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When should humans marry?

No, I’m serious about this.  I have no clue.  As yesterday’s post pointed out 23 is too early to marry – apparently – in mainstream eyes.  At the same time, there has been some Duck Dynasty kerfuffle (Honestly, till the first kerfuffle I thought Duck Dynasty was an AUSTRALIAN show about a family named Duck.  No, don’t ask.) because the main guy said you should marry a woman in her teens.  Whatevs.  His age seems to be like two years older than his wife, so the question is not “should a middle aged man marry a young woman?” but “Should high school sweet heart’s marry.”

I got married at 22.  By that time I was considered an old maid by my society’s reckoning.  The one woman who got married just before me was the last but one of my elementary class to get married (also, my best friend at the time.)  The one who remained unmarried after me is still unmarried.  So, I was at the very tail end of “those who meant to marry.”

Now, I grew up in a rural village, and therefore marrying early was the norm.  Most of my classmates quit school in fourth grade (yes, it was illegal, as was working at that age, but it was easy to get a certificate saying your daughter was mentally retarded and should be taught a trade.  Which is what happens when third world countries pass laws against child labor) and worked in the textile factory for their “dowry” (and some for help to their parents.)

By eighteen most of these women had been working for eight years, and had money saved for furnishing their first home.  Their husbands, too, were young men who worked in the same factory for the same time, or who had just finished apprenticeships in the trades, or who worked the family farm.

Getting married early meant another pair of hands to work and bring money home before the children, and meant more children, who in turn would work and turn at least some of the money to the parents for part of the time.

It was different in the “Class” I belonged to.  My brother and sister in law got married at 26.  In fact, in my college class only one woman was married, though several had long-term boyfriends.

But I was raised by a mother who got married at seventeen and who insisted that if you got married much past 25 you were “set in your ways” and couldn’t “accommodate” to each other the way young lovers could.  I don’t know.  A couple of my friends got married in their thirties or older and did/do fine.  It’s highly unlikely my older son at least will marry until his thirties, at least if he manages to get into the career path he hopes for.  There won’t be emotional room in his life till then.  And I hope he marries and is happy.

Median age of marriage has varied, too, as well as the gap between partners.  In regency England – something wildly fudged in contemporary romances – it was quite normal for middle aged men to marry seventeen year old girls.  For the conditions of the time, this made perfect sense.  A more financially/career secure man gave better protection, and a very young woman had more children, which in an age when survival to adulthood was iffy gave more chances at progeny.

Also, to be blunt, neither the high nor the low classes expected EMOTIONAL much less intellectual companionship out of marriage.  They weren’t looking for someone to complete them. They were looking for someone who brought something to a rather prosaic partnership and if they could rub along tolerably well, so much the better.  (This is of course, generalized from writings of the time.  I do not doubt some people had wild love-matches.)

At other times and in other places, marriage partners were expected to be roughly the same age and marriage ages have ranged from the early teens to the mid twenties.  Usually not much further than that, because absent modern medicine the chance of children past that was minimal.  And the chance of living much past sixty about the same.

So, why would 23 – or any other age above legal age of consent be “too young” for marriage?  Is there an age that’s too old?

Look, there have been very few studies done on the subject of marriage.  They tend to be conducted in skivvy ways too, to prove the researcher’s pre-conception.  There’s a reason we call them “soft” sciences.

The few that have been done often yield odd results – like the idea that arranged marriages do not result in more or less happiness than marriages “for love.”

I think the high degree of divorce we’re experiencing (nowhere near 50% but high enough) comes from the fact that none of us knows what to think marriage is for, anymore.  It used to be fairly clear it was for “a helpmate” and “the procreation of children.”  But female liberation and the pill have made those not immediate certainties.  Artificial reproduction, which is just around the corner, will only make it more so.  So instead people are trying to make marriage about “love” – a fleeting emotion, unless it’s viewed as a life-long growth process – or “self actualization” or “happiness.”  None of those are possible of a metric, and a lot of people give up.

I can only report on my own case. For me marriage was for the formation of a family; for having kids (at which I’ve had underwhelming success, but hey, I have two) and to have a man I could respect and trust and with whom I wouldn’t need to play games.

Under those objectives, I was wildly successful.  Did we make stupid mistakes because we were really young when we got married?  Sure we did.  But we also did grow together.  To be honest, I’m not sure, given the different cultures, how this would have worked had we been ten years older.

And love?  Oh, love too, judged as a long-growing emotion.  We have our peaks (shush you) but most of the time it’s sort of a low-grade, simmering happiness.  In fact, we’re both agreed if we could have it differently, we’d have got married at 18, because then maybe we’d have a few more kids.

For us, for various reasons and because both of us needed to find a path together (again for various reasons, mostly because we were odds and therefore scarred) an early marriage worked.  I have several friends who I would not have advised to marry before thirty.  Some of them did anyway, and some of those marriages turned out all right, to my shock.

So, would I condemn someone for saying high school sweethearts should marry?  Well, no.  For some people it’s the right thing.  I wouldn’t make it a universal rule. That would be stupid.  But I would say some high school kids are ready to marry.  Others aren’t.  Projected career paths, number of kids wanted, support by in-laws and various other factors would have to be taken into consideration before saying whether it’s a bad or a good idea.

Would I condemn someone for only marrying in their forties – again no.  Some people – particularly odds – simply don’t find the right person till then.  And you shouldn’t marry Mr. Right now just because you haven’t found Mr. Right.  (Or Ms.)

Some things I have observed though – some people never fully grow up until they’re married.  This is – forgive me – more true of men than women.  I think it’s because men’s social function is predicated on “loving and protecting” and until they have that someone to love and protect, they’re not “whole” as adults in our society.  Not all men.  I have bachelor friends who are obviously grown ups.  But some men – perhaps a majority of men – seem to need a unit within which to be an adult.

If the man in question is one of those, waiting for him to grow up outside of marriage/before marriage it simply won’t happen.  He’ll only grow up if he takes responsibility for someone else.

And the same is true of some women.  Some women will just run around being self-centered until they have someone to care for and look after.  If you’re waiting for them to grow up so you can marry them it won’t happen.

Again, I can only judge from my case.  Maybe I got immensely lucky

What do you think? Is there a “right” time to get married or does it depend on the person?  Is marrying young a bad/good thing?  Is raising expectations of happiness in marriage good or bad?

Likely none of us will fit any of the categories.  Being Odds, we move in Odd ways – but as an intellectual exercise…  Is our repulsion of the mismatched ages of Regency couples a manifestation of sanity?  Or something our descendants will find very odd?

So I’ve gotten so tired, up-to-here with the whole concept of “slut-shaming” and how this is a very bad thing.

