The New SyFy Channel

SyFy is headed to space, and it seems as though they're serious. Last week, they announced a 10-episode pickup of The Expanse, a series that will adapt (presumably) the first book from James S.A. Corey, . In the wake of the announcement, I've seen a lot of complaints from fans, noting SyFy's general track record with shows. Despite the last five years of distancing themselves from harder SF stories, this falls in line with the direction the channel is trying to lurch itself towards, shaking off their reputation for something better. It's about time, too.

The Expanse is a good move for SyFy and the announcement that they've picked up the TV show fills me with quite a bit of optimism for the direction of the channel's future. Over the last couple of years, the channel has been talking quite a bit about returning to space, with news over the last couple of years of shows such as adaptations of Larry Niven's novel Ringworld and Sir Arthur C. Clarke's Childhood's End and shows such as Ascension and Defiance. So far, only Defiance (after a really long development period) has aired, and then, to tepid reviews and ratings. But, it's a start, and shows that the channel is starting to think about bigger, more serious projects.

In the mid-2000s, the show was indisputably one of the better outlets for speculative fiction on the small screen: long-running shows such as Stargate SG-1 and its spinoff, Stargate: Atlantis collectively ran for fifteen seasons, while Farscape and Battlestar Galactica, two very ambitious space dramas, had fairly good runs before being cancelled. With the cancellation of Ronald D. Moore's Galactica in 2009, the channel seemed to get nervous about shows set in space. Galactica's ratings had nosed down over the last two seasons (most likely due to some of the narrative stunts they took), and its follow-up successor, Caprica, set decades before, never found its voice or ratings, and was cancelled a year later. A third follow-up, Battlestar Galactica: Blood and Chrome, died a slow death as SyFy executives waddled on the decision to release it to the web or to television. Ultimately, it was burned off on YouTube, effectively ending the franchise for the channel. A third Stargate entry, Stargate: Universe, a grown up, broody and excellent entry never quite captured the same attraction as its predecessors, and ended with a frustrating cliffhanger at the end of Season 2.

SyFy pivoted, perhaps seeing the successes rival networks enjoyed with shows such as True Blood, and went in an urban fantasy and Sci-Fi lite direction. It's not really any surprise: the darker stuff hadn't really succeeded, and shows such as Eureka had done really well. Alphas, Warehouse 13, Lost Girl, Bitten and Being Human have all been developed, and dominated the network's offerings since 2009, alternatively earning praise from fans who enjoyed that type of story, and derided by those who missed the shows set in space.

All the while, SyFy expanded their offerings into reality TV, as well as the frequently-derided WWE on Wednesday nights. Often, their placement on the schedule has been explained as money makers for the channel (or, laughably, that it's a type of fantasy in and of itself), which in turn support the programming of the other scripted shows. I don't know that I've ever met anyone who's actually watched WWE on the channel.

Meanwhile, a revolution in scripted television erupted from various premium and network channels. TNT's Falling Skies, Fox's Fringe, CBS's Person of Interest, AMC's The Walking Dead, and HBO's Game of Thrones all came out, as well as show such as Awake, Under the Dome, Terra Nova, Revolution, Agents of SHIELD, Almost Human, Arrow, Orphan Black and Outcasts, to name a couple, while in non-Science fiction offerings, there's Once Upon a Time, Grimm, Supernatural, Sleepy Hollow, American Horror Story, Vampire Diaries, and others. Science Fiction TV, once largely limited to the SyFy channel, found new homes. While not all have been successful, it shows that there's a new appetite for speculative works on the small screen, and that such shows can not only do well, but do really well. SyFy, while it's had some success with their current offerings, hasn't had any hits on the same scale. They easily could have, with the right mindset.

Major projects such as The Walking Dead and Game of Thrones aren't easy projects to bring to television: they're big, elaborate, and cover subject material that's far from the material that SyFy was putting out between 2003-2008. They're ambitious (and I'll throw Person of Interest in there, too, as an example of what network channels *can* also do.) and have received a disproportionate amount of praise from critics and fans alike, all the while seeing their ratings go up as viewers keep watching.

It's clearly a balancing act: Game of Thrones and The Walking Dead take on popular properties and subject matter, all the while they're fairly well written and scripted. Others miss out: Awake, while fantastic, never caught on. Terra Nova was silly and stupidly expensive. Fringe lasted on critical glee, but wanted for viewers. Others just do really well with the right combination of characters and story, building year after year: Supernatural is well into its tenth year, and has a spin off in the works, while Arrow doesn't seem to be going anywhere but up (and also has a spinoff in the works).

SyFy's clearly got the vision for ambitious projects, but they're held back; from themselves. It's a business, and accordingly, the material they're turning out needs to be successful. However, it's always seemed as though this very risk-adverse mindset percolates down into what's being picked up. They say that you never make the shot that you don't take, and the channel has been on a course where they're only taking shots where the basket is five feet off the floor. Until Defiance, it's seemed that there's no sense of risk to the shows that they've tried, but rather gone back to the well time and time again for material that is proven to run with a certain audience.

