Residency: Part 2

Norwich’s MMH Residency has since come and gone, and I have to say that it was one of the best weeks that I’ve had in a long while. This week was particularly special to me, because I had started as an administrator with the groups that were graduating this summer, while I walked with them for graduation. I and my March 2007 cohort mates were the accelerated residency group, who essentially graduate early, while still working on our final capstone projects.

The first three days were largely consumed by lectures from the six instructors that attended along with us. This was a change from last year, because we devided to forgo the presentations that used to make up residency in years past. I went to a couple facinating ones about maneuver warfare doctrine, methodology and a rather scary presentation on PhD studies and that entire process.

Seeing and meeting all of my students have really given me some insight into the student side of things. So frequently do I speak with students on the telephone or via e-mail, but rarely (only one of the students who was here was one that I’d met earlier) in person. This provided a fantastic look at how they react to the institution as a whole, while giving me a much better apreciation for what they go through. It wasn’t a huge revelation, but a timely and helpful one.

For much of the week, I met up with my cohort mates for dinner and for recreation afterwards. Someone had the brilliant idea to bring along my copy of RISK, which resulted in a couple of really fun nights of beer and board games. While that was fun, it was a great time that I’ll remember for a while, and it helped me meet a bunch of people who I’ll likely keep in touch with for a long time. I certainly hope so, because there were some very good minds there, and I hope that we can accomplish something in the world with that.

Graduating was weird, because I’ve worked with this class since I started, and still have more work to do. When I went up on stage, I got a big cheer from my classmates, something that I wasn’t expecting at all, and it threw me for a moment. For all of my worries, problems and depression over the past year, I seem to have been doing a good job, and that has cheered me considerably – while I see the mistakes and problems on my end administratively, I’ve been praised for the work that I do. I realized at that moment that I’ve been far too hard on myself. It’s doubtful that anything is going to change, but it’s nice to know that my work has really affected and helped people in this job. I just hope that I can continue to do so.

Leaving everyone was bittersweet. The week went by far too fast, and in my experience with groups, you will never get the same groups together at any one time like this. Real life takes people away, and moments such as this are singular occurances, which makes them all the more better.

Residency: Part 1

This week, I’m finally at my residency for my Master’s degree. In March of 2008, I started taking the degree through Norwich University’s School of Graduate Studies, working towards a degree in Military History. It’s an online school, and every day, I worked with fellow classmates, but through Internet discussion boards and through papers that I wrote and submitted online to my instructors. It’s certainly a different way of learning, but I’ve taken to it.

For every degree, we require that students come on campus, and this week’s our week. I’m finally able to meet my fellow classmates, whom I’ve worked with for 18 months now. Beyond that, I’m finally meeting students whom I’ve worked with when I first started the program. I’ve talked with them since day 1 of the degree, and come Friday, I’ll be walking with them across the stage. I still have some work to do after this residency (I’m an accelerated student) but the bulk of the program is over. I don’t have classwork, just research, which is exciting.

Residency is proving to be a highly productive and entertaining week here. While in years past, we’ve required students to present their capstone, we’ve moved away from that this year, in favor of faculty presentations which seems to be pretty popular with the students. Overall, students are enjoying the time, and meeting up with my fellow classmates has been extremely fun.

The first two days have been made up of presentations – I’ve sat in on ones about military doctrine, the Battle of Kursk, the IRA and the Easter Rising, Roger’s Rangers and Historiography and one on how to write and eventually publish a capstone paper. The rest of the week will be some rehersals for Graduation and our Academic Hooding Ceremony, then Graduation on Friday morning. I’m quite looking forward to that.

The Year of the Moon

2009 is a lunar year. The film Moon was released earlier this month, to much critical success, the 40th anniversary of the first manned lunar landing approaches in July, and fittingly, there is a new book that examines the history of Apollo 11, Rocket Men: The Epic Story of the First Men on the Moon, by Craig Nelson. In a wonderful PR move, the publisher, Viking, will release the book on July 13th, just days before the anniversary of the launch of Apollo 11- Just enough time to read it and know exactly what’s going on for that party that you’ll be out, when someone will mention Apollo 11.

The thing is- this book really isn’t about Apollo 11. The front of the book states this, it’s a fairly comprehensive look at the mission, but this book accomplishes much more than simply looking at this extraordinary story in vivid detail: it looks at the entire sequence of events that lead up to that moment when Neil Armstrong uttered those famous words: That’s one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind. This is an incredibly important thing, I believe, because not a whole lot of people know about anything beyond those words, and that some old guy walked around on our nearest satellite. Armstrong and that other guy (Buzz Aldrin, who deserves just as much, if not more credit to the space program than Armstrong) are mere footnotes in this story, just two people out of the 400,000 people who helped to bring them to that point.