It started with this article (and be warned that, shockingly, shockingly the woman who wrote it – this being the first time she ever wrote in public – made a grammatical mistake, probably as a result of having got flustered and revising things wrong.  This grammatical mistake – one, yes – causes a bunch of commenters to call her stupid.)  But it goes deeper than that.

Her article for those who don’t feel like clicking is a response to a snooty idiocy of a list “23 things to do instead of getting engaged before you’re 23.”  Again, feel free to click through to it from the response, but be prepared to shed IQ points.

What was astonishing to me was the number of people who reacted to the RESPONSE by saying that it was really negative.  The brand of pious stupidity that told the woman writing the response she couldn’t be negative and Christian is something else.  I’m sort of used to it, most often by having younger friends who are committed evangelicals (which I am not) coming to me in tears because so and so said they were hateful and not Christian.  There seems to be a sub-sect of what I – not being evangelical – will call Candy-*ss Evangelical Christians who think that their duty is to go through life being kissy kissy about everything and saying everyone is so wonderful and lovely.

How they reconcile this with the scene in the temple, or with the many cutting remarks of the Nazarene in the Gospels, or with the fact that that he instructed his apostles to shake the dust from their sandals and invoke the judgment of Sodom and Gomorrah on any place that rejected them is beyond me.  How they square serious religious commitment with their saccharine inability to say boo to a mouse is even more puzzling.  And how they manage to square their attitude of approving of everything and blessing everyone with coming down like a ton of bricks on anyone who doesn’t candycoat everything the way they do is most puzzling of all.  I’m going to assume Quaaludes are involved.

This reaction struck me as bizarre, as I thought the response was quite polite and not at all mean.  In fact, in a snarkometer it was well below my most polite and well behaved responses.

But beyond all that, it was the accusations that the woman writing the response was evil, nasty and JEALOUS.

Okay, the original list includes things like “get a passport and travel” – which is fine and dandy and as someone who did a ton of it before getting married at 22, I can safely say that there isn’t anything to prevent you traveling once you’re married.  The response points that out.

But it also includes sheer lunacy like “Stand at a window, naked” and “make out with a stranger.”  The responder pointed out that these suggestions – clearly originally proffered as good, fun stuff all women should do before marrying – were “slutty.”

This unleashed acrimony in the comments.  It was “Slut shaming” and therefore evil.

Sigh.  Slut-shaming and slut encouraging are BOTH forms of individual behavior control, a demand that people “fit in” with the current mood of society.

I don’t particularly care for “slut-shaming” but I also don’t care for “slut-shaming-shaming” and don’t like that the second is considered a worse sin than the first in our current society.

Look, I don’t care what people do with their private parts, in public or private, provided all spectators are okay with that; you’re of age; your partners are of age.

I’ve had a lot of friends (of both genders) who could technically be called “sluts” and who suffered no harm by it.  In fact, the bohemian life suited them, and they enjoyed it.  It was not my way.  For one, I never had enough time and emotional availability to love “the world.”  I’m one of those people who is naturally monogamous, and realizing that, I’m glad I’m married.  I don’t regret not having a long “hit list” in my past, nor do I feel I lost anything.  Sex without love is messy exercise.

BUT when someone is recommending women engage in what can only be called slutty – also stupid.  With the rampant spread of antibiotic-resistant STDs, you should not feel it is necessary nor good for your development to “make out with a stranger” –  behavior in a preachy and superior tone, surely they can be preached back at, right?

I don’t have a dog in this fight – much – but since when did slut-shaming become a worse crime than being a slut, even for self-appointed Christian moralists?

And who in heck thinks this is a good thing?

Again, I don’t have a dog in this fight, because I have fortunately grown past the place where I feel guilty about not fitting the mold everyone expects, and I no longer care if I had too many sexual partners or too few, too odd or too normal, if I married too young or too old according to someone else.  I care that the path I took worked for me, and that’s all I care about.  And I hope everyone else will be as happy.

BUT I remember being young and stupid and feeling positively ashamed that I was still a virgin at nineteen, because all the pop culture, all the advice columns, and most of all all of my older friends made it clear you never grew up till you had sex.  (I still don’t agree with this.  Well, I think you grow up in a sexual relationship that includes love and mutual respect and obligations, but a sexual relationship absent that… not so much. Also, people in that kind of relationship – with parents, with an organization, with friends – that doesn’t include sex clearly grow up.)  I remember being very worried I’d never have sex and thus never be “an adult.”

The original 23 things article propagates that belief.  You never grow up till you do this and try this.  For some people that might be at least semi-accurate.  There are people out there so devoid of imagination that they grow by personally hitting their heads on every wall and experiencing the results.  And there are people out there that are what I’d call “natural sluts” who do enjoy sex with practically everyone.  (More men than women fall into that.)  For them sex and love blur and their relationships all end up including sex.  They might not grow without sex, because they never get in a serious relationship if it doesn’t have sex. So their every minor sexual relationship on the way to the big one WILL involve sex.  Fine.

I would say that the percentage of women like that is vanishingly small.  I’d say that because studies on the hormones women release during sex seem to indicate women tend to get attached to their sexual partners in an emotional way.  Which would make perfect sense, evolutionarily, since natural-female-sluts would be less likely to have a male who stood by them, looked after the kids, and made sure everyone survived – necessary things in times without government welfare.

Most other women who confuse being free or individually actualized with “acting like a male cad” by “making out with strangers” and exposing themselves naked (does anyone else think this sounds like a middle aged male’s advice to a nubile young woman?) will come to deeply regret it, and probably inflict psychological damage on themselves.

Shaming?  No.  I don’t see any point in shaming anyone for acting like that.  If they’re adults, then it’s their choice.  But pointing out that such things as a universal recommendation for all young women are “slutty” and frankly stupid and parochial (those places where the woman recommends they travel have absolutely no issues with slut-shaming.  No, not even in Europe.  In fact, the recent murder trial of a young American woman in Italy was predicated among other things on the fact locals thought she was a slut and therefore a likely murderer) seems to me to be the right of any woman who would like to point out there is another path.

And this should not under any circumstances lay the person responding to accusations of being bitter or … envious?  What in heck does a young married woman have to envy someone who seems to be lost as to where she wants to go in life?

But this post is precipitated by something even crazier.  As you know, I spent the week I had some kind of stomach bug reading about Henry VIII.  One of the things was a mention of Kathryn Howard…   a) They called her a “good time girl” b) they went on about how she clearly enjoyed sex just for sex.  c) They scolded all previous biographers for “slut-shaming” her.