In many ways, SyFy pivoted one way, anticipating an audience that they wanted to grasp, only to end up missing an audience that's since moved beyond the SyFy walls. Game of Thrones, Walking Dead, Orphan Black and Doctor Who have become the destination shows that would make a dynamite portfolio for a dedicated genre-channel. Even the ambitious Defiance feels like it's a compromise, existing only due to the momentum that a $100 million show causes. They've got a season 2, but the show won't take off until the show becomes something a bit more interesting. Shows such as Helix have demonstrated that they're ready to bring back some serious scripted drama.

Recently, SyFy seems to have realized something was up, and has been shaking off like a wet dog. VP Mark Stern, who oversaw the Battlestar-Defiance years at SyFy, and who's been replaced by Bill McGoldrick. McGoldrick shift earlier this year has come with a lot of talk about bringing SyFy back. In an interview with Adweek, he noted that they've realized that scripted drama is what the channel's reputation lives and dies by. The current reputation? Wounded from reality TV and crappy films. But, with the rise of shows such as Game of Thrones, they're starting to see serious offers for new shows, one of which was apparently The Expanse.

If there's a show that'll demonstrate that the channel is serious about bringing back 'proper' science fiction, it's Leviathan Wakes. The show has just about everything: spacecraft, epic world-building, military science fiction, conspiracies, and a huge cast of interesting and diverse characters. It's large, hits all of the right notes, and it comes with a built in audience of readers who've made the books hits. The first novel was nominated for the Hugo Award, and along with a bunch of shorter entries in the series, an additional three novels were ordered after the first three. The fourth book in the series, Cibola Burn, hits this summer, this time as a more expensive hardcover novel (as opposed to trade paperback, like its preceding three books.)

Moreover, SyFy seems to realize that story's paramount. Rather than putting together a pilot and worrying about ordering a full, 22-episode season, they've committed to a run of ten episodes - enough time to tell the story, but not so much that they'll have to really stretch their special effects budget. In addition to The Expanse, SyFy has recently announced a limited 12 Monkeys series and Ascension, a limited series about a group of colonists, all the while cutting back on the B films.

Most of the complaints genre fans have had about SyFy are true. The channel's shifted direction and gone the safe route, and accordingly, they've really missed out on both the opportunity to do great things, but also hitched themselves to the wrong horse, one that's slowly running down. The Expanse has the potential to be an innovating move that can get the channel restarted with good stories, and can bring back an audience that they really want to attract. Already, shows such as Alphas, Being Human and Warehouse 13 have been wound down and ended, while SyFy is keeping shows like Lost Girl and Haven (which picked up a 2-season, 26 episode order) to have a balanced set of offerings for the foreseeable future. If you're going to shake off a reputation, you've got to start somewhere.

There’s also a level of caution here. I don’t think fans should expect a return to the same SciFi channel that existed in the early 2000s. The landscape has changed, and accordingly, so has viewer tastes and viewing habits. Hopefully, we’ll be seeing a new channel that takes both storytelling and genre seriously, recognizing exactly what makes a good show that’ll not only do well season to season, but help the channel’s reputation and build on its audience year to year, which will mean more excellent projects will be attempted. More importantly, SyFy needs to learn to take risks. Even for projects that aren’t necessarily successful, the effort not only counts, but helps all involved figure out what to do next, in theory making things better in the future.

The Expanse is far from certain: it's an ambitious project to run, and likely expensive. But, I'm optimistic. It's got just about everything that science fiction fans have been asking for, and in an adaptation model that's worked in the past. Let's hope that the show-runners will do the books justice, but more importantly, tell a great story.

The Sky Isn’t Falling: Science Fiction as a Genre

Lately, it seems like there have been numerous article and opinion pieces on the state of the science fiction genre, as opposed to the fantasy and horror genres, with science fiction losing out to both and declining as a field. More women make up the total readership, and tend to read more towards the fantasy genre, while commercial ready fiction such as True Blood, The Dresden Files and Twilight have pushed their respective genres towards audiences that are highly receptive towards what they have to offer. Speculative fiction as a genre is not going away: rather, it seems to be growing stronger, with more ties towards the literary fields and with a growing readership. Science fiction is not a genre to be counted out, but it is a style of fiction that will need to undergo much thematic change in the future in order to remain relevant to readers.

Science Fiction as a whole is one that covers a wide range when it comes to themes and topics, and simply stating that the genre as a whole is failing is a rather meaningless, if somewhat dramatic statement. To say that people will stop writing about the speculative future is to say that people will stop imagining what will happen next: that is simply not going to happen. Rather, it is more realistic to assume that some of the more traditional stories might go away as our understanding of the world around us changes: this is a natural expectation.

Science Fiction is a genre that acts as a mirror for the present. It acts as a rare opportunity for creators to examine commonplace issues in a way that it relates to the present; viewing current events out of context as a way of examining them from afar. This is something that I don't believe is new or revelatory when it comes to analyzing the genre, but it is something that bears reminding as people attempt to predict the future of the genre as a whole.

