Author Archives: Gray Rinehart

Putting Civility Back Into Civil Discourse

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My mission, should I choose to accept it, is to put civility back into civil discourse. And even if I can’t put it back into the general discourse, which became increasingly shrill and at times simply vile during the campaign, I will try to keep my own discourse civil.

I don’t know if I succeeded during the election or not, but I hope I did. I won’t apologize for disagreeing with anyone or for stating my own opinions in sometimes strident terms, but I apologize if anyone feels I attacked them personally.

I think I succeeded in my civil discourse goal the day after the election, in a long conversation with a co-worker. (We were in a car together, so she couldn’t get away from me.) She didn’t like all of the questions I asked her as I tried to pin down the sources of her dissatisfaction with our country, but neither did she accept my invitation to slap me if I went too far. I count that as a success.

(At the risk of putting words in her mouth, I think she believes in the perfectability of our country and perhaps the entire human race. I do not. She admitted to being a glass half full person, whereas in the realm of geopolitics I’m more likely to point out that someone’s going to break the glass sooner or later so we’d better get a towel and a trashcan ready.)

Anyway, I offer as an example an online discussion about how this election may affect the military that I’ve had with my writing friend Dave Klecha on his blog, Bum Scoop. We don’t agree, but we’re not gouging each other’s virtual eyes out, either.

That, I think, is a good start.

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My Personal Electoral Results

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I thought it would be interesting to list the election results in terms of all the states I’ve lived in:

  • Georgia (where I was born) – 15 electoral votes – McCain
  • New Jersey – 15 – Obama
  • South Carolina – 8 – McCain
  • California – 55 – Obama
  • Colorado – 9 – Obama
  • Nebraska – 5 – McCain
  • Virginia – 13 – Obama
  • North Carolina – 15 – Obama (not yet called, but trending that way)

So that works out to 28 electoral votes for Senator McCain, and 107 for Senator Obama. (Imagine if all those states had gone for the Anti-Candidate; that’s a good chunk of the electorate.)

So, congratulations to Mr. Obama.

And now we get to see how much more interesting the times will get.

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Political Sportsmanship Vs. Hooliganism

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Senator Obama’s extraordinary popularity has been compared with that of rock stars and other celebrities, but we might also liken it to the popularity of sports figures. I bring that up because I’ve been thinking about how die-hard fans of “Team Obama” might celebrate what at this point is shaping up to be their victory.

I hope they do so more peacefully than sports fans sometimes celebrate their championship wins. All too often, those celebrations spin out of control, with over-exuberance leading to injuries and general mayhem.

A simple request: More good sportsmanship than hooliganism, please.

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Happy Election Day — A Tax Quiz

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Yesterday I wanted to post the question, “How much tax revenue do you get from a bankrupt business?” Instead I went to bed. So I posted the question now.

Before you answer too quickly, bear in mind that one Presidential candidate has stated to the press (ten months ago, but they didn’t report it) that his proposed cap-and-trade tax on carbon emissions would bankrupt new coal-fired power plants and (emphasis on that conjunction, AND) bring in enough additional revenue to fund alternative energy sources. See this if you don’t believe me; here’s part of the transcript:

So if somebody wants to build a coal-powered plant, they can; it’s just that it will bankrupt them because they’re going to be charged a huge sum for all that greenhouse gas that’s being emitted.

That will also generate billions of dollars that we can invest in solar, wind, biodiesel and other alternative energy approaches.

The only thing I’ve said with respect to coal, I haven’t been some coal booster. What I have said is that for us to take coal off the table as a (sic) ideological matter as opposed to saying if technology allows us to use coal in a clean way, we should pursue it.

So if somebody wants to build a coal-powered plant, they can.

It’s just that it will bankrupt them.

I thought you’d get zero tax revenue from a bankrupt business, but I’m not as smart as this particular candidate. I guess the one-time bankrupting “huge sum” is what will somehow generate “billions of dollars” for alternative energy.

But what of the people unemployed when the power plants go bankrupt, or the people employed (perhaps not for long) by the factories that either can’t get power or have to pay exorbitant prices for it? Not a word. (Or not a word that was reported. It will be interesting to learn if the newspaper involved deemed the quote un-newsworthy, or if they were asked to delete it by the campaign.)

Orson Scott Card pointed out on The Ornery American that this would amount to a huge tax on the poorest Americans. That shouldn’t surprise us, since this is the same candidate who vows to impose a penalty on businesses that don’t provide health insurance, on the supposition that taking more money away from the business makes the business somehow better able to pay wages and buy health insurance. (See this.)

Ah, the joys of election season. And tonight it will be all over. So sad. 🙁

But meanwhile … happy voting!

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Space History: Mariner-10

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Thirty-five years ago today, Mariner-10 — the first spacecraft to visit Mercury — was launched. According to this NASA page, it was the seventh spacecraft in the Mariner series, and the first spacecraft to use the gravitational “slingshot” method to change course: it swung by Venus on its way to Mercury.