As you know, I wrote a novel – No Will but His – about Kathryn Howard (and no, it can’t be selling because the title (which was a her motto) sounds like tie me up, tie me down.  The subtitle is “The story of Kathryn Howard, 5^th wife of Henry VIII.”  Also, I’d have more returns if they expected S & M.

While I was writing, her skeleton was found.  As far as can be determined, she was not yet eighteen when she was beheaded, after being married to the king for over a year.

The perspective this gives you on her “affairs” before that time is appalling.  When her music teacher (a middle aged man) insisted they were in love… she must have been around 11.  When she supposedly “contracted marriage” and lost her virginity to a hanger-on at her grandmother’s house, she must have been under 14.

I am aware that people grew up faster at that time, but all the same, the idea that someone that age knew what they were doing, much less “liked sex” is frankly sick.

The book I just read estimated her age as late teens at death.  Even that would be far too young.  And then – and this is the amazingly stupid thing – this feminist author goes on about how Kathryn probably found sex “empowering.”  Kids, this is claptrap.

No, I don’t know if she enjoyed the physical act or not – she might have for all I know – but it is highly unlikely she found it “empowering” in itself.  Whatever the heck that means.  (Does anyone know?  Sex and power do not correlate in my head.  Sex and love or even affection sure, but… power?  What is empowering about doing something every female mammal can do?)

It is possible that as the more or less ignored daughter of a rather marginal nobleman she found sex got her attention or gifts or even just physical affection (which is important for seriously neglected kids.)

But it is far more likely in that time when there was no pill and no female alternatives but marriage, that the poor kid got taken advantage of by those who were supposed to protect her.

Slut-shaming?  Yeah, sure, THAT is the biggest problem in the treatment of Kathryn Howard.  The fact that most biographers treat her as a dumb blond is not far more offensive.  And then, to add insult to the injury, this oh so sensitive biographer, celebrates her for “finding sex empowering” BUT calls her a “good time girl” and stupid.  (The stupid thing is because her written notes were appalling.  If she was only 17 and never had formal education beyond music, this is not in any way proof of low IQ.)

The whole thing is revolting and stomach churning, like a carnival glass reflection of Victorian morality.  It’s like the person kept telling herself “must not slut-shame” but aping all the judgments of the people who did.

Let’s call a slut a slut, shall we?  One of the most magnificent sluts I ever knew also placed right below me in the foreign-language exams.  As far as I could tell that girl ENJOYED sex, and had no brakes.  Something that is quite possible thanks to the pill and to the professional opportunities of our day and age.

OTOH she also knit frantically (all through class. She never took notes) and last I heard of her she was the lover of a Basque terrorist and in jail for bombing school buses.

So, was her promiscuity a sign of a deeper problem?  I don’t know.  I’m not, thank heavens, her psychiatrist.  Or did a desire for permanence and stability as she aged lead her to a relationship with the one man she found exciting enough, who was also criminal (not unusual)?  I don’t know.

What I know is that she was neither stupid nor did she find sex “empowering” – she had sex because she enjoyed it, which is fine.

People who scold you into having lots of sex because it’s good for you and “empowering” and, somehow, you’re not “fully grown up” without it are the worst king of scolds.  Puritans in black leather and whips, they manage to make the transgressive – or even mildly naughty – completely uninteresting.

Part of my issue with that school of “morality” is that not only do they risk all kinds of disease and psychological trauma, but they do it joylessly, by the book, the same way that I used to be forced to swallow codliver oil every spring “because you should.”

And then, having driven every bit of true emotion and joy out of their lives, they run around trying to destroy everyone else’s fun.

By comparison, getting married early, being monogamous, and thumbing your nose at the establishment is a positively countercultural act.

Be revolutionary, sisters!  Become stay at home moms.  The intellectuals will rage and foam with hatred.  Oh, what fun we shall have.

So I was reading about Henry VIII (No, I truly don’t get this, but not only is No Will But His selling better than anything else, I have, the sales are accelerating.)

While the Baen books still have priority, I’m going to try to – G-d willing and this week being atypical for the year (I am better, thank you, and no longer living in the bathroom) – find enough time this year to write the other queens.  (On the good side, I’ve done two of those books.  One took me 2 weeks and one 3 days, so…)

But it’s been years since I read anything about Tudor England and there have been new books.  So I’ve been reading about Henry VIII because frankly I haven’t been up to reading fiction this week.

Anyway, so every author agrees Henry VIII as a young man was a true renaissance man, good at everything and so very good looking.  And every author wonders what dread disease caused him to turn not just into a murderous tyrant, but a stupid murderous tyrant in old age.

Except if you dig in you find that when his dumbest moves were made was after he’d killed his two ministers, first the great one and then his apprentice.  (Wolsey and Cromwell.)  Which brings us to… was he really that brilliant or were they great at manipulating him.

But surely – say you – he composed music, he wrote poems, he wrote theological dissertations, for crying out loud.

Except that Thomas Moore put the finishing touches on the “theological dissertations” – were they “finishing touches” or book doctoring?  And at least one book casts doubt on whether he had the same kind of help with his music and, let’s face it, his sonnets to Anne Boleyn are remembered because of their very unfortunate romance, not because he was another Thomas Wyatt.  (And for all I know Thomas Wyatt helped him “with the finishing touches” too.)

While I read, I started getting this incredibly familiar feeling.  “They tell me he’s a genius, but there’s really no proof and no one would dare have said anything else in writing because he was an absolute monarch.”  It could be argued in that way they fed the ego of a man who was just a man till he became, ultimately, a monster.

And while we’re at it, when the same forces apply in a supposed democratic republic that applied in Henry VIII’s absolute monarchy, something must be done.  I’m just saying.  We’ve seen this movie many times from Henry VIII to the Sun King to Kim Il Jung.  It always ends in blood.  And it’s rarely the blood of those responsible for making the people suffer.  I’m just saying it’s time for America to be exceptional again.

Oh, and while on that, when Henry VIII died he left England near bankrupt.  I was snorting with laughter at an author who couldn’t understand why Henry VIII stayed “protestant” – in the most Catholic way possible – after his first two wives died, instead of submitting to Rome.  Sigh.  Apparently this is an historian who believes the ledger part of the reign isn’t history.  He couldn’t go back to Rome because he’d dissolved the monasteries and pillaged their wealth in land, houses and rents.  DUH.  And then he still took the kingdom into penury.  Good thing he didn’t have a printing press he could run at will to create fiat money, uh?