In order to fully understand the first lunar landing, one must go back to the start. While there are other books out there that cover the space program in far more detail – University of Nebraska’s Outward Odyssey series, for example – this book does the remarkable job of doing it in a single volume, getting all of the important details that went into NASA, but also pulling in the smaller peripheral details that gives the book a bit more interest. Nelson has done an incredible job of balancing the technical and human sides of the story, allowing neither to really overwhelm the reader, and is able to deliver a fantastic history. The story of Apollo is scattered throughout the book, at all levels of the production, design, training and preparations that went into the mission, starting all the way back to the Second World War, with the first military rockets developed by the Nazis and by Werner Von Braun, who would later turn himself over to the United States forces. From there, he leads a team that worked with the United States military until 1958, when NASA was commissioned by President Eisenhower. We meet the Mercury 7 astronauts, and look quickly to the missions that brought us into space, and the missions that would lead us to the moon, which were just as important as the actual landing itself.

This is where the book shows its true colors. Rather than being just examining the history of American space flight, there is a genuine look to how this all fits together in American history, as the Cold War raged onwards. The entire space race was a byproduct of the arms race that very nearly brought about our self-destruction at various points in the 1960s. Interwoven throughout this story is the delicate balance that the United States and Soviet Union rested upon, and it is quite clear that while the plaque that rests on the Tranquility Base landing strut proclaims that we came in peace for all of mankind, this is a particularly ironic statement, considering that much of the space program had roots in military technology.

For all of my bluster about this book being most than a reiteration of the Apollo mission reports, this book is quite possibly one of the most engaging and one of the better reads about the Apollo 11 mission. Details are numerous, and I get the impression that this was a rather hard task to accomplish, something that was largely glossed over in my own education. This was an enormously difficult and complicated program to pull off, and after this read, I am rather astonished that we were able to pull it off. This was a task that engaged hundreds of thousands of people, with enormous yields that go unappreciated by the general public, with amazing advances in communications, medical and engineering technologies that we use every day.

Recently, I’ve heard people say that all we got back from the moon was a sack of rocks (and offered up a free bag to taxpayers). While I’m astonished at the lack of vision that seems to be permeating the public when it comes to the space program – the book cites that 27% of people in my generation find it unlikely that we actually landed on the moon – I will remind you that the benefits are there, and tangible. Something that Nelson mentions early on in the book has stuck with me, where he notes that not a single dollar was spent on the moon – it was all spent on Earth. Hundreds of thousands of people were employed by NASA and the aerospace industries that helped to make it a reality. That number undoubtedly increases when all is said and done. The scientific findings alone are also astonishing, and have provided new insights to the birth of our planet and solar system. Even beyond that, there are numerous implications for utilizing the moon as a source of energy, from either the mining of Helium-3 from the surface or from Solar energy (where, as Mr. Nelson notes, a lack of cloud cover and a fairly constant view of the sun will come in handy), which could potentially help with the coming energy problems that we’re going to face in the coming decades.

Apollo was more than just bringing back rocks. It pushed the boundaries of what was possible, helped to unite the world for one extraordinary, singular moment in our history when we most needed it, and showed us what was possible. This book does a fantastic job of explaining it all in an engaging manner, but like Apollo 11, it is all about the stepping stones and wonderful couple of hours that Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin spend on our nearest neighbor, and essentially ends with that mission. Sadly, after Apollo 17, the lunar missions ended, and NASA changed gears to the Shuttle program and low orbit missions to save costs. Nelson reserves the end of the book for a quick look at the past couple of years, and brings out his soap box to explain exactly why we need to return to space, for the fuel crisis, to beat the inevitable landings of China and India, but because it is in our nature to explore. We will return to the lunar surface someday. I can only hope that it is sooner, rather than later, because this is what the country and the world needs right now, something far more important than all of the technical and scientific accomplishments that came with Apollo: Hope.

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.

For Sam and Miranda

I first met Sam at YMCA Camp Abnaki in 2000. At first, I didn’t know what to make of him, but soon, we learned that we held many common interests – books, films, historical eras, etc. Since then, I have considered Sam to be my closest friend and confidant, and he has always been willing to lend a helping hand, and a willing ear, when I have needed it.