The future of science fiction isn't limited to literature.

Amongst other articles that I've heard reiterated most often is the decline in the fiction that is presented in book (or soon, in virtual book) form. While that might be the case, especially compared to the rise of competing genres, science fiction is not limited to the printed page. As technology progresses, new avenues have presented themselves as methods for the genre to thrive. Content-wise, science fiction is a genre that fits very well with any number of video game systems, and the rise of games with larger story arches, such as Mass Effect, Halo, Gears of War and others demonstrate that science fiction has moved forward with interactive stories that have appealed to a very large audience. I don't believe that I've seen a comparable success with the any sort of video game that follows 'high-browed' literature style to tell a dramatic story.

Similarly, while the same isn't true with films, it's very clear that while they don't win awards as consistently as dramatic films, they can still do very, very well when it comes to earning money for their creators and generating a wide following. One doesn't have to look far beyond Star Wars, Star Trek, Lord of the Rings and Avatar in recent years to realize that people do like science fiction and fantasy in large numbers. Even looking at the critical reception of films such as Inception, Moon, District 9, and Pan's Labyrinth to see that the genres are capable of being far more than 'just' crowd pleasers, but can also act as an introspective on the problems and conflicts that surround us in everyday life, addressing themes on identity and culture, morals and ethics, just to name a scant few.

Speculative fiction hawks have to get away from academic acceptance.

Listening to a piece on NPR the other day, I listened to Margaret Atwood note that it paid to be somewhat cautious when labeling works of fiction. She herself was caught up in a bit of drama when she characterized her works as being speculative fiction, rather than science fiction, characterizing her work as speculative fiction, creating a distinction between the genres, which rubbed numerous science fiction fans the wrong way, prompting a lot of speculation as to the nature of the genre. Reading over numerous book blogs and talking with fellow readers, it's clear that there is a large rift amongst people as to how to accept science fiction.

Science fiction seems to largely be unclaimed by the literary academic fields, dismissed from major awards on numerous grounds. I noted the bitterness in an acquaintance's words that a literary award was left devoid of science fiction and fantasy works, and I have had to wonder there is such attention paid to the status of the genre in these fields as other books have gained considerable attention in the mass media, such as Cormic McCarthy's post-apocalyptic The Road to Lev Grossman's The Magicians, both of which seemed to fall under a more mainstream section of the genre, while enjoying what appears to have been quite a lot of critical and commercial success. At the same time, other books, such as Cherie Priest's Boneshaker, and Scott Lynch's Lies of Locke Lamora seem to have done very well within their speculative genres, if the outcry of fans over the delays in the third book of Lynch's stories and the quick sellout of Priest's sequel novella are anything to go on.

Obviously, labels matter to an extent, but only when it comes to the marketing of said fictions, which makes the complaints about the literary discrimination seem only stranger to me, from both sides of the spectrum. While Atwood's remarks seemed remarkably short sighted for an established storyteller, numerous science fiction novels that line my shelves are ones that I can point to as superior works of literature, groundbreaking even outside of their own genres. Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials was a series that provided some profound philosophical and religious points for me as a high school student, while Ray Bradbury's novel Fahrenheit 451 provided an understanding and appreciation for knowledge that remains with me to this point. The fantastic fiction that is out there provides argument and understanding on par with numerous works of literature, and I heartedly believe that genre snobbery is something that is largely baseless and short sighted.

Despite the labels that are out there, books like The Road and The Year of the Flood demonstrate that there is a leaking out of the genre to other genres, and one doesn't necessarily have to go to the science fiction section of the bookstore to find books that could largely fall within the genre. The label on the back of the book matters very little, and readers should be more aware of what else is out in print, especially as regular fiction catches up to the present. Given that we are increasingly living in a world that is science fictional, it stands to reason that some of that will bleed into our entertainment.

That all being said, the genre has survived for going on a century at this point, often as a crowd-pleasing genre, and one that certainly wouldn’t attract any academic or critical interest at various points in its history.

Fans need to understand that Speculative Fiction is about change... and it is changing.

If there is any one lesson that Science Fiction as its own, self-contained sub genre can impart, it is that the future is going to present a changed reality for all of those who inhabit it. The stories tend to follow how the protagonists can change their world for the better, usually based upon their actions. (This is a broad assumption, but one that I feel is valid) As such, it needs to be understood that the environment that fostered the genre in its earlier, formative days has given way to a world that has been drastically changed by economic, environmental and political events that leaves the current generation of readers with a vastly different understanding of the world as opposed to those who grew up during the Cold War.

Science fiction of the recent past was heavily influenced by world events: a book such as A Canticle for Lebowitz is one that likely could not have been written in the present day, ground breaking as it is. Fiction generally relates to its surrounding cultural contexts: It comes as no surprise that a film such as District 9 would succeed commercially and critically in today's present environment, whereas a film such as Star Wars did the same in the 1970s.

