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:
]]>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:
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:
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:
Plain text version (members only)
]]>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)
]]>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.
]]>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.
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.
]]>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.