I first learned of Miranda at Camp, when Sam told me that he met someone fantastic. Based on everything that he told me, I felt that by the time that I met Miranda in the car park in Farmington, Maine, I knew her very well. I could tell from that moment on that they were a good pair, from the glances that they stole, to the way that they talked and smiled at one another.

Oftentimes, the first impressions of a person is based on what someone else says about them when they are out of earshot. Based on everything that Sam had told me, I felt – feel – that Miranda was a friend from the start, and I treasure the ensuing laughter, wit and conversations that we have shared, and look forward to much more in the future.

Sam, Miranda, I have no advice that would be of any good to you. However, I offer my best wishes for the many coming years.

I first met Sam at YMCA Camp Abnaki in 2000. At first, I didn’t know what to make of him, but soon, we learned that we held many common interests – books, films, historical eras, etc. Since then, I have considered Sam to be my closest friend and confidant, and he has always been willing to lend a helping hand, and a willing ear, when I have needed it.

I first learned of Miranda at Camp, when Sam told me that he met someone fantastic. Based on everything that he told me, I felt that by the time that I met Miranda in the car park in Farmington, Maine, I knew her very well. I could tell from that moment on that they were a good pair, from the glances that they stole, to the way that they talked and smiled at one another.

Oftentimes, the first impressions of a person is based on what someone else says about them when they are out of earshot. Based on everything that Sam had told me, I felt – feel – that Miranda was a friend from the start, and I treasure the ensuing laughter, wit and conversations that we have shared, and look forward to much more in the future.

Sam, Miranda, I have no advice that would be of any good to you. However, I offer my best wishes for the many coming years.

Virtuality Moves Up

Has anyone else heard about Virtuality? Fox picked it up for a TV series, and they will be releasing the pilot on June 26th, at 8:00 PM. I’ve been following the project for a little while now, and it’s certainly an interesting project, although it is in limbo as to whether it’ll actually become a series or not. Originally, this was slated to be released July 4th on Fox, and this move might indicate that they have a little more faith in it.

Here’s how the SciFi Wire described the show:

The crew of the Phaeton is approaching the go/no-go point of its epic 10-year journey through outer space. With the fate of Earth in the crew’s hands, the pressure is intense. The best bet for helping the crew members maintain their sanity is the cutting-edge virtual-reality technology installed on the ship. It’s the perfect stress reliever until they realize a glitch in the system has unleashed a virus onto the ship. Tensions mount as the crew decides how to contain the virus and complete their mission. Meanwhile, their lives are being taped for a reality show back on Earth.

It’s supposed to be quite good, and there are a number of possibilities for where the creators can go with the storyline. It looks like it’s got a fairly big cast, although there’s nobody that really jumps out at me for people that I recognize. I’m mainly interested in this because Ron Moore’s the guy who created it, and given his track record from Battlestar Galactica, there are undoubtably some high expectations for this from other SciFi fans. Plus, Peter Burg is directing the pilot, and I’ve generally been really impressed with his work.

What gets me more interested is that while there will undoubtably be Matrix and other sort of cyberpunk connections to this, I’m really excited that this seems to be a completely original show and story. This isn’t a remake, adaptation or inspired by sort of project, and I really hope that this’ll make it to the TV series stage because there are so few good space shows out there at the moment.

The Book Of Lost Things

I love stories. From a young age, I’ve loved listening and reading them, as a child who was never terribly inclined towards sports or other activities. From a very young age, I have been fairly shy around other people, instead usually to turn to books for company – this is not to say that I’ve been antisocial all my life – as people often let me down or disappoint far more than books do. It’s with this basis that I love our ability to imagine.

While stopping by the bookstore recently, I came across an intriguing book – The Book of Lost Things, by John Connelly – and armed with a coupon e-mailed to me that day, I bought it, and found that it was one of the better fantasy books that I’ve read recently, and has reminded me of my simple love for stories, which this book is largely based around – a love for stories and the limits of imagination.

The book’s premise is fairly similar to one of my favorite films, Pan’s Labyrinth, which came out in 2007. David, a young English boy in 1939, has had a troubled life – his mother passed away from a wasting illness, and his father shortly fell for another woman, Rose, who bore him a son. David is resentful of this new family, and grows angry at the divided attention and the supposed replacement of his mother. He soon experiences a sort of episode – a blackout – and when he recovers, he begins to hear books whispering to one another. At this point, the London Blitz is well underway, and when trying to run away, a German bomber crashes near his house, and David is thrust into a fantasy world.

