[mp3]http://media.blubrry.com/bogosity/p/podcast.bogosity.tv/mp3s/BogosityPodcast-2016-09-19.mp3[/mp3]
Co-Host: Chris Hangartner
News of the Bogus:- 1:38 - The ACLU Is About to Launch a Campaign Asking Obama to Pardon Edward Snowden https://motherboard.vice.com/read/edward-snowden-presidential-pardon-campaign
- 8:40 - Chimpanzees choose cooperation over competition: Study challenges distinctiveness of human cooperation https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2016/08/160822155920.htm
- How chimpanzees cooperate in a competitive world http://www.pnas.org/content/113/36/10215.abstract
- 16:30 - More Details On How Corporate Sovereignty Provisions, Like Those In TPP & TTIP, Are Dangerous https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20160909/22583035479/more-details-how-corporate-sovereignty-provisions-like-those-tpp-ttip-are-dangerous.shtml
26:15 -
Biggest Bogon Emitter: Weirton, WV Police Department and the Los Angeles Police Protective League
- Cop Who Didn't Shoot Black Man Fired for 'Failing to Eliminate Threat' http://reason.com/blog/2016/09/13/cop-who-didnt-shoot-black-man-fired-for
- LAPD Honors Officers Who Didn't Use Deadly Force, Much to the Police Union's Dismay http://reason.com/blog/2016/09/12/lapd-awards-officers-who-didnt-deadly
36:45 -
Idiot Extraordinaire: Vermont Bern Victims https://morningconsult.com/2016/09/13/bernie-sanders-popular-ever/
This Week's Quote: "There have been times throughout American history where what is right is not the same as what is legal. Sometimes to do the right thing you have to break the law." —Edward Snowden
Those who want peace should be the greatest fans of truly free trade, because where trade crosses borders, armies DON'T.
There are additional arguments for why the Federation is a dystopia, my favorite being that they exhibit a typical trait of authoritarian societies that is almost never seen in free societies: Creative sterility. All the art that appears in the Federation is either from the cultures that formed it from before they formed it, or from other cultures outside it. (For instance, all the 'holonovels' that appear either derive from pre-20th century human novels, or in the one case where a deliberate work of art is created without such a basis, it's objectively crap. The only good holonovel presented without such a basis turns out to be a training exercise that was abandoned incomplete because it was recognized as not being needed. Fans will probably recognize all the instances I'm referring to.)
Ferengi are really interesting, as they ended up being the most relatable characters for contemporary audiences, in many cases. The best example is Quark, a guy trying to make a living (and, if at all possible, get crazy rich) running his bar and working whatever side deals he can set up. He's just a small businessbeing trying to make his business work (and, for the most part, enjoying the whole process of finding new markets and serving them). Exhibit: His pure joy at discovering the lucrative and previously unobserved and unserved market of family entertainment when he's explaining to Odo what Jake was doing in one of Quark's holosuites, previously mostly used for virtual prostitution. He was even very happy making huge profits selling weapons to anyone who wanted them, as long as he could treat them as being purchased for defense. (The moment he's asked for a weapon not only almost useless for defense but explicitly to carry out an atrocity against the customer's adversary's followers, he balks so hard he ends up engineering the murder of the customer by the very adversary he was fighting.)
Back in the days of the FASA Star Trek pencil-and-paper RPG, the notion that the Federation didn't have an economy with money was never incorporated (the fact that the license was pulled shortly after the idea was inserted in TNG didn't help with that, either). Star Fleet officers even had published pay rates and there was a mechanism to calculate the accumulated savings a character should have, and it was perfectly possible to calculate the cost of any given ship.