Blogging in the Classroom Presentation

This is a post for everyone who attended our technology lunch meeting. Hi!

Those print-outs I gave you are filled with annoyingly long links. Here they are below, so you can just click on the links rather than searching the internet for those sites:

Google Blogger Instructions

Blogging in AISD/Christina's Websites/Weebly

Peace,
Christina

Carrie Fisher and Princess Leia are not the same person. But they both kick butt.

Image courtesy of The Harvard Gazette. 

So. Carrie Fisher. And, separately, Princess Leia. Let me unpack a little bit.

When the news broke that Carrie Fisher had suffered a massive heart attack, my first thought wasn’t, “Oh no! Not Princess Leia!” Princess Leia is a fictional character and, trust me, Not Dead.

My first thought was, “Oh, crap. I need her on twitter if I’m ever going to survive 2017.”

This week's lightsaber vigil at Alamo Drafthouse wasn't much about Carrie. Instead, we mourned Princess Leia. I watched my sister-in-law, dressed in Leia’s white robe, console my niece, corral a stroller, and brandish a lightsaber without missing a beat. A kerfuffle arose between the men wanting to toast “Princess” Leia, and the women shouting “General!” A marching band played songs by The Modal Nodes. Cinnamon-roll buns abounded. It was impossible not to see what Princess Leia means to us as a culture and not to think about how she shaped me, personally.  

See, Leia's the first person I saw break out of her archetype. Star Wars is about as in-your-face with the Hero Cycle as it's possible to get, and that means everyone and everything has a role. Leia is the meeting with the goddess. She's the damsel in distress. If you look at the movie in terms of structure, she plays the typical female parts.

But the second she gets placed in those roles, she starts breaking down the walls. "Help me Obi Wan Kenobi. You're my only hope." Sounds pretty typically damsel-y, right? She's not asking for rescue, though. She's asking him to take the baton and get it to Alderaan while she gives up her life in an attempt to stall and outmaneuver the Empire. To put it in gaming terms, tiny 18-year-old Leia is the tank of A New Hope. 

And what does she need the guys for? To unlock the door. The second it's open, she goes from damsel to rescuer: "This is some rescue. You came in here, but you didn't have a plan for getting out? ...Somebody has to save our skins."

She has absolutely no respect for the role she's supposed to inhabit. She's not gracious or soft-spoken or helpless. From "Into the garbage chute, flyboy," to "We have no time for our sorrows," she never flinches away from putting aside what’s expected of her to get the job done. Princess Leia doesn’t so much escape her archetype as explode it from the inside.

When I was a kid, I adored Carrie Fisher—because I was a kid, and I conflated her with Princess Leia. Now I adore Carrie Fisher separately. She fights just as hard as Leia does, but she does it with messy humor. Leia fights the power. Carrie Fisher sticks out her tongue at the power and blows a raspberry. Both Carrie and Leia were born into royalty, and both refuse to be confined or silenced by the expectations of their positions. Leia barks orders. Carrie plays words the way some people play piano.

And both taught me that trouble isn't something you sit back and passively take. You don't have to be defined by your hardships. You can define yourself by the way you choose to react.

That President Obama. We have a lot in common, he and I.

President Obama and Nichelle Nichols, who plays Lt. Uhura. Image courtesy of ABC News' blog. 

Here, have a list of President Obama's Eight Essential Sci-Fi Films and TV Shows. Many of these you have already studied. It's a solid list!

-Mrs. Swan

Star Trek and a Private Little Directive

Despite dancing around the issue for an entire class, we managed to talk Star Trek without mentioning the Prime Directive! Any exploration of Star Trek as a utopian ideal rather than just a first-world fantasy has to contend with the Prime Directive, that pesky non-interference clause.