This is the interesting part of the book, and where there are a lot of parallels to Pan’s Labyrinth, but also to other well known stories, such as C.S. Lewis’s Narnia series, as well as Grimm’s Fairy Tales and even Life on Mars. Throughout the book, the reader is never entirely sure as to whether David has really been thrust into an alternate world, populated by fantastic creations, or whether he is lying injured, much as Sam Tyler is in the TV show, or even it the entire experience is a sort of psychotic break, a device that David utilizes to escape from a world that he hates so much.

The ability to hear books whisper to one another is a fun concept, and is helps to reinforce what happens to David goes through. In this world, we come across a number of fairly familiar stories or concepts as David journeys onwards in an attempt to find his lost mother, but later, to return home. Various incarnations of the tales, such as Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, Sleeping Beauty, the heroic knight, werewolves and vampires make their appearances, often with far more brutal and violent twists that are more reminiscent of the Grimm’s Fairy Tales than their sanitized Disney versions. (However, the Seven Dwarves as a sort of communistical band who felt that they were repressed by the Capitalistic classes is downright hilarious) Essentially, this world of David’s has been created from within his own knowledge of stories, a creation of his own imagination, one that is borne out of a sort of self-realization and psychology that helps mend his own hurt nature.

The story elements, upon looking back, are really quite simple, and throughout, I found myself catching what would happen next and realizing where the plot was going next, which gives the book an air of predictability to anyone who’s listened to enough bedtime stories. But where that might have annoyed me in most books, it really didn’t here – this was a story with a good character arc, one that is reminiscent of the classic stories of the growth of a hero – a brash, angry young man who sets off to prove himself to the world, only to discover his own nature, and thus the character growth beings until you reach the happily ever after at the end. However, while there are many elements to this story that are much like the fairy tales that we are all familiar with, it feels far more realistic. The epilogue, of sorts, recounts the remainder of David’s days, in a way that really doesn’t fit with the rest of the tales that I’ve come across, giving the antagonist – the Crooked Man – a grain of truth to his predictions and proclamations.

While the book is fairly clear about what the entire experience was, it can easily fit into any of the three descriptions – David fell into a coma, he created the world because of trauma or he really was catapulted into this other world. The ambiguity of this is a very nice element, while one is clearly correct, they all are essentially part of what happened. Looking back at this, it really doesn’t matter to the overall part of the story – this story is more about the arc of the hero, self-realization and growth to beyond his angry and frustrated youth.

What the book really feels like, now that I’ve finished (and my copy was deceptively long, with a sort of notes and interview that takes up the last hundred or so pages of the novel) is an homage to the classic stories. There’s a grain of humor and twisting of some of the classics that only a modern author could get away with, but what it shows, most of all, that these stories and one’s imagination are still relevant and important. There are values to these stories that still permeate to the beginnings of the Second World War, and indeed, to the present moment, where some of the basic elements of good and evil are laid out. This book is about stories, and like David finds, how they can talk to you.

Star Wars Retrospective

Earlier this week was the 32nd anniversary of the release of Star Wars: A New Hope, and May 19th was the 10th anniversary of The Phantom Menace. These two anniversaries have gotten me thinking a little about just what Star Wars means to me. The initial answer is: quite a lot.

Depspite my participation with the 501st Legion, owning a ton of the books, comics and being able to quote the films, I’ve become far less of the rapid fanboy that I was at one point. I recognize some of the major flaws with the films, want to throw things at the television with any number of annoying characters and have absolutely no patience for the endless discussions about the exact length of a Super Star Destroyer on message forums. Yet, I go back for more with new novels, and will don my armor for events.

I first saw the movies with my Dad in 1997 when the special editions were released. I knew about the films, but after the first screening, I was absolutely hooked. A couple years later, I discovered the books, and went on to grab as many as I could while waiting for The Phantom Menace. When that was released in 1999, I absolutely loved it. I didn’t care that Jar Jar Binks would be reviled anad that the film would be relegated to the bottom of the inevitable lists that appear on websites. It had lightsabers, space battles and new planets, and I loved it for that. The same went with Attack of the Clones, although you can add on the Clone Troopers to that list, which I still like. By the time Revenge of the Sith came onto the big screen, I had my own set of armor, but a more cynical attitude towards the films and franchise, largely from watching Firefly and a number of other features that were more story-driven, rather than effects driven.