As such, the works within the genre should be expected to change with times, as our understanding of the present (as well as our understanding of technology and the things that surround us) changes. Works of epic space opera such as Isaac Asimov's Foundation Trilogy and some of the minor space arcs such as Timothy Zahn's Conqueror's Trilogy or Ender's Game fit within their own contexts.

A common argument that has been talked about is that the futures presented in the past tended to be optimistic, with people believing that the future held a brighter future for humanity, which in turn translated into works of science fiction. Today, the opposite seems to be true, and as such, the fiction that tends to look backwards towards better days - fantasy - seems to be on the rise. At the same time, the science fiction that seems to be garnering more attention is the dystopia stories: Paolo Bacigalupi's The Windup Girl and assorted stories, Cormic McCarthy's The Road, and the multitudes of zombie novels that predict our demise in the rise of undead and lone libertarians seeking to preserve the American way of life out on their own. In a way, the most successful form of science fiction to come is likely Steampunk, which presents a darker form of science fiction, set in the past, where readers can feel comforted that their current world of advanced technology (or at least medical science) leaves us much better off than in the Victorian world.

Science fiction isn't dying, dead or going anywhere.

I don't believe that this is the case, at all: science fiction is a genre that has been seen to present some utterly fantastic and relevant stories for readers, addressing concerns of the present day in a twisted context. Looking beyond the artificial walls that genre terms provide, it's likely that the stories that we grew up with are likely going to change a bit: the random adventure in a space ship with strange aliens and laser guns might not be quite as common in the wider genre world, but they're likely to be replaced by stories that offer far different visions and interpretations of the future, by simple virtue of being written and created in the present day. 'Real life' is rapidly becoming something out of a science fiction novel, with hand-held computers, global positioning sensors and advances in all sorts of other technologies.

While some of the subject matter is changing, so to is the mediums that we can see the genre, and by this virtue alone, science fiction and fantasy is a genre that is here to stay, simply because it is a resilient genre that can fill numerous forms. Life itself spreads and survives on numbers, so to does the speculative fiction genres, where massive franchises of video games, movies and tie-in fiction enthralled millions of fans each day, generating excitement at the box office, blogs and conventions, where people look to the next really cool thing that they can take in. In its popularity, it is already bleeding into the mainstream consciousness through any number of forms. At this point, do mainstream literary awards matter for the genre as a whole, or signal some form of mainstream acceptance of the genre? I doubt it.

Cause and Effect

A particular thought struck me last night as I pulled away from the Rochester police SUV: I really like to drive fast, and the past couple of years speeding along in my Mini have just hit the register, and it's time to pay up. I had been caught flat footed, something I somewhat predicted would happen at some point, and ten agonizing minutes later, I was issued a citation for speeding through the small village. The moral of the story? There are costs for everything, and my tendencies to drive a bit faster ends up with some additional risks and because of those risks, there's some consequences to that. Over the course of my driving history, the fine won't even out to be much, but it served as a humbling reminder that there are rules in place to govern my behavior, in the public interest.

Driving away, listening to the radio about more news on the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, I can't help but wonder if the same thing needs to be applied to companies such as British Petroleum. I've watched in a sort of numb horror as the situation has gone from bad to catastrophically bad, all the while hearing that the oil company is readying another attempt to stem the flow of oil. Up until now, they’ve been largely unsuccessful in capping the flow, and I can understand why this is such a time consuming problem.

The main issue is that the wellhead is under a mile of water – the pressures at that depth are immense, and the well itself actually runs another thousand or so feet below the bedrock to the reservoir. The pressure of the crust and ocean on top of it undoubtedly is pushing the oil out through the only weakness in the area: the wellhead, and hampering efforts to plug it up. It’s even somewhat understandable to realize why it’s taking such a long time: this sort of problem has never occurred before, and a lack of planning and experience is leaving BP with few answers.

BP and off-shore drilling advocates are at fault here for pushing a short-sighted agenda. As the United States economy grew, demand for oil increased, and alternative sources for cheap petroleum had to be sought out, while to help speed this along, incentives were granted to a number of companies to encourage them to look for more reserves. Increased pressure and instability from around the world, such as in the Middle East, has only further pushed this along as a reasonable alternative. The United States has looked to tackle the problem with the quickest method: there is a demand for oil, thus, more oil needs to be found, rather than looking at ways to reduce the need for demand for oil while accomplishing the same tasks and actions as before. During the 2008 presidential election, I was encouraged by President Obama’s reasonable approach to this, looking for alternatives that would allow for a far more sustainable course of action, one that would ultimately be cheaper and allow for less pollutants and risk to the environment.

BP is at fault for doing much the same thing: as more details emerge from the wreckage of the Deepwater Horizon, it seems that there was no contingencies or planning on the part of the oil company for a disaster, but also that the company had sought to cut corners with experimental technology, only to have it backfire with untested and untried equipment that is ultimately poisoning the Gulf Coast. Their desire for a quick buck, BP has surpassed their desire to protect their workforce and the environment in which they’re working. BP will most likely come out of this disaster with a tarnished reputation while the livelihoods of those that depend upon the Gulf of Mexico are ruined for generations to come.

