Another week done, another crop of students to teach. I often am intrigued and happily surprised by the number of kids coming in for traditional learning. I, of course, am a big proponent of traditional learning. Why? Lets find out.

We all know that with the advancement of technologies, people are able to learn anything in a matter of minutes. Want to be an electrical engineer? No problem, pay a high fee, go to a education clinic, and you’ll know it as if you went to school. Or so they say.

I once decided to have this technique done. I thought to myself, when the technology first came out, that I should give this a chance. I am by no means an anti-technological zealot, i hate those guys, and am always very open to the latest advances. So I went down a clinic, plugged myself in and requested the historical topic of the 23rd century Martian politics. It was a historical topic that I never really studied. As such, it would make an excellent experiment point. I could take what I learn from the brain dump and compare it to my traditional education and see which one is a better education.

Now, of course this really wasn’t a scientific experiment. It’s all based on my level of objectivity when comparing the two educations. But, it’s about as close as I could get without a grant. It would have to do. The procedure itself is, as i’m sure you all know, very quick and simple. Put on a neuro-hat, sit back, relax and an hour later you’re done. How it works, beats the hell out of me. But, it does. And the results?

Lousy. Did I now know all about martian politics? Yes. Did I learn anything about martian politics? I would have to say no. What does that mean right? It means this. I once had a student who was very smart. I suspect he was augmented but you can’t opening say such things. He knew everything in my class. What I mean is, after the semester as done, he knew all the facts, knew all the dates, knew all the talking points. If someone asked him for a fact, he had it. But, he didn’t know a thing. If asked, what did all those facts mean, he was clueless. What does it matter if he knew the date of the bombing of New New York, he couldn’t answer the question of why it was bombed. His facts were factual. But there was no meaning behind it.

Human history is filled with facts. It is also filled with nuances. Subtleties that can not really be quantified. It is not a fact that a leader felt a certain way. This is a subjective point and one open for debate. It is a fact that a leader acted in a certain way.

So, when I say I knew the facts I did. But, I didn’t really know why or how those facts knit together. After my brain dump at the clinic, I knew the dates of elections, I knew about the riots, I knew about the failed terraforming bills. What I didn’t know was what led up to those elections, riots, and failed bills. The dump was only factual there were no nuances.

Lets face it, Sentients of all kinds are simply more complicated than a list of facts. We are a mix of emotions, imperfections, you name it. It takes an understanding of those imperfections to get a full and broad view of the topic.

Now, the brain dumping is fine for factual content. Want to know something, it can provide it. Want to learn something, it can not. I did, however, take what I was given and attend several lectures and classes on martian history. It was good to have those facts and then discuss them, debate them, among fellow students.

Brain dumping simply isn’t a substitute for traditional learning. All of those degrees being given out by education clinics, I feel, are not worth the paper they are printed on.  Traditional, four year degrees are still the way to go. And I think we are seeing some backlash in several industries and a return to the notion that traditional degrees are more valuable. It’s the life experience’s, the debates, the interaction with other students that is the real learning experience, not the facts. Even before brain dumping, you could just memorize facts, regurgitate them on a test and get a degree. It’s just now that technology has been created to speed up the memorizing factor. Take my advice, don’t do it. Spend the four years, don’t cut corners, you’ll be better for it. And as my list of papers to grade can attest, lots of young kids are taking this route. I even have two AI’s and three Cy’s, limited augmentations, in my class. I think it’s great.

Well, back to grading papers and watching low-grav sports. Love Sundays.

The Singularity event brought about great changes in Human society. One of those were the eventual birth of neo-humans. Neo-Humans, or Neo’s as they are commonly called, are those groups of humans that have altered their genetic code and have become a separate and distinct species from Home Sapiens Sapiens. Under the current Sentient Accords accepted by most major powers and the UN, only once a population is shown to be stable and of a certain size can it petition for Sentient status. There are a good deal of rules that go into this but I wan’t delve into them all. Suffice to say, they must meet certain criteria. For instance, people that get simple augmentations or designer genes are not given such status and are treated as members of their birth species. The curious part for me of this, as a historian, is how all this came to be and how the first Neo’s, Homo Sapiens Aquāticus, fought for and won their freedom.

After the Singularity event, the 22nd century saw unregulated Eugenics experiments running rampant. Scientists could tweak genes, modified the human form in any way they wanted. This rampant unregulated and at times unethical abuse of this new form of technology lead to the first Eugenics war. People were no longer people. Some added muscle mass, some grew appendages, what could be done was really limitless. That had a disastrous effect on society. Not everyone wanted to join in on this body reshaping free-for-all. Many liked being and wanted to stay being Homo Sapiens Sapiens. Unfortunately, some also wanted those who embraced this new technology to cease living. Thus, the Eugenics war exploded.

Of course, by the time the of this war, Humanity had spread out a bit from Earth and into the inner system. New Luna, which was able to remain mostly neutral during the War, was thriving as were other less developed colonies and spatial habitats. Though many of the colonies were neutral, the war did spread to those areas as well. Simply put, the colonies simply didn’t have a strong military in which to stave off incoming waves of the war machine of terrestrial earth. But, due to it’s isolation deep in the moon, New Luna was not an appealing target and was able to remain out of most of the conflict.  It’s interesting that the one place that was created in the hopes of preventing an all out Eugenics war became the safe haven for many fleeing the effects of it.