While my love for the franchise has cooled significantly, it’s certainly a series that I can still go back to for regular enjoyment. Looking back on the films, I realize that it’s not so much the individual movies, but the overarching storyline of good vs. evil that I really have come to love, and this is certainly one that has grown far more than what it was originally envisioned to be. True, that’s mainly because they can make money from the people willing to part with it, and I’m okay with that. True, the prequels had their significant low points throughout, but honestly, I look more towards the memories that I have of the films, the anticiption, conversations with friends and that excitement as I watched them, more than I really care about the story at this point.

Balancing Act

As I finish up my final seminar of class work with Norwich University’s Military History program, I have begun to mentally shift gears towards the subject matter of my final paper, where I’m going to be examining the role in which warfare helped to influence the comic book industry around the time of the Second World War, a subject that has long fascinated me.

While looking around for materials, I have been thinking a lot about comic books and their subject matter in a more abstract sense – the dual role of the hero and villain in society, and as such, I believe that comic books tell some of the most elemental stories, which helps, I think, to account for their appeal to a wide range of readers around the world.

There is a basic appeal to superheroes – the abilities especially – when I was a young child in Elementary School, I idolized the X-Men, because I loved what they were able to do, whether it was super strength, claws, flight, plasma beams, and so forth, and much of the deeper meanings behind some of the stories were lost on me until much later. The central meaning behind each story, I think, is of the hero, whom we are meant to emulate, but what I have come to be more interested in lately is the complicated nature of the hero and villain, and how one is inseparable from the other.

This thinking comes at an interesting time. Over the past couple of months, I have been reading about a rise in costumed vigilantism across the United States, dedicated civilians who are attempting to right wrongs that they come across. These individuals, most likely heavily influenced by repeated viewings of the recent Batman films and other comic book fare, take to the streets, their faces covered, to take on crime. I have to admit, I see the appeal in this sort of thing, and I’ve often wondered, if I was in somewhat better shape, how I would go about this sort of thing. Fortunately, Vermont is not awash in crime, overrun by gangs and drugs, so my services will likely remain dormant for now.

Interestingly, and unsurprisingly, the rise of this fad seems to prove a point about the existence of heroes – with their rise come their counterpart, the villain. Utilizing YouTube and Craigslist, an anti-heroes group, R.O.A.C.H., has formed, offering a ten dollar bounty for the identity of one of the heroes operating out of Ohio.

With a hero, or a force for authoritative good, there must be an equal, counterpart entity that represents the opposite side of the coin. The recent installment in the Batman franchise is possibly one of the best examples of this, which helped to make the film stand out – hanging upside down by his feet, Heath Ledger’s Joker cackled at Batman:

“You won’t kill me out of some misplaced sense of self-righteousness. And I won’t kill you because you’re just too much fun. I think you and I are destined to do this forever.”

Essentially, the point that the Joker makes in the film is that where Batman is the force for a form of justice and order, he exists as a sort of counterpart, a ying and yang sort of effect. The same idea is applied to the character of Harvey Dent, who epitomizes the theme of duality.

DC comics see this sort of theme between heroes as well, especially when one considers the personalities of Batman and Superman. While both are arguably forces for good, they represent two very different thought processes. Batman is a vigilante, whereas Superman seems to adhere to a far more strict ethical code. Essentially, one represents chaos and righteousness – the damaged man who has no powers to speak of – and the other represents law and order – the man who is invulnerable, godlike. While we are on the subject of Superman, we once again turn to the iconic villains, and Lex Luthor is arguably one of the main counterparts in his life. Where Superman often relies on feats of strength, righting wrongs in a purely physical manner, Luthor is much the opposite – he has no powers, but is able to counter Superman through his intellect alone. Here, major themes such as obedience and curiosity come against one another, and the realm of comic books are opened to a far greater realm.

Duality is an enduring human condition, one that is completely ingrained with much of our belief system, especially the Holy Bible. I do admit, I’m not wholly familiar with the book, but there is one story that has particularly stuck with me, and that is the role between good and evil, of God and his angel, Lucifer. Lucifer was struck down to Hell because he went against God, against authority, and by all accounts, good. In a way, I have always seen this as a larger theme, where good is associated with an adherence to authority, of obedience to law, where evil is often associated with everything that is the opposite – of stepping out of the lines, to question. I don’t necessarily believe that there is any sort of natural right and wrong in nature, but I see these two elements – obedience vs. disobedience, predetermination vs. free will, black and white vs. shades of grey, as a permanent quandary that cannot, and will not ever be decided by any number of philosophers. As the Joker proves, one cannot exist without the other. As I learned in an ethics class in high school, one cannot know good without knowledge of evil.