And speaking of other people who have been told what they wanted to hear or what other people wanted to be true until they’re drinking their own ink and completely out of touch with reality – here’s a few more examples:

Like all monsters of legend, Bill Blasio is attacking New York City.  Only the Castro-admirer was elected to lead it.  Yes, I know most people there drink their own ink, too.  They’re too wealthy and comfortable and think reality no longer applies to them. But there is something wonderful and special about the city.  Try to go see it before it becomes Detroit.

As for the Ship of Fools in search of global warming, who got stuck in ice – no matter how much the tv stations hide it and no matter how much they call the occupants “tourists” the gig is up.  It’s like the summer of recovery, guys.  You’re telling people digging out from under snow they’re having a heat wave.  Your climate refugees failed to show up.  Most of us know we’re not stuck in a tropical paradise.  Oh, and most of us know, too, that the Earth was much warmer than this before, sometimes when there weren’t humans.  You can indoctrinate people going through the schools, but in time they get out and the scales fall from their eyes.  And sometimes, if you push hard enough, you create people like me, who went through a much more biased system than even you have managed. Sure those who are like me will be one in a hundred, but all the same, think on it.  Consider telling the truth now and then.

But this – this is an example of drinking your own ink that leaves us absolutely breathless.  I’m linking to the Chicks on the Right Holy Mother of Whack, instead of to the original article.  You’re free to read that, but TRUST me, you’ll be dumber for it.

I’m not going to go into EVERYTHING that’s wrong with the original article – a cry for psychiatric help if I ever heard one – but will just point out the person seems to think of evolution as a god.  However we’re formed, we can tell for if it hurts or not that it is or isn’t meant to be used in some way.  Older son who is a fully trained biologist tells us that the hymen is actually a “seal for freshness” not in the sex sense, but because it keeps most disease-causing germs away, until the woman is of reproductive age, which increases the chances she’ll reproduce and pass on the gene for it.  (This btw, explains why women in the middle ages were kept from strenuous exercise, which is known to rupture the hymen.  They didn’t have antibiotics.  Another myth of male supremacy exploded.  Sad.)

The sad – truly sad – thing is that this psychological cry for help is not that individual.  For instance, while on a panel with one of the glittery whoo has who later plunged into the SFWA kerfuffle, I watched her try to articulate the same argument.  She was CERTAINLY sure that men only had sex with women to impregnate them (wait, what?)  And that this was the primary purpose of rape.

Don’t get me started.

When a significant portion of the population gets this far away from reality and CAN live, our society is so wealthy that most of us can afford to be like Henry VIII completely divorced from reality.

The question is – can it go on?

I think it can, but I think that the gods of the copybook headings will make a comeback tour before we’re on the right course again.

WELCOME Instapundit Readers and thank you Glenn for the link!

*By the time I went to bed last night, I was over this… I thought.  I had dinner with no ill effects.  Except I spent the whole night feeling as though I were either seasick or drunk — a disconcerting sensation when neither of those conditions apply.  I am also running a fever.  So, having managed to crawl off my bed to put this up, I’m going to crawl back into it.  Meanwhile, the incomparable Sabrina Chase is your guide for the day.*

Hi, I’m Sabrina and I’ll be your Science Guide today. I am a gen-u-wine Mad Scientist with a PhD in experimental physics.  I’ve only electrocuted myself a few times and the scars have healed over nicely.  For your own safety, please keep your manipulative appendages inside the tram at all times and do not touch the blinkenlights.

OK, Science Fiction. There are a few crucial categories, and I’ve set up my own view and how to write about each of them. I love science, and science fiction is lots of fun to read–but can be intimidating to the non-specialist when it comes to writing. Not to worry! There is hope.

1) “Diamond-hard” sf (Andy Weir’s The Martian, Asimov, etc) OK, maybe this one you should worry about. You do need a really thorough grounding in whatever field you want to base your story on. This type is very rare, and even more rare if you insist on a good story too. Scientists who know their stuff may not be able to write themselves out of a wet paper bag. (A non-fiction example of someone who can is Ignition!. Hilariously funny history of rockets and the guys who blew them up.) Also, the things scientists think are fascinating tend to bore nonspecialists to tears. (“They found five-fold symmetry in a real crystal! Woohoo!”) Now if you *do* have specialized technical knowledge, *and* a good story idea that makes central use of this knowledge, knock yourself out. Just make sure your mother/mailman/parole officer can understand it too.

2) “Soup of the Day”.  It’s not cheating, it’s specializing! Pick *one* topic to specialize in accurately, and wave hands in an artistic frenzy for everything else. (SA Corey’s Leviathan Wakes features heavy emphasis on correct sublight intrastellar ship mechanics, effects of thrust and momentum, and a truly spectacular accident when a ship’s rotational gravity stops rotating, but goes completely to town with quasi-sentient proteins and vomit zombies). Or try solar physics, and a ship that could possibly enter the outer surface of the sun (David Brin’s Sundiver). Again, focus on *one bit of science*. Then add some handwavium, talking silicon trees, and hot monkey sex and nobody notices the duct tape. Read up on your chosen topic, and if you feel that is still not enough, contact researchers in that topic with specific questions. Especially if you have done your homework and ask reasonable questions (don’t mention chemtrails…) researchers will at the least point you to some useful papers or books. They may even indulge their own speculative fancy to your benefit, if you are lucky. Scientists love sharing information about the things that fascinate them–but remember this is their day job and they might not have a lot of spare time.

3) “Turn the Volume down”. Science is everywhere in this kind of SF, but as a nice background hum rather than the main stirring soundtrack (this is what I try to do in my books). Understand basics like conservation of momentum. Human survival in a vacuum. Basics of radiation. Basics of thermodynamics. The big thing is you DON’T need math. This is not about calculating orbital trajectories–you just need a good feel for what is rational. The rest of your made-up science in the book should be like magic in fantasy–internally consistent, and with some sort of cost. My faster-than-light drive in the Sequoyah series is totally made up. It depends on artificial gravity (which can fail in a badly maintained ship, providing Drama) and is affected by anomalies (I was inspired by supermassive strings speculated to exist in interstellar space) that function much like reefs for sailing ships. Navigation is important, and so is the relative motion of stars in the galaxy (you did know everything is moving around like stirred cake batter, right?) That gave me ways to demonstrate my main character’s skill, problems to overcome, ways to fix them, and so on. Note that I am NOT an expert on superstrings, or galactic dynamics, or gravitational theory. I read a general-level article somewhere, or read Kip Thorne’s book (see sources below).