In "A Private Little War" Kirk assumes that the Klingons have armed the villagers with flintlock firearms, and he’s furious. How dare they contaminate this planet with their superior (and murderous) technology? He and Bones refuse to give any weapons to the hill people until they’ve proven Klingon involvement, and they keep their identities secret from the tribe—only Tyree and his wife know that they’re from another planet, and they’re none too happy with Nona having this information. All of this fuss about staying out of other people’s business is Starfleet’s Prime Directive, which states that "personnel should refrain from interfering in the natural, unassisted, [sic] developmentof societies, even if such interference [is] well-intentioned." (Thanks to Memory Alpha, the Star Trek wiki.) But Kirk is emotionally involved—these are his friends! This planet was a paradise! Bones, on the other hand, insists throughout that providing these people with flintlocks is a slippery slope. What weapon next? How many people will they enable to kill? Where does it end?

Thanks to Iverson Movie Ranch for the screen capture. 

The thing is, the Prime Directive is really serious business. It means no interference whatsoever, not even in providing knowledge of a larger universe. In the episode "Bread and Circuses," Kirk explains the Prime Directive as: "No identification of self or mission. No interference with the social development of said planet. No references to space or the fact that there are other worlds or civilizations." You can pass for one of the natives, or you can hide. Those are your only options. And the Federation is not kidding. This directive is “prime," number one, the very first rule. Starfleet captains vow to uphold it with their lives, if necessary.

Which leaves me wondering—why does it matter? Why is it such a big deal if we interfere in other civilizations? Presumably we’re letting evolution take its course, but what’s the good in doing that? Doesn’t that assume some sort of moral dimension to evolution that doesn’t actually exist? The end result of noninterference may be a people more perfectly suited to the planet they live on, but this compatibility comes at the cost of virtually everyone before them. And at a certain point in the development of a civilization (assuming an intelligent life form that uses tools), we create technology to supplement our imperfect adaptation, anyway—technology lets us triumph over nature. Doesn’t it? Am I missing something? Am I mapping a human adaptation technique onto non-human species unjustly? Is there not a point at which technological invention necessarily dominates other adaptive capabilities? I mean, chameleons are fantastic at camouflage, and bears are the top of their food chain, but you don’t see them curing disease and adapting to climate change. Why should we be cruel and let evolution take its course when it’s going to end in technological innovation, anyway? This has become a tangent, but, I think, a relevant one.  

The real answer to my question is "the Cold War" and "the East Asian theater," right? We talked about humans and Klingons as capitalists and communists in "The Trouble with Tribbles." "A Private Little War" is a clear—blatant!—allegory for the Vietnam War, which was in full swing by the time the episode aired in 1967. The communists provide arms to one side, the capitalists to another, and we sit back and watch those involved in the conflict blow each other to smithereens without having to become involved in the bloodshed ourselves. Until suddenly it escalates, and we are involved. And then we fight them over there so we don’t have to fight them here, right?

Star Trek doesn’t see much of a need to fight at all. And in the context of the Cold War, the never-ending and unwinnable Vietnam War, and the arms race (the pinnacle of which is the civilization-ending nuclear bomb), it’s hard to argue with that claim. Involvement leads to escalation. Involvement leads to bloodshed. They’re better off on their own. Some may die, but certainly not in the kind of mass carnage that our (military) interference would cause. The Garden of Eden may not actually be perfect, but it’s better than the Fall. In its historical context, I see what they mean.

But not all involvement is military involvement, and by the time we get to Star Trek: The Next Generation, we’re looking at the Prime Directive in much trickier situations. In the episode "Homeward," the Enterprise crew is willing to let an entire (intelligent, developed, tool-using, literature-possessing, humanoid) species perish in a natural disaster rather than interfere in their "development." To be perfectly clear, these people wouldn’t develop further; they would all die. Granted, the episode ends with the crew saving one small village while managing to uphold the Prime Directive (sort of): the village never knows that aliens intervened on their behalf. But the show also reaffirms the importance of the Prime Directive, as the most intelligent of the villagers discovers the Enterprise, undergoes an existential crisis, and commits suicide.

One might point out that if the Enterprise had not intervened, he would have died anyway.