What needs to happen is a consequence for the oil company, and any others, that will become a major deterrent to prevent this sort of behavior. Just as my speeding ticket will serve as a potent reminder of the consequences of risking public safety by directly impacting my available cash for the next month, so to must BP be punished for their mistakes, in a way that directly impacts the company to make them rethink policy and once again put the public’s best interests first. Just as driving fast works well for the individual, it puts others at risk who are uninvolved, who have no say in how their livelihood will be affected. The oil spill in the Gulf has ruined a natural resource, because of the shortsighted policies of BP and the U.S. Government.

On my drive home last night, I stuck to the speed limit, closely. Today, tomorrow, and for a while, I’ll be much more careful, as I am reminded of the impact that casually breaking speed laws has upon me. BP, and other companies that operate and impact the public need to be held to the same standard. It doesn’t matter that they create some jobs and revenue for the economy because of what they do – mistakes like the ongoing spill demonstrate that they will have a much bigger, far more costly impact in the future, which sets everyone back.

Rant: Education

As someone who studied to become a historian, one of the most frustrating things to watch unfold is the ongoing debate over textbook content that is happening now in Texas. School boards have opted to revise criteria in favor of modern political happenings, injecting their own preferences to combat the 'liberal version' of history as it has been playing out. The political as to how this will impact education aside, this seems to me to be a dangerous shift in how we will educate our younger generations.

In college, I studied both history and geology, and came away with a dominant feeling for context. While exploring vastly different subjects, both the study of prior human events and of geological happenings are linked by a couple of very basic things: they're about actions, and how those actions affect other things down the line. Listening to the radio this afternoon, Vermont Edition talked about a recent landslide that consumed a home in Canada, and geologists on the show noted that there is a direct correlation between what happened over ten thousand years ago and today. Actions have a tendency, in both nature and human history, to have both short term and long term effects. Thus, the context of whatever one is studying is just as important as the individual figures and events that make up the present day.

History is the interpretation of the past. When I've talked about my degree, an M.A. in Military History, I usually have to preface that with an explanation that I'm not an expert in the specifics of World War II, Vietnam, the Napoleonic Era or the American Civil War. This was a degree that was designed to teach someone how to think like a historian, how to research like a historian and how to put together an argument, backed up with evidence like a historian – I can confidently say that I can talk about any number of military concepts, battles and figures, but more importantly, I know how to research those things, but also understand how to examine them within the context of history.

The founder of my alma mater, Alden Partridge, conceived of the school at a time when practical achievements were just as important as the theory behind the words, and as such, sought to educate the first Norwich University cadets in ways that encouraged them to see their teachings in practice, but also to formulate their own thinking based on what they saw when they were seeing. Where Partridge looked to more practical studies, such as Engineering, the same line of thinking applies to the social sciences field, which is where the worry about the Texas Board of Education comes into play.

History is not a static field, but one that is constantly growing and changing as different minds enter the field. Nor is history the study of the past: history is the examination of the past, and the interpretation of events as they happened. Thus, removing important figures such as Thomas Jefferson from mention as a founding father based on some of the things that he pushed eliminates the change to examine some of the context, and arguments, that have helped to shape the present. While teaching any sort of correct form of what happened in the past is far more preferable than teaching something that is ultimately incorrect, the problems surrounding the study of the past in this instance isn’t about correcting past mistakes, it’s about re-framing the past with a modern mindset, and patently ignoring the context of past events to suit modern political thought.

Removing elements of the past is harmful in a number of ways, going far beyond the individual figures: it not only impacts a student’s understanding as to what events happened, but why they happened. Removing Thomas Jefferson as a figure who had pushed for the separation of church and State leaves a void in the understanding for a student as to why the founders placed such a restriction within the constitution. Rewriting history in this manner will thus leave a flawed understanding of the past, which in turn impacts how we view and act in the present.

While that, in and of itself is frightening, what bothers me far more is that a trend towards intellectual backwater and restriction on thought has grown. Often, there are arguments against spending on scientific endeavors, because a practical use or result might not result, or someone cannot think of how any such argument or study can be useful. However, the progress of science and thinking cannot be directed, channeled or moved for convenient thinking: science and learning will ultimately find what it will find: oftentimes, the results and findings exist, but only through searching, will answers be found. The same applies to education, and restricting what people learn simply for the sake of political convenience is short-sighted, ignorant and downright offensive to anybody who wants to see this country grow intellectually, politically and economically in the future.

High Speed (or, I Want To Read On The Way To Work)

Recently, the problem of drivers texting while in a vehicle has been brought to the forefront of the news, shedding light on a vital issue that illustrates that driving is inherently a very dangerous activity. Road safety is something that should never be far from our minds, either in the car, or out of it, and every day on my drive to work, I see examples of poor training and practice amongst my fellow drivers. Two years ago, the issue was on the roads themselves, where cuts and transfers of funds to the roads took place, resulting in roads with plenty of hazards. Both issues taken separately are worrisome, but taken together, they're both downright scary.