Recommendations:

Read around in some science topics and note down things that make you say “ooh, that’s neat!” Don’t worry about jamming it all in one story–you are developing a Junk Pile of useful stuff for later. I probably don’t have to mention it to hard core Human Wave types, but try and be aware of agendas. We all know about Global Warming, and anti-vaccination nutbars, but there can be some esoteric food fights lurking in the shadows as well. (Herschel senior thought people lived on the surface of the sun, Einstein was famously allergic to probability theory, Pons & Fleischman thought they had created fusion events in a pyrex beaker.) Not that you can’t have fun with controversy, just be aware that There Be Dragons and you will get irate emails.

Sources:

-Cartoon guide to physics for the basics http://www.amazon.com/Cartoon–Guide–Physics–Larry–Gonick/dp/0062731009 (they also have chemistry and genetics and statistics, but I haven’t read those)

-Feynman lectures for more details, but they do contain scary math and greek letters. (free online http://www.openculture.com/2013/09/the–famous–feynman–lectures–on–physics–now–online–in–html5.html )

-sites that have the latest cool stuff for general inspiration http://phys.org/ , http://www.livephysics.com/ , http://www.foresight.org/nanodot/

-Kip Thorne’s highly entertaining book on gravity and black holes http://www.amazon.com/Black–Holes–Time–Warps–Commonwealth/dp/0393312763

I am starting to feel really bad about not giving you ya’ll a chapter, but really, seriously — no, truly — until I go back and edit these are very hard to write and to make my life complete, I have whatever the kid had.

The good news is that it doesn’t seem to be norovirus — at least the younger kid has stopped upchucking.  OTOH older kid fell yesterday and I don’t feel so good.  I don’t seem to have a FULL version of it, but it’s still making it damn hard to concentrate for any real creative work, including writing the long overdue chapter.

If this changes by tomorrow, I shall post tomorrow.  For now I’m going to do the cat box (yes, it IS a constant thing.  Sorry.  And then I think I’ll go nap, because it’s that kind of day.

Part of the “being sick less” resolution is to try to rest when I needed it so the crud doesn’t drag on.

Okay, that’s it.  Head is empty and fuzzy.  More later if I find brain.

So much for the New Year thing on not getting sick, though to be fair, what struck me was just mild sinus/with earache (and seems to be resolving itself.) Younger son, OTOH woke up on the first day of the year with what I hope – knock on wood (there are indications that way) – is a 24h bug and not norovirus.  The main indication that way is that none of the rest of us seem affected and we do live in each other’s pockets.  Also, he was getting better by the evening.

Of course, this is an example of a resolution you can’t keep as such – you can endeavor to live a healthy life, but you can’t keep the bugs from infecting you.  So, on with the endeavoring.  And meanwhile, I had the weirdest nightmare.

First of all, I dreamed I was running for political office – which, while not impossible, is highly unlikely – and second I dreamed someone had data mined my blog and everywhere, including on bill boards on the side of the road was “Sarah A. Hoyt thinks the Earth is flat.”  This was based on half a sentence, taken grossly out of context.  No one reading the actual post I’d written could think I believed that.  In fact, no one reading the first part of the sentence could think I believed that since the first half was something like “I looked out the window and saw a pig flying by, so I think…”  However, all the blogs were full of it, and all the billboards and all the radio stations, and jokes were being made about the science fiction writer who thought the Earth was flat.

Which made me realize something.

The big power of the industrial media complex right now is the power to destroy.  They no longer have the power to burnish the image of their darlings, or to make us believe counterfactuals.  I’ve said this before, and I mean it.  If they had the same sort of control over the streams of information/entertainment that they had back in the 40s they would have pulled off their stated goal of making this administration the second coming of FDR.  In fact, the more we learn about FDRs effect on the economy of the nation, the more that seems distressingly likely.  If they’d had even the type of control over the media that they had back in the early 90s, we would too believe this first lady is a beauty queen, instead of rolling our eyes at the covers proclaiming this.  (No?  We did believe that Hilary was efficient and intelligent, which considering she advanced in life the old fashioned way – by marrying a man who did – was quite a rasper.)

They can no longer do that.  And either they caught on that their “Summer of recovery 1 and 2 and 3 and 4” was becoming a fodder for giggles, or they’re losing heart.  Yes, we all know people who believe that this administration halved the deficit (to be fair most of those people believe in unicorns, too) and we all know people who believe that the economy is getting better and that there is no inflation (those usually require advanced degrees, because no one can believe that much nonsense without training up).  But influence the general opinion, they do not, and they keep getting smaller and smaller bang for their buck.

Those are the good news.

The bad news is that there is something that they can still do and do quite handily. Heinlein observed in The Moon Is A Harsh Mistress that it’s much easier to make people hate than love.  Our media has lost the ability to make us dote on their darlings, but they can still turn public opinion against anyone they choose.

It’s not very rational; it’s not very sane; they don’t even try to make it plausible.  Instead they tell a big huge whopper – Sarah Palin made rape victims pay for the rape kit, say – and then keep repeating it, making jokes about it, using it as a throw away line by late-night comedians you know “Oh, well, of course she’d have cut the deficit.  The American people would need to pay for its own rape kit.”

And suddenly it’s everywhere.  Part of it is coordination, of course, and part of it is the willingness of marginally attached left groups to jump in on the buzzword of the day, which happens not through conspiracy but through the fact that these people desperately want to be cool and be like the cool people they see on TV.  The right – and certainly the libertarian right – has nothing like it, since most of us by the time we arrived at our opinions had decided that we had to stand against cool and societal approval, but that some things were more important.

Witness the whole “Binders full of women” they deployed to prove that Romney was against women.  The incident is likely to make your head hurt.  What he was saying, of course – and the expression isn’t even that infelicitous just a verbal short cut – is that he’d asked to be brought the files of women who’d not been promoted, and got whole binders full.  (It serves him right, for trying to create his own affirmative action instead of JUST aiming for meritocracy, but never mind.)  Next thing you know this phrase “binders full of women” was being deployed to show he was “anti-woman” and the idiots of code pink were marching in circles wearing binders.  And most of the people who just heard the phrase “binders full of women” never had any clue of the context and were convinced he was either keeping women in binders (!) or thought women’s resumes should be kept in binders and not considered.

It was in fact the exact opposite of what he’d said and it was all accomplished by never explaining, never saying anything, just repeating “binders full of women.”

Meanwhile the DNC was running with “We all belong to the government” a phrase that would genuinely skiv the average American voter, but since it was never mentioned, nor was the convention shown in its pale and old glory, but the media assured people that it was diverse and there were tons of “people of color” (as opposed to transparent people, I guess) the public believed without having seen.  Which might make them blessed, but certainly DOES make them stupid and blinkered – as they’re finding out.

The power-to-destroy is being deployed earlier and earlier.  For instance, I noted an accusation of plagiarism against Rand Paul which, when traced down, amounts to “he didn’t use proper citing procedure” – which, pardon me, these days keeps changing and even I am not sure I can use it right even though I have a literature degree.