Just last month the MESSENGER spacecraft sent back vivid images that revealed parts of Mercury never seen before. With that in mind, it seems fitting to remember its predecessor today.

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15 Years Ago in Space History

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On November 1, 1993, the Space Shuttle Columbia landed at Edwards Air Force Base, California, at the end of mission STS-58. The crew had spent 14 days aboard the orbiter.

At the time, we were still new to Vandenberg AFB on the California coast, and I was in the middle of the first project I would manage for the Titan System Program Office: finding and retrieving from the ocean floor pieces of a failed rocket. That was a fascinating project, and I have a piece of the rocket that they gave me as a going-away present.

In more recent news, I think I figured a way to tie in part of that search and salvage operation with the novel I’m writing. We’ll see how that works out.

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More Significant than a Riot

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Carrying on civil discourse is difficult in this day of heated exchanges and vile rhetoric, and a conversation with a friend on a writing forum reminded me of this Robert A. Heinlein quote (from his novel FRIDAY):

Sick cultures show a complex of symptoms … but a dying culture invariably exhibits personal rudeness. Bad manners. Lack of consideration for others in minor matters. A loss of politeness, of gentle manners, is more significant than is a riot.

Given the excesses of this very medium, I wonder if we can rein in the invective and stop our disagreements from becoming unbridgeable divides. Mud-slinging used to be the purview of a select few; now, everyone seems to want to take a turn. As a result, we’re all a lot dirtier than ever before.

On that somewhat somber note, Happy All Hallow’s Eve!

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Tenth Anniversary of a Triumphant Return to Space

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I don’t know if anyone else is enjoying my ongoing series of space anniversaries, but I am.

Ten years ago today — October 29th, 1998 — the Space Shuttle Discovery lifted off from Kennedy Space Center on mission STS-95. Aboard were seven astronauts, including one from Spain and one from Japan, who would conduct experiments in the SPACEHAB module and deploy and retrieve the “Spartan” free-flyer.

The crew were Curtis L. Brown, Steven W. Lindsey, Scott E. Parazynski, Stephen K. Robinson, Pedro Duque (Spain), Chiaki Mukai (Japan), and — making the triumphant return mentioned in the title — John H. Glenn. Thirty-six years, eight months and nine days after becoming the first American to orbit the Earth, Senator Glenn returned to space.

The mission also:

  • Was the first Space Shuttle launch watched by a U. S. President (President Clinton)
  • Included the first astronaut from Spain to fly in space
  • Included the first Japanese astronaut to fly twice into space

The mission lasted a few hours shy of nine days, making it a much longer stay in space than the first time for Senator Glenn. And longer than I’m likely ever to stay in space, despite my most fervent wishes. I suppose there’s still hope for my ashes, but hopefully that day won’t come for a long time.

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Logging Some Forward Progress on My Novel

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It feels good to get some writing done, and be a little closer to completion on MARE NUBIUM. Since my unanticipated hiatus, I’ve pushed my self-imposed deadline back from Halloween to the first of December — and if I make it, I will meet my goal of completing the novel this year.

And as of today, the thing is a little over 75,000 words long. I still think this draft is going to run over my planned 100,000 words, and therefore will need some trimming in the edit, but so far I feel pretty good about it. Hopefully other people will feel good about it, too!

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Book Preview: DREAMING CREEK by Edmund R. Schubert

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Announcing Edmund R. Schubert’s first novel, DREAMING CREEK, now available from Amazon.com.

High school teacher Danny Wakeman has spent sixteen years believing that his childhood friend, Marcus Gaines, saved his life after an accident. But Danny’s perspective on the world gets turned inside-out when he and the woman he wants to marry, Sara McBride, drink from the mystical waters of Dreaming Creek, trade bodies, and get stuck that way… Trapped in each others’ bodies, struggling to fit in to each others’ lives, Danny and Sara will have to pull together to overcome a perplexing lawsuit, a plot to defraud Danny out of his recently deceased parent’s farm, and an attempted rape—all of which ultimately prove to bear Marcus’s sinister fingerprints. And before it’s over, Danny will discover that this pattern of treachery and violence goes all the way back to his supposed accident, which Marcus designed to cover up an even blacker secret…

Who is Edmund Schubert, and why am I plugging his novel? That’s simple:

Edmund R. Schubert is the award-winning author of over thirty short stories, having been published in magazines and anthologies in the U.S., Canada, and Great Britain. In addition to writing, Schubert has held a range of editorial positions, including serving as fiction editor of the online magazine, Orson Scott Card’s InterGalactic Medicine Show. An anthology of IGMS stories, co-edited by Schubert and Card, was published by Tor (August, 2008).

In the interest of full disclosure, Ed Schubert is also one of my buddies from Orson Scott Card’s 2004 Literary Boot Camp, and he let me read parts of DREAMING CREEK as he got them ready for his publisher. And, in my not-so-humble opinion, it’s very well done.

DREAMING CREEK can be ordered from Amazon, as mentioned, or directly from the publisher, LBF Books.

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