Thinking about this has brought to mind another initiative that has been making a bit of news over the course of the past year: high speed rail service. Currently, the nation lags far behind other industrialized nations, such as the United Kingdom, much of Europe and Japan, for large-scale access to a fast train system. In part, I suspect, that's due to the sheer size of the United States, as well as competing for space with freight transportation across the country. Because of the size, a high speed rail system is going to be an expensive proposition, upgrading the current one to something far better.

However, despite the expense, I want to see a high speed rail system come to the United States. On my way to work, I cross a set of rail road tracks that have since been abandoned, and over a hill, follow alongside the major railroad track that runs from the Burlington area all the way down to Boston and down the East Coast. A friend once visited from New York City, and it took her just as long to get up as it would have been to drive. Driving alongside the railroad tracks this morning, I couldn't help but think how much I would prefer to have the ability to make a short walk to a train station, get on a train and simply ride in to work. While I lived in England, in 2006, this was a common occurrence for me, and I found that I really enjoyed riding in to work and class via the underground and regular London transit system.

Maintaining a high speed rail system in the State of Vermont would be a good thing for Vermonters. Our long winters bring about hundreds of accidents each year on the highways that commuters use between Montpelier and Burlington, and hopefully, a rapid system would help to cut transit time for people who live a bit further away, and would help reduce the load on the roadways. With an increasing number of people texting and driving, deteriorating roads, moving more people off the roads into a mass transit system will help reduce some of the risks while on the road, and will help with the wear and tear on the roads. It's an alternative that should be available, and as public transportation has increased as fuel prices have done the same, hopefully there will be the the perfect storm of dangerous drivers and accidents, federal spending and infrastructure and availability to Vermonters.

A system such as this would be good for the state as well, linking Vermont to the southern states and cities, allowing for the state to market itself as it has long done for weekend excursions during changing of the fall leaves to the ski season, as well as all of the other attractive reasons to visit our state. It's easy to do that by car, but I've always seen taking a train ride somewhere as a sort of adventure, and have many fond memories of doing so while in London, travelling to Edinburg, Cambridge, Oxford, Eastbourne, Stratford-Upon-Avon and many other places. It was quick, allowed me to plow through fourteen books in four months and allowed me to see the rest of the country without requiring a personal vehicle.

Plus, mass transportation is a good, sustainable sort of practice. Thousands of people driving separately to their destinations is a woefully inefficient activity in the grander scheme of things, only going to highlight some of the issues that the country has when it comes to dependence on oil. It would be good to get used to the idea of having to limit ourselves and what we use before we're forced to in the future by high price by becoming a more efficient society. Don't get me wrong, I like driving my Mini very much - it's one of the reasons why I bought a car in the first place. But I while I enjoy driving, I get very little joy out of my morning commute. I would much rather be reading a book and not having to worry about the other drivers around me.

The Progressive Era, Government and Industry and Trust

The political climate over the past year has gotten me thinking about the relationship between government and the economy, and it's turned my thinking around in a number of different ways. It's an incredibly difficult subject to approach, and I've often found myself caught between both sides of the argument.

I've recently been studying the Progressive Era, especially in the state of Vermont, in the early 1900s. From the mid 1800s to that point, Vermont underwent a bit of a technical revolution, with larger industries, namely with Granite in Barre, coming into the state, with their own histories with organized labor and several incidents of unrest. In my current research, I'm examining Byron Clark, a Burlington man who I feel exemplifies the Progressive era as a model representative, and through this research, I've come across several sources that have noted that the Progressive Era was a time of massive social reform in response to industry.

"The progressive era has long been recognized as one of substantial contribution to social legislation. Working through state and national legislatures, reformers rewrote child labor laws and safety and factory inspection statues. They cast the society's response to industrial accident and death into the new form of workmen's compensation. They limited working hours for some women and in a few cases, for men. In some states, night work became illegal. By 1915, several states had passed minimum wage legislation." (1)

As business and the economy grew in the United States during this time, many of these reforms were left to the states. As the economy likewise began to nationalize, so to did reformers, who saw a need for uniform legislation to cover a more uniform economy. (2) Clark wasn't involved with this level of the Progressive era, as I've found little evidence that he worked in state-wide or national politics, but his actions clearly indicate that he saw a need for the sort of things that industry detracted from in society - the need for a well rounded education in the body, mind and spirit of children, for example, which still lives on with him today through the continued operation of YMCA Camp Abnaki in North Hero, VT.

My point in all of this is that the unfettered rise of industry in this country is one that is not pretty. It was exploitative on a wide scale level, by industry bosses who raced to undercut their competitors at the expense of the workers who made up their bottom line. One of the more interesting reads that I've come across is David Von Drehle's book, Triangle: The Fire That Changed America, which looks at the Triangle Shirtwaist factory fire that killed a number of workers because the company's upper management felt that the risk of workers taking too many smoking breaks outweighed the risk of proper safety. As it happened, workers died because the fire escapes were chained up.