The end result of this is to drop the people who would even marginally be interesting to the base (Paul is saying he won’t run and I’m not sure I blame him) leaving us with the one the left fears less.  That one they spare until the general election and then they unload on him.  At any rate, not much is needed since the base is usually cringing.

Mind you, it’s never really bad stuff – like, say Clinton’s serial record as a sex offender WELL before he ran for president, or Elizabeth Warren’s using of racial preferences to which she’s not even remotely entitled, or … any of that – It’s stuff like “binders full of women” or using the word “niggardly” or something else into which they can read penumbras and emanations of a hatred for women or other races or another designated Marxist victim group.

They are aided in this by the right’s – and for the purposes of this Libertarians are very much the right – wish to distance itself from anything that might sound even vaguely off.

Look, the left doesn’t do this.  Point out to them that Elizabeth Warren is Faux-a-hontas and first you get the “well, she truly believed it” then you get the “there is no proof she used it to advance” and then you get “she did much to raise consciousness…” and then they reset and are back to “you’re racist because she’s a Native American.”

The right, OTOH would jump away from everything like that, like a shot, and then start piling on and driving the person out of the party.

I have a theory that this is a leftover cold war reflex.  During the cold war the left managed to paint the right as being for the rich, because it was against the distribution of wealth.  (Instead of the distribution of wealth ipso facto favoring a large government and an “upper class” that gives bennies to the benighted, just like in feudal times.  In fact the whole concept of redistribution IS feudal. Why would the government give YOUR money to anyone else, unless all money belongs to them and “we all belong to the government”?)  From this came painting the right as anti-other-races (completely airbrushing the fact it was the left who endorsed slavery – same as it ever was, I guess) and all the other image of the stodgy/old fashioned right.  It took them forever and near monopoly of the information/entertainment complex to build that image.

And now the right reacts to it as if it were ever true.  So faced with a politician who is less than perfect (ah!) the right recoils and piles on, to prove they’re not like that.

Which reinforces the left’s sole remaining ability – the ability to destroy.

There is also the fact that we have very little ability to fight against it.  The “accusations” themselves are the sort of thing you can’t fight against.  Trying to explain that Sarah Palin never said she could see Russia from her house puts you in the position of trying to explain a joke.  “A horse couldn’t have walked into a bar.  The doors aren’t wide enough.”  It doesn’t work.  In fact, the more stupid and widespread the accusation, the harder it is to counter.

Even the Tea Party, as a widespread phenomenon that most people know someone who belongs to, has got the tarnish job.  It took them forever, but by dint of repeating the “ignorant” and “fanatic” they’ve got most people believing it or half believing it.  (A couple of false flag operations helped that along.)  And part of it is that the right willingly goes along with it, again.

So what to do?  Well… The only thing I can think of other than stop jumping every time they make jokes about someone being a frog is to fight fire with fire.  Is there a stupid meme out saying that so and so said something totally out of context?  Find the stupidest things Obama has said (And I don’t mean corpse- man, most people don’t care about mispronounciations.  Unless your target is college professors.  But “you didn’t build that” is pretty damn dumb, as are his recent scolds on “inequality” while he flies around in private jets to glam vacations) and make a meme, and flood the net.  And when they push their meme at you, push right back.  Just a sentence.  No, it doesn’t need to be impeccably sourced, no it doesn’t need to make sense, even.  It just needs to be catchy.

Will it work?  I don’t know.  But it’s worth trying.  It’s worth trying because in the last two elections the left has used their power to make people hate and cringe to select their opponent.  And if they do that again in 16 it will be enough.  It will do for us.

I know I keep saying to be not afraid and that in the end we win they lose.  I still think that is true.  But I also believe our country (and by extension civilization) can go down for a one or two generation count, and we can live our great-grandkids such a mess to rebuild that what we have right now will seem like a golden age.

Just because tech and history will eventually go our way is no reason to put down our weapons.  Just because they control most of the channels that can be used for propaganda doesn’t mean we can’t counter it.

Be not afraid.  But keep fighting.

I know you’re going to tell me that the New Year is an arbitrary day, a chance of calendar, but humans live by ritual and symbols as much as by concrete things.  If the world were all logic and what matters logically, we wouldn’t have any special dates, and no one would ever do anything extraordinary because “it’s just the practical that counts.”  And no one would attach any importance to the myths and stories.

I don’t know about you Tovarish, but me I use the rituals and the dates and the symbolic turning points as a fixed point off which to rappel and change my direction.

I don’t often do New Year’s resolutions, mostly because I view them as “things to break” and these aren’t quite so much resolutions as things I say are changing and will endeavor to change in this direction.

This means if I don’t do it on the 1^st of January I didn’t break them already, but I’m starting to tack my ship in that direction, and it will get better as it goes.

You see, there is a dreadful weight of inertia to human life.  Things-as-you’ve-always-done them become established in your mind and you end up doing them the exact same way over and over again, even if you hate it.  It’s kind of like trying to swim in a soaked overcoat.  And in this case, the habits formed during this year are the kind that, like that soaked overcoat, will be the end of me, if I don’t change them.

So I’m going to hold onto this here buoy of the New Year and try to change my direction in the following ways.

–          I’m going to try to walk three miles a day, even if it’s very cold.  This is why G-d gave us padded leather overcoats, after all. No more wimping out on the “Argh, I’m freezing” escape clause.  There will also be an appointment with an endocrinologist (don’t ask) and I’m going to try to eat by the method of “It was out when I walked past the kitchen) since I have it on good authority that living of cheese sticks and the occasional spoon of peanut butter is bad for me.

–          I’m going to try to write no more than 4 original/non repeat, not link-fest links for this blog per week (other than the chapters) and fill in the rest with stuff the huns will enjoy.

–          I’m going to try to write all the blog posts for the week in advance on Friday, so they don’t impinge on the other writing.

–          I’m going to try to change my subscribers’ content at least once a month (there’s new stuff up, btw)

–          I’m going to try to finish Through Fire and Darkship Revenge in January.

–          I’m going to try to finish The Musketeer’s Confessor in February.

–          I’m going to try to go to officeish at least 4 days a week, to facilitate the above goal.  (Trying to write while running this madhouse is for the birds.)

–          I’m going to try to take at least one drawing course, because it feeds the soul.

–          I revolve to read at least two new novels a month (no, I’m not that slow, but I read a lot for research/re-read a lot. New stuff tends to suffer.)

–          I’m going to try to be a better friend and more assiduous correspondent to the various ones of the huns who are regular correspondents.