As a twelve-year-old watching The Next Generation, I never questioned the moral rightness of Prime Directive, even as I never thought to question all the times our heroes break it. As an adult, I understand that interference in the business of others often leads to a big fat imbroglio, though I wonder if a proxy war conducted for our own gain is the same as something like building infrastructure or providing aid. 

I’m also completely unwilling to stand back and let people die and claim that I’m doing the hard but right thing. So what am I missing? The Prime Directive might be a very good rule from a practical point of view. But is it really so morally correct? 

Here, have a reality check from a science fiction author!

Art from the cover of Robinson's Red Mars, obtained here. 

Sci fi author Kim Stanley Robinson reflects on Elon Musk's vision of travel to Mars. Spoiler alert: He thinks the plan is unrealistic. Read about it in Why Elon Musk's Mars Vision Needs 'Some Real Imagination' (interview by Eric Roston)

I love Mars. Love love love. My first experience reading science fiction was the Young Astronaut series, about--guess what?--colonizing Mars. I made great grades in science for years because of those books. (They are every bit as cheesy as they look, by the way.)

We can't help but be attracted to Mars. Given enough time and resources, it really could be a second home--not as hospitable as earth, but close enough to reach, and viable. The moon...well, the moon doesn't have enough atmosphere to make intensive terraforming possible, and it's just less exciting. Robinson makes a good case for a Moon base, though.

Infecting Mars

Image from Space X, via this Quartz article. 

Did you know that Tesla founder Elon Musk is making plans to send human beings to Mars?

Really. He is. Right now! See? Read this article.

I know it seems like science fiction--or at least something far down the road, considering how big a mess we've made of Earth itself. And clearly we are not going on a field trip to Mars next year. Even if he is successful (and that's a HUGE if), it's going to take a lot of time. But considering how far he's come with Space X, we should probably take Musk seriously.

Which leads us to Mars. This article invokes the 1967 Outer Space Treaty (which is apparently really cool) to claim that Musk's mission might not be ethical, or even legal. The United Nations has pledged to take measures so that we don't contaminate other planets with microbes. (Since human beings are walking bacteria factories, that makes a lot of sense to me.)

I still think it highly unlikely that Mars contains sentient life, or even animal life. We're not going to arrive and be greeted by Ylla. But we have found evidence of running water on the planet. And we're pretty sure that some Antarctic fungus could survive there. The presence of microbial life on Mars is looking...well, if not likely, then at least more and more possible.

"Don't mess up," you optimists say. "Just don't go around contaminating and killing things on Mars, and we'll be fine." But I'd like to remind you that we have a crummy track record, as colonizers, for keeping native populations alive. Remember those woodcuts from 17th century England? "Come to Jamestown! Fertile earth! Uninhabited land!"

Uninhabited! Sometimes we blunder through the places we explore and destroy people and animals and plants in truly accidental carelessness. And sometimes we are blind to the damage we cause, because this blindness suits our purposes. I'm not so sure we would recognize life on Mars, even if it were staring us in the face--at least, not at first.

So I want to ask you, because this is a question that comes up over and over in science fiction: What obligation do we have to the life of other planets? Is terraforming a "dead" planet okay? (How do we recognize a dead planet?) Is it all right to contaminate or replace microbes? Plants? Animals? People? Why, or why not?

Your next stop, the Twilight Zone!

No, seriously, you're entering The Twilight Zone today!

I'm out at a doctor's appointment. I need you guys to help the substitute hook my laptop up to the innovation station, get the projector started, and then play the two episodes of The Twilight Zone that you'll watch in class today. The sub has the specific lesson plans, and you can get Mr. Dehram, in room 220, to help with unlocking my computer, in case it gets locked (which will probably happen). Basically:
-Watch "Time Enough at Last."
-Talk about it. Use the discussion questions.
-Watch "The Star."
-Talk about it. Use the discussion questions.

Both episodes are online. The web addresses and discussion questions are on today's handout. Now, if only there were a way to put that handout online, so you didn't have to type in the whole url to get to the episode...

But wait! Look at THIS!

There's your link to today's assignment. Have fun, guys!

-Mrs. Swan