A friend of mine, in her blog, pondered the question, why is it more important to distrust government over industry? There are valid arguments for distrust of any sort of governmental setup - an overabundance of regulation when it comes to industry can harm the innovation and expansion of market power that helps keep the economy robust, as many Republican members of congress have noted in their oppositions to the current reforms that are ongoing in legislation at the moment.

This, I think, is where the Progressive era can be extremely helpful. Faced with the excesses of industry and overwhelming legislation, the Progressive Era is a transitional point between the two extremes, from a laissez-faire part of history prior to the era, to the New Deal reforms of the 1930s and 1940s. The Progressive Era was the middle ground that seems to be so coveted by the American public, but for some reason, it seems to be unobtainable.

Like Amber noted in her blog, I don't trust Industry. From its own history throughout its rise, it has proven, time and time again that the interests of a nation and the well being of the people are not at the forefront of any sort of industrial agenda, aside from the added effect of raising a country's GDP and economy. In this excuse, it seems to be okay for companies to contaminate our ground and air, duck responsibility for accidents and try to deceive the general public. While I was in college, I worked with a small company that helps to inspect and analyze groundwater contamination, and by Dad, who's worked at the company, has been called as an expert witness on the behalf of some, going up against larger oil companies who try to pass off the problem to those who ultimately are not responsible. Similarly, with companies such as Union Carbide, Pfizer and Monsanto Corporation are all modern companies who have had similar accidents for which they have shown that while they can provide much good for the well being of the nation, they can also cause a great amount of harm for those who are unfortunate enough to live in the same areas. People who argue that industry can be responsible may have some valid points, but they miss or disregard most of the arguments that prove that this isn't the case. Industry cannot be responsible for its own actions because it has shown that. Regulation, in many cases, not all, helps to keep this behavior in check, to keep industry responsible for its actions. This is the greatest lesson out of the Progressive era that I've come across.

From the past and present, we have to look to the future. The current argument of government vs. economy is one that will rage on for a long time, and I've found myself thinking about it while reading Paolo Bacigalupi's first novel, The Windup Girl. It's a hard SF novel that deals with this very issue - a world that is overrun by industrial greed, in the form of large agricultural companies who have decimated the planet with artificial plagues that have run out of control. I'm hoping to write up a review for the book in the coming week or so (I'm taking my time with it right now), but I think that there are some valuable lessons here - industrial and corporate powers are really not the ones to be trusted - their interests lie elsewhere. While generating a profit is hardly a bad thing, it should not be at the expense of the lives of the people around them.

1 - William Graebner. "Federalism in the Progressive Era: A Structural Interpretation of Reform." The Journal of American History, Vol 64, No. 2 (Sept 1977), 331 2 - Ibid, 332

Exploration vs. Scientific Modes of Spaceflight

Now that I've since finished my last seminar of classwork for my Master's, I've begun to switch gears and begun work on my Capstone Paper, the final paper before I get my diploma, should I pass. I'm very excited to begin this mode of work, because I've gotten a topic that I've gotten really interested in - the Space Race. Originally, I'd intended on studying something with the comic book industry and the Second World War, but there's a huge lack of sources. Since then, I've switched gears, and will be looking to the early days of Mercury, Gemini and Apollo, and the military roots and implications that the American space program represented to the United States during the Cold War. I'm still working to narrow down my sources, and will likely spend the weekend working through sources to get a comprehensive bibliography put together, along with a tighter thesis.

While talking with my program director earlier today, I came across a realization about the space program that I hadn't realized or considered before - the current Space program will never, ever be as successful as the Mercury - Apollo era, for one simple reason - there is no certain, end all goal for the current plans for space travel. This is in no way trying to say that what we're doing up there is useless, far from it. The difference between the two is that in 1961, President John F. Kennedy set an end goal for American space ambitions. Americans would reach the lunar surface by the end of the decade - an extraordinary declaration that left many at NASA and the nation stunned, as the cumulative United States spaceflight experience amounted to a mere 15 minutes with Alan Shepherd's Freedom 7 flight earlier in the year.

From that point forward, there was a clear point to work to, and the space missions that came afterwards followed a specific path to reach the moon. The Mercury missions were designed to get mankind to space and into orbit, the longest time in space amounting to just over a day, with Mercury 9. Project Gemini followed with a slate of missions that were designed to test space flight, where the first docking and EVA on the US's part took place. Finally, the Apollo missions are most noted for the Apollo 11 mission that landed on the moon. This was the validation of the efforts of the US, but leading up to that saw other specialized missions that saw humanity to the moon and back, testing the Apollo hardware in each of its phases.

While reaching the moon was the most visible goal and most dramatic part of the space race, it is far from the most important aspect. The space race did a number of things, but everything was done with an overall goal in mind, one that was contested early on by mission planners who felt that we should skip the moon all together and head for the other planets. What the early missions provided was structure and essentially, building blocks that helped to bring the lunar landings from science fiction to reality.