–          I’m going to try to get the rest of my back list – Musketeer’s Inheritance, Musketeer’s Servant and (revised) Heart of Light, Soul of Fire, Heart and Soul – up for sale, both paper and ebook.

–          I’m going to see about getting Basset’s antho done, even if it’s by barflies for barflies.

–          I’m going to try to get permission to do a fan-story antho for the shifters (if Baen doesn’t want to publish it in paper, they can publish it in webscriptions, and Goldport will bring it out in paper.)

–          I’m going to try – very hard – to take my indie stuff if not as seriously as Baen, at least seriously enough that I finish A Flaw In Her Magic and A Fatal Paws (the first orphan kitten mystery) at last.

Yes, that’s a lot of stuff, but most of it is in various states of completion, and I really think that if I’m not hampered by the dead weight of the blog, and if I can stop getting sick, it WILL get done.

I look back at 2013 and wonder if it’s me or the rest of the world that went mad.

First the personal: we spent most of the year wondering if the main income of this household would still be there, all the while knowing if he lost it it would be hard to find another, even as, from every magazine and newspaper – for years in a row – we are assured that we’re on the brink of a recovery.

To be fair, most of them say we’re on the precipice of a recovery, and perhaps they have read the dictionary definition of precipice, and just think we haven’t.

prec·i·pice

[pres-uh-pis] Show IPA

noun

1.

a cliff with a vertical, nearly vertical, or overhanging face.

2.

a situation of great peril: on the precipice of war.

We seem to be among the lucky few because our proposed doom has been postponed for at least a year maybe two, unless we all hit the cliff together – and in that case, well, we’ll be like everyone else.  “And we’ll all go together, when we go/and we’ll all go together when we go/ with the currency diluted/and our sovereignty disputed/yes, we’ll all go together when we go.”

Meanwhile, of course, this lays an obligation on us to write like demons, so maybe, just maybe if/when the main breadearning proposition fails, there will be lots of little others to take their place.  The kids are starting to pull their weight in writing.  Dan is making time for it.  He/us are also trying various other gambits.  I still think our future is multiple small streams of income.

“So, will we go over the precipice?”  — Who knows?  But even if we do, life tends to go on.  Look at places like Zimbabwe.  So, shut up and keep rowing.

Grandma used to say that “Where bread is short, everyone argues no one is right.”  Given how much groceries have gone up and salaries haven’t (good thing that food and fuel are no longer counted towards inflation, uh?) Much of the year can be explained in that vein.

There was for instance the amazing insanity of the SFWA glittery hoo-has trying to create a storm in a B Cup by accusing men of sexism for being men.  One wonders if they think the world would be better populated by castrati and women only.

I really wish we’d bring back single-gender schools.  Why?  Because any woman who has attended a girls- only middle school will not have any sort of illusions about a society composed of females only.  “Peaceful because there are no men” my sore big toe.

And to the extent that SFWA seems determined to kick out anyone who isn’t “different enough” (in a purely genetic way, of course, because diversity of thought is evil) I can see them fast becoming like the middle school I attended: Nasty, full of gossip, a place where no loyalty nor honor apply, and occasionally and unexpectedly unbelievably violent.

Then there was the shut down, because the republicans wanted to delay the onset of the Deathstar… I mean, Obamacare.  That was a moment of total surreal confusion.  “Wait, the people who’ll suffer the most from this craptastic “law” are the ones wanting to implement it?  The ones who have the most to gain from its implosion want to stop it?”  There was the Park Service taking orders to harass the citizens who pay their wages because Befehl its Befehl.  There was the news stations ASSURING us that the Republicans had lost from causing the shutdown (I’m still not convinced this bears any more relationship to the truth than the jobless figures do, or the inflation figures, either.)

But it turns out they’re drinking their own ink (no, seriously) and think that they really thought that their law HAD to work, because it was ideologically correct, even if it makes no sense, doesn’t apply to the real world, and can’t do anything that it said it would do…

The prognosis on this for 2014 is: I’m going to drink heavily.  But not as heavily as they’ve been, and not their ink.

We will pass over, with averted eyes, the bizarre notion of us becoming allied with Iran and getting them the right to enrich uranium, and the other… oddities of a foreign policy that’s come completely unglued from reality.  Never mind.  This too shall pass.  Hopefully without taking us along in a radioactive burst.

So, everything is in a mess, and so …  And so we forge on. This is no time to get wobbly.  They’re the ones that create the mess, and we’re the ones with broom and mop, who come in and clean up.

In the way these things work, this means we win, they lose.  Because if all you have to offer is chaos and destruction, you’ll never (duh) build anything lasting.  Maybe this is why the great statist empires, from the one that was supposed to last 1000 years, to the one that was supposed to bring in the Homo Sovieticus last a maximum of 70 years and reduce everyone and everything to sh*t.  Odd how that happens, uh?

Not to say I’m willing to give them even 70 years over the land of the free – no.  This is where we settle their hash once and for all, hopefully with a minimum of unpleasantness.

Be not afraid.  We win they lose.  But the times ahead WILL be interesting.  That I guarantee.  Fortunately, you ain’t seen nothing like us yet. And neither have they.

*You know him as Kilted Dave and what the fancy title means is that he’s one of the poor souls I’ve convinced to give me at least one post a month.  Yes, I’m still taking guest posts from the rest of you, but you’re under no obligation to do one a month, while the poor saps souls in the raiding party are on the hook for that.  So, without further ado, I’ll let him introduce himself.  (And Raiding Party is, of course, in keeping with the Hun theme.)*

I’ve been instructed to introduce myself. And to make it amusing. Very well.

I am called the Kilted One, the Blurred Barista, the Red-Bearded Pirate, “Hey, You,” the Scourge of God, and (my favorite) the Magnificent Bastard.

I come from a long, long line of scoundrels, ruffians, and assorted barbarians (sometime within a generation of the Battle of Hastings, I have an ancestor called Thom the Saxon). Those arbiters of all things cultural – the Hellenes – gave the concept to their conquerors/conquered the Romans (it was a very confusing assimilation for all involved), and they applied it to – so far as I can tell – all of my ancestors, as far back as anyone can find. Gaul, Pict, Gael, Celt, Scot, Angle, Saxon, Dane, Norse. Without expensive tests whose legitimacy has recently been called into question, it seems clear I am the penultimate product of as shady a gang of ne’er-do-wells as you’ll find this side of Tortuga (not the one in the Caribbean Sea; the raucous freehold occupying the hollowed out moon of a nameless planetoid hurtling ’round the white dwarf companion of Ultima Baengari, binary system famed in story and legend. I would say more, but we haven’t the time).

