Revisiting 2007 This Thanksgiving Eve

WORD COUNT: 42,055

Man, I used to write -- and occasionally still do -- some awesome stuff! I was looking for ... something to post for this Thanksgiving, more than just a photo at least (though I do wish you all a happy Thanksgiving as well -- eat well, get some rest, and get back here with enthusiasm!) And going through Blogger where I keep my posts from the early years after Multiply betrayed us, I came across this one from Thanksgiving Eve seven years ago (dated November 21, 2007 in case you wondered) titled "The Borg's Backhanded Compliment, From Species 5618's Point of View". I think you'll like it -- heck, some of you who've known me these many years may even remember it!

So let me take you back seven years (a tribulation in New Testament terms) ... 


WE ARE THE BORG.


Of all the intelligent species encountered in Star Trek's five television series and ten movies, one stands out not necessarily for its grand accomplishments but rather for its lack of interest to the ever-pervasive Borg. I suspect that name is familiar even to people who've never watched Star Trek; the name for this cybernetically enhanced race has become a synonym in our culture for any all-pervasive influence that absorbs individuals by "assimilating", uses them up, and then discards them. One of the first species the Federation starship Voyager ever encountered in the 1995-2001 run of "Star Trek: Voyager" was the copper-skinned humanoids known as the Kazon who when they weren't fighting Janeway and crew or their former Trabe masters were fighting each other. One former Borg refers to the Kazon as Species 329 (likely indicating they were the 329th race the Borg encountered) and says when the Borg encountered a Kazon colony they found "their biological and technological distinctiveness was unremarkable; they were unworthy of assimilation". Considering Borg don't attack and/or assimilate who and what they encounter unless they perceive them as a threat, that's an unexpected compliment. A little insulting, though . . .

LOWER YOUR SHIELDS AND SURRENDER YOUR SHIPS.

At our current stage of development, it's likely Species 5618 (the Borg numerical designation for human beings) would get passed up for assimilation too. We certainly don't have shields on a planetary scale as of 2007 -- unless that's what they're working on at Roswell, LOL -- and routine space travel is currently not on our menu. Other than our physical nature as mammalian bipeds with largely similar internal structures, there's very little we have or like to admit we have in common. Perhaps that's a result of what the Borg call our "below-average cranial capacity, minimal redundant systems and limited regenerative abilities". Of course, that could also be our strength; since we don't rely on to-our-knowledge beyond human or paranormal skills like telepathy or superior strength because by and large we don't have these talents, we learn to work with what we do have, regardless of where and how we live.

WE WILL ADD YOUR BIOLOGICAL AND TECHNOLOGICAL DISTINCTIVENESS TO OUR OWN.

No, my goal today is not to bore you with "treknobabble", the real-world Star Trek version of language scientists and those who claim to be often use to make things "relatable" to the rest of us. But like most really good science fiction, Star Trek at its best shows us where we could be going and maybe what we want to prevent as well. I read the results of a Yale University study which shows babies being capable of making social judgments even at six months (and potentially three, deciding what's helpful and what isn't) today, we're certainly modeling for our kids every minute how to act, even when they don't have the capacity to respond understandably. Martha and I are learning this hands-on already with a twenty-month old Sarah and four-month old Jeffrey. We expect them to not be carbon copies of us, of course; in some -- I expect a great many -- ways they'll surpass us, and they should! We're constantly improving as a race; may it be in the right way.

YOUR CULTURE WILL ADAPT TO SERVICE US.

Al Gore needs to come up to North Dakota during the middle of January! When it's snowing heavily even though not as intensely as it has in past years (our last major, town-closing snowstorm was in 1997), it's hard to believe in "global warming". Last Wednesday I excerpted "The Politically Incorrect Guide to Global Warming and Environmentalism" by Christopher C. Horner (ISBN 9781596985018) and Mr. Gore is one of the principal figures the author, a senior fellow at the Competitive Enterprise Institute, excoriates for his extreme stance. Citing statistics and graphs throughout, even from those who supposedly are in favor of greater controls on our energy usage to fight "global warming" which the United Nations like most confuses with constantly-happening "climate change", in this book we learn that "global cooling" was the media's fear thirty years ago and that even if Earth's temperature (depending on where you measure it; globally it's "risen" because many cold-weather measurement stations closed with the fall of the Soviet Union in the early 1990s) increases by a few degrees, we would most definitely survive without the greater social controls industrialists and politicians would love to impose in the name of "fighting global warming". And it hasn't made hurricanes worse, contrary to what you may have heard; our tendency to build houses in their paths is getting greater! How many holes have been shot in "global warming" . . . but that would take another several blogs! Read this, it's great!

RESISTANCE IS FUTILE.

As for Thanksgiving tomorrow (and I wish you all who do celebrate it a happy one), I am going to eat turkey with all the trimmings, screw the diet! Smaller portions I can do, but I can't quite omit dinner rolls, mashed potatoes, gravy, green beans, any of a variety of pies, etc. After dinner (which at my in-laws' is going to be at noon tomorrow) I will find somewhere to crash for an hour. This actually happened this morning after I brought Sarah and Jeffrey for Grandma to babysit while Martha and I are at work; I sat in Martha's dad's chair and without thinking about it fell asleep for thirty minutes. I thought that was supposed to happen tomorrow! After work tonight we've got the Thanksgiving Eve service at church, and Martha's mom will put the turkey in the oven at six in the morning; we'll all get there as the kids wake up and enjoy the start of their four-day weekend! We grown-ups only get tomorrow off and work Friday. One of the joys and perils of growing up . . . see you Friday!

With the love of family and friends,

David