Following the Apollo missions, there was a lull. The space shuttle program was approved, as well as Skylab, and the entire mission and focus for space shifted from an exploration model to one of scientific discovery. Skylab was essentially the turning point, utilizing leftovers from the Apollo missions for something new entirely. However, there has been no overarching goal for space since the Apollo years. The public has turned away from space and NASA's efforts up there, I suspect because of a perceived lack of purpose. The Space Shuttle, while a wonderful machine, has not really full filled any sort of plan to reach the next inevitable stage, missions to Mars, beyond scientific experiments that require a zero-gravity environment, servicing space stations and satellites. The information gathered about living in space for extended periods of time has been incredibly helpful and will no doubt be utilized in a future mission, but these experiments were not expressly conducted for a martian mission.

Mars is the next logical step for future space flight missions beyond the International Space Station (which, looking at it, is a good goal that has brought together nations, but has largely failed to capture the public's imagination like the Lunar landings did. Let's face it, walking around on the moon is a lot cooler). What is required of the United States is a large, overarching series of missions that will begin to pave the way for heading to Mars. The technology is certainly there, as is the willpower, but what is needed the most is guidance from up on high. Kennedy's statement in 1961 was a powerful catalyst that set everything in motion, and any further trips to Mars, and indeed, even the Moon, will require such a thing, but will also require a comparable plan.

Now is also the best time for such a project, when one thinks about it. At the peak of the Apollo program, NASA employed around four hundred thousand people, and that does not count the other multiple hundreds of thousands that would have worked in the defense and aerospace industries during that time designing, building and supporting the missions leading up to the space program. In a book that I've been reading, it was noted that not a single dollar was spent on the moon - it was spent on earth, and provided a massive boost to the economy during that time by supporting those industries. This is exactly what will be needed in the coming years, and I hope that with China and India beginning space programs of their own, this will provide an acute sense of urgency for US mission planners and policy makers to begin to really consider such an endeavour.

Education …

 has produced a vast population able to read but unable to distinguish what is worth reading.

G. M. Trevelyan (1876-1962) British historian  

During my senior year of college, I took a course on Norwich University's history. Initially, I wasn't a huge fan of the idea of the course, because honestly, how intertesting is the history of one's own institution? I ended up loving the course, and wound up typing up a piece on the Norwich University students who fought at Normandy, and went to France to talk about it. 

One of the things that I really took away from the course was the school's founder, Alden Partridge, and his ideas about education. He was an incredibly patriotic man, who believed in the idea of a citizen soldier, but who also believed in a well rounded education. One of the big things that I learned was the idea of experiencial learning, and how much of the school's history was set around this style of learning. Partridge would take students out on hikes, marches, field trips, while bringing in experts on all sorts of vocations, but also making sure that his students got out of the classroom and into the field, where students could learn something hands on. 

While I majored in History at Norwich, I also minored in Geology, which I think Partridge would have liked - a mixture of sciences and arts. The Geology department at the school is absolutely fantastic, and those classes are amongst the ones that I miss the most while at the school. We took field trips - lots of them. It wasn't uncommon during some of my courses that we would get together on a weekend and end up in the middle of New York while looking at rocks along the way to see how the rock beds changed as we went further into what was a sea. More memorable, however, was the geology trips to the American southwest, where we visited and studied the Colorado Plateu and Grand Canyon. I feel that because I saw this all close up, I understand it far better than I ever could have by mere examination in a book. 

Over the past couple of months, I've gotten hooked on a webpage called Not Always Right, which features stories from people in service postitions and their odd, funny or disturbing encounters with customers. While reading these, I'm often astounded at the sheer stupidity of people featured in them, and it makes me a bit sad at just how ignorant, backward or just plain oblivious people can be, and while listening to the radio on a program about the state of education or something along those lines, the root problem to this can be solved by some of Partrige's ideas when it came to teaching - experiencial learning can help to solve some of the problems. 

I think that the biggest problem that the United States faces when it comes to educating students is that our education system is largely out of touch with how life really works. Thinking back to high school, I can narry remember a class in which I learned something useful that I apply to today. Most of my social interactions I've learned from summer camp, where I could work with people in the real world. But in school, I never really learned how exactly Shakespheare fit in with a job or anything along those lines. 

The general consensus seems to be that our education system is very out of date and needs to be revised because a lot of students aren't learning what they really need to learn. The content is there, but it seems to me that people aren't making the connection between the academic world, and how to apply things in real life. Looking back to High School and College, the best classes that I had were the ones that the teacher worked to link the class's content with real world applications. In classes such as tech, mathematics, sciences seem to have concepts that are much mroe easily applied in the real world, while classes such as history and other social sciences are a bit tricky, but it is doable. 

What the US needs to do is look to experts in the education field and to see just how kids are learning nowadays. The argument of "It worked for me" just doesn't work because the world that we live in is constantly changing - what might have worked for a politician years ago might not even apply now. 

Learning and education is the most important thing that we can spend money on - teachers shouldn't be cut back, and we need programs that help to support failing schools, rather than undercut their support when they clearly need it the most. But above that, we need to teach people how to think, reason and operate in the world once they come out of the educational system and into the real world.