This is a strong theme throughout the history of science fiction, from Isaac Asimov’s Foundation trilogy to Michael J. Straczynski’s Babylon 5, both stories that contained this as a dominant part of its mythos. Within Foundation, there was the effort to save society, where the Mule sought to undermine all that. MJS’s Babylon 5 looked to the duel nature between the Shadows and the Vorlons as the same arguments between good and bad, dark and light, order vs. chaos, as the two extremes of reality. But these are extremes to each side of the coin, as society is eager to jump to, it would seem. One of my favorite television shows, Life On Mars, demonstrates much of the same storytelling qualities, with Gene Hunt and Sam Tyler being much the polar opposites of one another, which is why their partnership works so well for the story. (The UK version, at least. The US version employed this to a far more limited extent.)

If one looks to any sort of politics in the world today, you will see that there is a division between left and right politics, because of the seating positions of an older government. In the United States, these divisions fall much along the same lines – the right is often a force for order, for adherence to principles, often along with religious support and faith, where the left is often represented by scientific reasoning and knowledge. Strictly speaking, this is a broad generalization, but you get my point.

One of my favorite short videos that I’ve come across recently is ‘Nemisis‘ a Norwegian (I think) short film that demonstrates this split nature between a hero and a villain. The protagonist, Arne, desires to be a hero, but alone, by himself, he is unable to become one without the antagonist, the Nemesis, as they find towards the end of the short film. Like many other stories, the heroes are often defined by what they are not, and oftentimes, villains are placed into the story with just these qualities, which will often boil down to these two extremes.

This, I think, is why the comic books, and their stories, are so enduring in society, much like the Bible has remained for the thousands of years that Christianity has been around. The duel nature of good and bad, right and left, heads or tails, is a fundamental part of how we see the world, and the comic book format tells these stories in one of the most fundamental methods, a hero that represents one side, where the villain, who is just over the top enough to match the hero in this instance, represents the other.

There is one movie that I can think of that does this in an even better fashion than the Dark Knight, in the same sort of genre, Unbreakable. The dominant theme here is once again, that of duality, and it incorporates the long history of comic books into this story, with the two characters as polar opposites. Where one was strong, the other was weak, and so on. One carried out crimes, where the other one sought to prevent them, a never-ending loop, a sort of natural balancing act that will continue to be examined, not only through the political, philosophical and religious realms, but also through that of the brightly colored panels of a comic book.

I highly doubt that I will explore this sort of thing in my capstone paper, but there are elements of the Second World War that certainly applies, with the absolute evil that is represented by the Nazis that took over Europe, countered by the just cause of the Allied forces that took it back. I think that this balance is best represented by the introduction of Captain America in the late 1930s, with a dramatic punch to Hitler’s jaw on the cover of a comic book. In a way, without a presence such as Hitler, the very heroes that inspire and motivate us would have no reason to exist. Much is the same in today’s society with a group of costumed heroes. Without crime, they would have no reason to exist, however amusing their methods are. Heroes will always be balanced by a villain who represents everything that they are not, for good or for bad.

Ground Control to Major Tom

On Monday, STS-125, the last space shuttle mission to the Hubble Space Telescope launched from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida to replace gyroscopes, batteries and to install two new cameras to outfit the aging satellite for the last time, making it the most powerful in its history. I’ve talked about space before, and I find it utterly facinating. Hubble itself has had a long and varied history when it comes to space, from a blotched lense to the historic repair mission, not to mention the thousands of beautiful pictures that it’s captured over its long life.

The current mission is one that I’ve been looking forward to for a while now. A couple months ago, I wrote an article for io9, titled Stalking NASA, which was a laundry list of ways in which someone can follow up on NASA’s activities via social networking sites. What they have been doing with this launch is really highlighting the mission. In the leadup to the launch, there was numerous updates from a number of twitter feeds for Space Shuttle Atlantis, a couple of the astronauts, NASA and a couple other lines. Facebook had a number of status updates for the specific pages for the mission, and almost the entire mission has been broadcast live online.

I’m really digging the ability to watch this stuff live. Whether it’s watching Atlantis docking with Hubble to watching the astronauts work (in some cases, watching from THEIR view) has been absolutely fantastic. You almost get a feeling that you’re right there with them in space. The images are absolutely stunning, and I really hope that this’ll attract more interest to the space program.

Man, I want to go to space.