[rktman]

Mr. SueLou will be right at home. Paging george tacky.

[cgbg]

“Iain Banks’ Culture series of books, which also involve a galaxy-spanning globohomo society that actively tries to subvert and convert other civilisations to its globohomo standards”

Big ouch.

Banks “Culture” series is much more complex than that—the OP has just given the kindergarten version.

Among other things, Banks has a wonderful dark sense of humor (totally impossible for leftist ideologues) and the plans of all sorts usually go terribly wrong.

[humblegunner]

So Faggotry = Blogs.
Yep. Got it. Thanks.

[algore]

Watch Blake's 7 instead, much better.

If you do Skip the first episode as it should have been cut anyway.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g8n6D78ePU0

[ifinnegan]

Why would this guy know so much about Star Trek?

[robowombat]

From the first there was not the slightest tincture of the sacredness of being an officer in the sea service. Noel Coward (a card carrying homoeroticist) captures this supurbly as a regular RN career officer in ‘In Which We Serve’.

[Candor7]

Uhuru!

All the others in weightLessness are not worth any flying f**k proposed by these lugubrious gay fansies.

[Tell It Right]

I like the original Star Trek, Next Generation, and to some degree Enterprise largely from the mesh of NASA, Navy tradition, sci-fi (actual contemplation of phenomena, not just space battles), and even some stories from real life Navy battles and situations (largely WW2, but some Barbary War stuff too).

Even things like engineering sometimes saving the day reminds me of reading historic battles sometimes won by who could repair their ship the fastest. The times the good guys in Star Trek have a disdain for some bad guys using cloaking technology is reminiscent of the German U-boats in WW1 and WW2 and the feeling they were "cheating" in rules of navy war. When on the show the captain gets the order from starfleet for the captain to be the one to decide war or settle a treaty because they're the only ones that far out, I think of what it was like being one of the Navy commodores and captains doing battles and negotiating treaties with the Barbary nation states because it'd take months to get word back to the Sec of State and President. Or in the Next Generation episode when the Enterprise arrives too late for a battle after the Borg have torn up many starfleet ships, I think of what it must have been like for the real Enterprise crewmen arriving in Pearl Harbor too late and seeing all the destruction and deaths (though they did sink the Japanese sub the I-70 a month later near Pearl Harbor). Or all the times the good guys are captured and send a secret message only starfleet can recognize, I think of what it was like for Captain Bainbridge of the USS Philadelphia using letters back home (the Muslim pirates let their captured prisoners write home to beg for ransom) to secretly tell about enemy strengths in the area that was later used when William Eaton led the first marine expedition. Or the times they consider self destruction I think about a young Stephen Decatur from the USS Enterprise leading an expedition in the captured USS Intrepid with the mission to either recapture or destroy the USS Philadelphia (they destroyed her) during the First Barbary War. Or the times the Klingons say "today is a good day to die in battle" I think about all the hand-to-hand combats early 19th century Navy seamen did against Muslim pirates, or the WW2 Navy battles against kamikaze pilots, particularly the last battle the WW2 Enterprise was in before it limped home to be repaired the last time (with the war ending while in dock). Or all the times on Star Trek the Enterprise seems certainly destroyed by the enemy only to not be, I think about Japan referring to the WW2 Enterprise as "the grey ghost" for all the times they thought they destroyed her only for her to fight against them again later.

But hey, I love navy military history. LOL

[nicollo]

So you then have increasingly irreligious societies coasting in the wake of their earlier religious ancestors.

Same goes for all of modern America where successful. Machiavelli put it best:

So that one can call happy that state that by chance gets a man so wise that he gives laws so arranged that, without need of re-correcting, it can live with them securely.

And contrariwise that city that, not having come across a wise lawgiver, having by itself alone to rearrange itself out of necessity, holds some degree of unhappiness.

And of these, the still more unhappy is that one that is further distant from the constitution; and that one is furthest from it that, with its laws, is completely off the straight path that can lead it to the perfect and true end.