2010-07-18
July 2010
Chief Editor's Notes
By Bram Peeters
It looks like this month's edition is a lot smaller than the previous ones. That is because it is. Even some of the monthly command reports are missing. This month's Council News will added here as soon as I get it though. The Council news has been added 
Anything else people will send me will be included in the August edition, which will be... Our TENTH Anniversary Special Edition. So you people better send in lots of nice stuff for that, please 
In this month's edition:
2010-06-28
June 2010
Chief Editor's Notes
By Bram Peeters
Slightly delayed again... here is the June 2010 edition of the Federation Tribune. The number of player contributions kinda dropped a bit this time D:
In this edition:
- Council News, by the Council
- Update from the USS Calhoun, by Rob Maxum
- Update from the USS Valkyrie, by Kelly Power
- Update from Yeager Colony, by Rob Versteegt
- Update from Pandora Station, by Rob Verlinden
- Starfleet Academy Status Report, by Rick Clogston
- Doctor Who Review: The Pyramids of Mars, by David Susman
- Upcoming Star Trek Book Releases 2010 & 2011, by Bram Peeters
- Sci-Fi News, by Kelley MacKinnon
2010-05-28
May 2010
Chief Editor's Notes
By Bram Peeters
Slightly more delayed than last month's edition, here is the May 2010 edition of the Federation Tribune. Several people sent in stuff, keep this up people!
In this edition:
- Council News, by the Council
- Update from the USS Calhoun, by Rob Maxum
- Update from the USS Valkyrie, by Kelly Power
- Update from Yeager Colony, by Rob Versteegt
- Update from Pandora Station, by Ruben Hilbers
- Starfleet Academy Status Report, by Rick Clogston
- Back to the first year of Frontier Fleet, by Rob Verlinden
- Favorite badguys and mission, by Dennis Church
- Doctor Who Review: The Green Death, by David Susman
- StarTrek.com Re-Launch, Press Release by CBS Consumer Products
- Sci-Fi News, by Kelley MacKinnon
- Defying Gravity and Virtuality, by Kelley MacKinnon *SPOILER WARNING*
2010-04-20
April 2010
Chief Editor's Notes
by Bram Peeters
Slightly delayed, here is the April 2010 edition of the Federation Tribune!
This month we bring you... updates from our council, and from all our dutystations! Oh wait, we will do that every month. What else is there... Oh right! Kelley wrote a commentary on Doctor Who (the recent series), David wrote a review of a classic Doctor Who episode, so that's quite a bit of Doctor Who stuff in this newspaper. There's also other things though, just read on :-P
Then an important note: The reviews and sci-fi news have been placed at the very bottom. They may contain spoilers. Consider yourself warned. In particular the sci-fi news contains spoilers for upcoming episodes of Stargate Universe and Eureka.
Also, I'd like to repeat a question Rick asked us in the December edition of his Academy status report, as it asks for a potentially good source for things to write for the Tribune:
So I ask the question; how has the game changed since the heyday when there were five active duty stations? A couple of years ago someone mentioned in a status report that their posting numbers were good, but still only half of what they'd once been. What is different? From what I understand, the game started with just the Calhoun. How did it grow so much that it spawned three other ships and a space station?
I for one would like to hear what those days were like. Maybe someone could write a piece on that for the newspaper or something, but we were already up to the five when I arrived. In this era when Star Trek itself is looking at its own origins for inspiration, it might be time for us to at least dust off the cornerstone. We don't have to go back in time, and really we couldn't if we wanted to. The game is clearly founded on the idea of moving the Trek we know forward, not backward. But maybe it's time to take a look at how far forward we've come.
This month already has something written by Rob Versteegt, looking at STFF's past, with Rob looking back at his favourite characters, missions, and posts from the time he has been a member of Frontier Fleet. I would really like to see this a recurring type of article in the Tribune (and already have been poking some former members about this too)
In this month's edition:
- Council News, by the Council
- Update from the USS Calhoun, by Kelley MacKinnon
- Update from the USS Valkyrie, by Kelly Power
- Update from Yeager Colony, by Rob Versteegt
- Update from Pandora Station, by Rob Verlinden
- Starfleet Academy Status Report, by Rear Admiral Charles D. Clark
- Frontier Fleet Favourites, by Rob Versteegt
- Review: Doctor Who - The Ribos Operation, by David Susman
- Commentary: Doctor Who, by Kelley MacKinnon
- Sci-Fi news, by various contributors
Plain text version (members only)
2009-12-21
December/Holidays 2009
Chief Editor's Notes
by Bram Peeters
December, the month of snow, traffic jams, last minute shopping, and a bunch of holidays. It's also the month where a new Chief Editor has taken over from Rob Verlinden, who stepped down after having provided us with the monthly newsletter for about two years.
To find out what our readers expect from the Tribune, I sent out a survey, and I would like to thank everyone who took the time to fill it out. Full details about the results will be in next month's newspaper, but most people seem to like the way the Tribune's been done so far, however people did indicate they would like to read more about Frontier Fleet's behind the scenes things, and therefore starting this month the Tribune will contain status reports from the Council as well, and there's also a new way to read this newsletter: through our member blogs (or the tribune blog directly)
In this month's edition:
- Council News, by the Council
- Update from the USS Calhoun, by Kelley MacKinnon
- Update from the USS Valkyrie, by Rick Clogston
- Update from Yeager Colony, by Rob Versteegt
- Starfleet Academy Status Report, by Rear Admiral Charles D. Clark
- Crew News, by Bram Peeters
- Keiri Jones: Christmas Time, by James Jackson
- Elves Exist!, by Rob Versteegt
- A Legendary post, selected by Rob Verlinden
Plain text version (members only)
2009-07-10
Random pondering
The coding is confusing me, so I can't post this here. So here's a link to what I wanted to say.
