove
  8. For the World Is Hollow and I Have Touched the Sky
  9. The Tholian Web

Read, laugh, enjoy — and remember to leave a comment over on TOR.COM so we know you’re out there. (We can hear you breathing, but that doesn’t impress our masters at Tor.)

Until next week, may all your meals be laced with kironide.

Catching up with Star Trek Re-watch

Another turn of the page-a-day calendar brings us once more to Thor’s day (or Thursday, for those of a more modern persuasion), and that can mean only one thing: a new installment of Tor.com‘s weekly feature Star Trek Re-watch, by Dayton Ward and yours truly.

A combination of illness, travel, and a holiday kept me from promoting last week’s Re-watch column, so this week you get a double feature — and what an “odd couple” of episodes this is. Back to back, we find one of the original series’ most laughable entries followed by one of its most laudable.

First up is For the World Is Hollow and I Have Touched the Sky.” If you just couldn’t get enough of “The Paradise Syndrome” five weeks ago, then you’re in luck—most of that episode’s tropes (and effects shots) are recycled here for your viewing pleasure.

Then get ready to grab something heavy, because the next episode will blow you away: The Tholian Web is far away one of the finest hours in the 40-plus years of the Star Trek saga.

For you completists, here’s the list of my and Dayton’s contributions to the Star Trek Re-watch:

  1. Spock’s Brain
  2. The Enterprise Incident
  3. The Paradise Syndrome
  4. And the Children Shall Lead
  5. Is There in Truth No Beauty?
  6. Spectre of the Gun
  7. Day of the Dove
  8. For the World Is Hollow and I Have Touched the Sky
  9. The Tholian Web

Go check ’em out, and leave a comment over there to let us know you’re paying attention!

Blind Devotion on Star Trek Re-watch

It’s a dreary, drizzly Thursday here in New York City, but there’s a bright spot in the gloom: a brand-new installment of the TOR.com series Star Trek Re-watch by yours truly, ably aided and abetted by Dayton Ward.

This week, Dayton and I sink our teeth into the third season’s fifth aired episode, Is There in Truth No Beauty? — and, for once, we’re not in complete agreement about its merits.

Watch the episode for free on the CBS website, then read our review and leave a comment to tell us what you think!

Hard Numbers: Taxes & the U.S. Economy

Over at Tax.com, economist David Cay Johnston lays out a detailed, by-the-numbers case for just what a disaster the Bush tax cuts have been for our country, and why they need to expire.

The bottom line? By even the most forgiving metrics, the Bush-era tax cuts cost the United States $1.8 trillion and completely failed to produce any of the benefits that the GOP promised they would yield. (A more thorough accounting suggests the true cost is closer to $2.7 trillion.)

I found myself nodding in agreement as I read Johnston’s post-evidentiary summary (emphasis mine):

The hard, empirical facts:

The tax cuts did not spur investment. Job growth in the George W. Bush years was one-seventh that of the Clinton years. Nixon and Ford did better than Bush on jobs. Wages fell during the last administration. Average incomes fell. The number of Americans in poverty, as officially measured, hit a 16-year high last year of 43.6 million, though a National Academy of Sciences study says that the real poverty figure is closer to 51 million. Food banks are swamped. Foreclosure signs are everywhere. Americans and their governments are drowning in debt. And at the nexus of tax and healthcare, Republican ideas perpetuate a cruel and immoral system that rations healthcare — while consuming every sixth dollar in the economy and making businesses, especially small businesses, less efficient and less profitable.

This is economic madness. It is policy divorced from empirical evidence. It is insanity because the policies are illusory and delusional. The evidence is in, and it shows beyond a shadow of a reasonable doubt that the 2001 and 2003 tax cuts failed to achieve the promised goals.

So why in the world is anyone giving any credence to the insistence by Republican leaders that tax cuts, more tax cuts, and deeper tax cuts are the remedy to our economic woes? Why are they not laughingstocks? It is one thing for Fox News to treat these policies as successful, but what of the rest of what Sarah Palin calls with some justification the “lamestream media,” who treat these policies as worthy ideas?

The Republican leadership is like the doctors who believed bleeding cured the sick. When physicians bled George Washington, he got worse, so they increased the treatment until they bled him to death. Our government, the basis of our freedoms, is spewing red ink, and the Republican solution is to spill ever more.

Those who ignore evidence and pledge blind faith in policy based on ideological fantasy are little different from the clerics who made Galileo Galilei confess that the sun revolves around the earth. The Capitol Hill and media Republicans differ only in not threatening death to those who deny their dogma.

How much more evidence do we need that we made terrible and costly mistakes in 2001 and 2003?

Go check it out.

My dream setlist for a RUSH concert

Last night on the drive home from the RUSH concert, my friend Randy and I discussed what we had liked about the evening’s setlist and what we hadn’t.  In my case, there were a few songs that I especially missed hearing, and a few I would not have missed had they been excluded.

That got me thinking — what would be my dream setlist for a RUSH concert?  (more…)