I am the proud holder of a degree in that most useful and least marketable of (in)disciplines: philosophy. My BA in BS has served me well in the decade since I made off with it. I learned early on that nobody likes philosophers (much like prophets in that regard, but more on that later) so I figured a term of enlistment would provide adequate recompense for my profligate education. After six years nowhere near a mast (boy and man), I discovered the Navy had no more interest in my high-minded mannerisms than did that bane of all thinking people, Academia. No really, listening to static and not seeing the sun for weeks was pushing me rapidly toward doing something precipitous. Well, those, and bureaucratic nonsense I have since learned is standard.

But now I’m free: free of obligation, free of trousers and free of that gods-be-damned hole in the ground. Free to starve to death on my own merits. Fortunately, behind every man stands a woman, prodding him in the back with drawn bayonet. And Mrs. Dave, aka Sarah the Younger, aka Sarah the Blonder, aka Mischief, aka A Trial To Me, aka the mother of my as-yet-unborn spawn, does her share of prodding. I just wish she’d take the batteries out of the prod. But seriously, Mrs. Dave is a gracious lady who allows me to pursue my writing with only the simple understanding that I’ll clean her house, cook her meals, father her children (in various stages of potentia) and generally prove to one and all that I’m more or less civilized. Also, it brings closer the day when I’ll keep her in the manner in which she’d like to become accustomed.

When it comes to the lies I tell for a living, I seem to have fallen into a peculiar niche. My prose isn’t so much purple as it is a shadowed lavender, and my protagonists seem to barely know what they’re about. I’d blame this on a relative lack of experience, but I’ve got several hundred thousands of words (some of them even in sentences, no less) in multiple works spread across several (sub)genres. The published works are, on the one hand, rural fantasy (that peculiar subgenre of contemporary fantasy that doesn’t happen in a city) and on the other hand, something I think of as a cross between fairy tales and Lovecraftian quasi-horror.

I have other projects in various states of disrepair and decay, to include steampunk, second world fantasy, space opera, a couple of post-apocalyptic adventures, pulp adventure, and military SF. I come by it honestly, as – at age seven or so – I picked up a nifty book on my father’s shelf. The book had a dragon on it, and I thought, “cool.” Eventually, I hit a point where, halfway though half of the books I picked up, I thought, “I bet I can do better than this.” After the Navy and I called it quits (always nagging, calling at odd hours to check up on me, issuing orders she knew wouldn’t be obeyed) and I had my aforementioned sugar-mama (Hi, Dear! What’s that knife for?), I’ve shuffled off to the bucolic countryside for a life of lit-RAR-y leisure. It is the most pleasant thing, staring deeply into candle-flames until early in the morning, sleeping until nearly noon and then slaving over nearly two hundred words, polishing them until they fling back the rays of the setting sun. Romantic, non?

[Editors’ note: Help STOP This grinning idiot won’t write the bloody stories STOP All we get are weak daydreams STOP Send red meat and whiskey-soaked gunpowder STOP Use the FTL matt-trans for Krim’s sake STOP Don’t know how much longer we can hold off the entropic drain STOP]

Sorry, where was I?

Oh, yes. Our hostess has asked me to go on a bit about my ambitions and what I want to get out of writing. It’s pretty simple, really: I want to write good stories, and mostly, get paid for them. Simple, and as easy as any other trained skill. Which is to say: not at all. At least, not when you need to know what you’re doing. So I’m working on that part. For a given value of work. Yes: working on that, as well.

Along those lines, I do have a few writers whose work I study, and of whom I’d be delighted to be called derivative. Larry Correia, besides being a Wise Latino and a friend, has a way with words that draws the reader on. I think I managed to avoid staying up until the sunrise with Warbound, but then only because I firmly left it in the other room. Had I taken it to bed, “to finish the chapter,” I’d have been doomed to finishing it in one sitting. As I’ve done with all the rest of his books. I’m firmly of the opinion that the best compliment a writer can get is, “you bastard, you kept me up until the wee hours on a school/work night!” That is what I want out of writing.

I keep Sarah the Wiser’s (you heard it here first, ladies and germs!) work in mind, and that of her spiritual forefather, RAH (pbuh). Our hostess has a manner of pacing that I wish to emulate, though it’s double tough to cut out the boring bits (but I love that sentence! I neeeeeeed iiiitttt!) Mad Mike’s gift of gab, as what translates into his writing. Oh, John Ringo, No’s seemingly magical ability to take anything and turn it into gold. The Mad Wizard’s way with plausible-seeming high technology. Col. Kratman’s insouciance toward the opinions of his fellow humans, as well as his and Mr. Drake’s ease with military history and the filing off of serial numbers of the same. Dozens of others, whose names and qualities escape me at the moment. There are even those whose work I do not wish to emulate, but from whom I learn something every time I read them. There are even those who simply serve as a negative example. Too many to enumerate, and I’ve not the energy to give them press. Maybe later. If you behave.

When it comes to the more rollicking discourse we tend to enjoy here, I have opinions – as should have become apparent by now – even strongly held ones. I am, however, a naturally retiring individual. I don’t particularly enjoy interpersonal conflict, especially over things on which I lack certainty. Trained in the Socratic Method as I am, and indoctrinated in the professional paranoia of the intelligence community, I’m sure of my lack of knowledge and wisdom in most arena and disinclined to advertise the fact.
Moreover, I often lack the patience for the cut and thrust of online debate, and as physical violence is somewhat frowned upon (re-institute a Code Duello!) and I mislike shaking in impotent rage, I’d liefer play the diplomat to the rest of the Huns’ savagery. ‘Tis more fun that way.

Oh, as regards prophets and philosophers.

There are generally two kinds: fore-tellers and forth-tellers. Often, these are two responsibilities of the same person. What we do here is – hopefully – both. We speak truth. Not to power, thank Bob, we’re not nearly that far gone. We tell it like it is. The world is thus, and we’ll say it to your face. Doesn’t matter if you want to believe some figment of a brain-sick, maundering freeloader of a demagogue. And people don’t like that. They don’t like being told their deeply cherished foolishness is so much dross.

Which is why we’re clever about it, ’round here. We dress it up all fancy-like; hang it round with rocket-ships and battle scenes, romances and betrayals and any other scores and scores of literary devices that strike our fancy. That’s what Human Wave is, after all: truth cloaked in pretty lies, falsehoods, fictions. The kind we like to read, and reread and read yet again. The kind that inspire us to look at the messes around with hope, rather than despair.

Or at least with an eye on which parts of it to plunder and which to burn. Until the next raiding party, you hoodlums, keep your blades sharp and your pens sharper.