2009-06-17
The whinge of (some) meat-eaters
Sir Paul McCartney is [url=http://www.google.com/hostednews/ukpress/article/ALeqM5h4Z1sVCFYUNwtkLV9CXcjCCHzchg]urging people to stop eating meat one day a week[/url], for environmental reasons. Predictably enough, Internet readers are reacting with blubbering anger, both in English and in French; comment sections in the news are filled with their moronic, furious and irrational rejection of the idea. Part of the press are doing the same; an opinion piece in [i]The Telegraph[/i] is whining about McCartney "taking the meat out of our mouths". Yet another example of the idiocy of the masses; no big surprise there. The meat-eating fundies are out for blood.
In this particular case, however, idiocy takes the familiar form of selfish denial. Denial of the obvious environmental benefits of vegetarianism is oh-so-similar to climate change denial. Along the lines of "the truth would force me to make sacrifices in my selfish and unsustainable lifestyle, so the truth can't be true". The ability of irrational and selfish minds to convince themselves of the absurd (or rather, to reject the obvious) will never cease to amaze me, or appall me. It's basically the same mental mechanism as the one behind literal creationism: reject the truth if it challenges one's irrational preconceptions or intrudes on one's comfort zone.
Philosophers used to say that human beings are creatures of reason. I think not. Some of us are, or try to be despite our limitations; most human beings are not, and make no attempt to be.
No wonder our planet's future looks bleak.
As a reminder, McCartney is, of course, entirely correct. The impact of the meat industry on the environment is devastating. And not only because of methane gas. Animals for the slaughter are produced in their billions, and need to be fed. Forests are chopped down to use land for agriculture - not to feed human beings, but to feed animals destined for the slaughter. Deforestation is due, in great part, to the meat industry.
And there's another tragic irony. Agriculture produces more than enough food to feed every human being on the planet. Yet people are starving. Why? Two reasons. The first is economic: there's no profit in feeding them, so the capitalist "ethos" dictates that they should starve. The second is that we prefer to divert food away from them and use it on cows and other animals instead, to keep meat production going.
Leaving aside, for a moment, the horrific cruelty of the meat industry -in which cows sometimes have their hooves chopped off and their skin boiled off before they're actually dead- ; eating meat destroys the ozone layer, increases global warming and accelerates deforestation.
McCartney was well aware that he wouldn't be heard if he suggested vegetarianism. So he's simply pointed out that cutting back on one's meat intake just a little bit would be a positive step towards helping the environment. It's not much to ask, and it should have appealed to every rational person's understanding of the obvious.
Instead, it's brought the frothing morons out to whinge.
2009-05-25
Frustration
I spend most of my time these days working on my thesis. I've written close to 650 pages now, but I'm only on chapter 6 out of 9. I had initially set out to finish my thesis by June or July 2009; I'm way, way off the mark. I have a massive amount of work left to do, and I just can't see the end of it. I'm going to have to ask for an extra six months or a year to do it in, which I was really hoping not to have to do. Added to that is the problem that it's going to end up being ridiculously long, despite my leaving out many things that I'd have liked to include. It's... frustrating.
Equally frustrating is a presentation I've agreed to do at an international conference in Paris, where I'll be talking about the evolution of the perception of non-indigenous New Zealanders on Maori (basically; I'm calling it "From the 'white Maori' to biculturalism?"). I found out, belatedly, that I would have only twenty minutes to talk in. I've been struggling for ages to condense my notes into something that I can present in that short amount of time, without it becoming devoid of all meaning. My notes now are, for the most part, pages of crossed-out text, and I still can't find a way to cover the topic meaningfully with so little amount of time at my disposal. Either I'm going to run out of time while talking, or I'll just be giving brief mentions of vague facts and trends without figures or quotes to back them up. GAH!!
Anyway... As you may have guessed, I'm feeling frustrated.
And I've got nowhere else than this blog to vent my frustration.
2008-11-10
Getting on with my thesis
Ever since I locked myself out of Wikipedia, I seem to be getting on better with my thesis. I've also cut back on my FF posting, which has helped. And today, I finally finished the first draft of the first of the three parts of my thesis! Yay, a milestone! I've completed the huge chunk on identity issues in the pre-colonial Pacific - close to 270 pages, including indigenous socio-political and identity systems, and the impact of pre-colonial White settlers (merchants, missionary, and so on). The differences between the stateless societies of Melanesia and Australia, and the establishment of the Kingdom of Tonga by Taufa'ahau, not forgetting the messy condition of 19th century Samoa...
Now I can finally move on the the colonial era, and to the changes it brought. Starting with why Britain, which was a reluctant coloniser, ended up with a bigger colonial empire in the Pacific than the three eager colonial powers (France, Germany and the United States) which were, at that time, snapping up as many colonies as they could.
2008-04-19
I are Jedi?
Well I was once, many years ago, in the heady days of my youth. With two friends, I made a video in which one friend and I battle it out in a breathtaking, terrifying lightsabre duel, complete with dazzling special effects and at least two lines of dialogue.
The video lasts 21 seconds. It took 5 hours to make.
I'm the guy in the ridiculous costume with a face you can't really see, with the red lightsabre.
This scene was initially supposed to be part of a longer film, which would have included droids (i.e., hoovers meants to be droids), and holographic aliens (me in a mask with a filter effect). We never got round to doing more than those 21 seconds, though.
The full video is now available on my Facebook page, here.
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