When the war started, there were several Neo’s that had grown in population. Several aquatic varieties, some avians, even some that had molded their bodies to better survive extra-terrestrial locations such as Mars and the deep caves of Mercury. It was, and is, really interesting how most Neo species choose to modify themselves along lines to allow them to live in a natural environment without the requirement of technology.  A fact about this time, most of those that had modified themselves were individuals. Meaning there weren’t any large amounts of Neo’s that were genetically the same and compared to today’s Sentient’s, most of the changes were cosmetic.

As the war churned on, countries fought each other for the right to control the technology. Some fought for the Neo’s that could not fight for themselves, claiming that they were, deep down, still humans. At times during the war countries split apart, sided with different nations, army’s often fought their own. It was truly a giant mess.

Most of the Neo’son Earth will killed. A large amount fled, with Cy’s and AI’s, to the outer system where they still live today. They had to alter themselves heavily to survive in those harsh environments but they did and do. When the war finally died down it left the inner system a mess of destroyed stations and broken space vessels. The Lunar and Martian surfaces were littered with bodies, burnt out vehicles, and countless other leftovers from the war.

One group of Neo’s that managed to survive, did so by hiding. When the war started a group of aquatically modified people went deep in the Earth’s oceans. They found the Mariana trench, altered themselves to survive the pressure while still keeping the ability to breath open air, and vanished beneath the ocean. They actually thrived beneath the sea. They had brought sea technology, mostly primitive organic based technology, with them and managed to improve upon it. They augmented the organic based computer and technology system. Literally grew homes, vessels to travel in, and even defenses to protect themselves against the war raging above. More importantly they were having offspring. They had not modified their genetic code in nearly 100 years, adopted as a requirement for Sentient status, and were now becoming their own species. As intelligent as Humans but distinctly different in every other way.

Eventually they were able to tap into radio broadcasts from the surface and they realize that the war was long over. The hatred of their kind had muted and there were those that were more accepting. They decided to reveal their colony, long unknown from everyone.

It was a sunny day in Florida, July 22nd 2245, when the first of them returned to the surface. They arrived in one of their grown sea ships. They were greeted with fascination, awe, in some cases even fear. Their coming to the surface, and their decision to rejoin Humanity, was a pivotal moment. They proved that an augmented, changed, group of humans could live, have children, those babies would share in their changed features and they would be a stable and viable species. Most of those on that first ship were children of the original’s that hid in the deep trench. Their existence paved the way for the Sentient Accords to be drafted and accepted by the ever changing community of Mankind and the people of Solar System. They were welcomed as hero’s by nearly every group in existence at the time. They were the first to be given full Sentient status. Theirs was the first new nation to be recognized beneath the sea and warmly welcomed to the UN. Innovations from their aquatic kingdom spawned a new age in sea and space exploration. Organic technology was taken to a new level. Their species name was decided on and agreed upon. Homo Sapiens Aquāticus had arrived. They had shown that change wasn’t evil. That humans could alter their genetic code and still be humans. They loved and died just like any other.

In the years since their re-emergance from the sea. The cities beneath the waves have grown and become major destinations for tourism and opened up vast areas of uncliamed land that would become nations and cities in their own time. Perhaps the most interesting of all, it was members of Aquaticus that first settled Europa. The cities there are magnificent and awe inspiring. I for one thank God that they surived the First Eugenics war, were hidden for the second, and re-joined Humanity. We are so much more richer for their presence.

As the title says, I just got back from an actual, not virtual, trip to New Luna. I decided to take the week off and spoil myself to a little vacation. I debated going somewhere on Earth but after recently writing about New Luna I decided to head up there. It’s not that far really and I haven’t been in ages. I know i know, why go actual these days?  As all of you know, even in these technologically superior times, there’s still lag on the nets. And even though the plug-in does tap right into the brain, and you can’t tell the difference between real and virtual, I think you can still tell.

Whatever my reasoning, I decided to hop an elevator to upper orbit, rent a room and schedule a seat on the next Luna bound shuttle. I must say the elevator ride is quite pretty, though a little long. You get an incredible view of the Earth. I live in DC, so I took the North Atlantic elevator up. Great view of the eastern seaboard and you can see western Europe.

So a short trip up and I was at the Hyatt. That place is getting a little run down I must say. Why is it that companies are unwilling to spend on upgrading things in orbit? I dunno. The Hyatt is based on the old Bigelow design from 300 years ago, again the 300 year theme.  It’s not an actual construction from that time of course but it’s one of the inflatable designs. It’s just such a good, cheap design why make anything else? Of course, other designs have been made. My room didn’t’ have a window but I did go down to the viewing hub and took a look around. It’s crowded out there. I saw three pinwheel hotels, several science stations and a few military installations. The giant O-Ring station was just visible to me. It is the largest station in earth orbit, with offices for nearly 35,000 people, 5,000 of them living there. It is a massive construction. It single handily controls all space traffic for the entire inner system , earth orbit and ships entering or leaving Earth. It is a primary docking station for ships leaving or arriving at Earth.  I do want to tour that place one day, they do offer tours. It really is a building in space. Though not the biggest man made space bound construction out there, it is the biggest in earth orbit.

But at any rate, I stayed in the viewing hub for a bit, watched stations whiz by, a few yachts, some space skimmers, I even saw a girl in a fly suit, those things are wicked! Latest thing out there for space survival and of course someone took it, tweaked it and made it into a luxury item. Love it.

I crashed out and the next day caught a speed shuttle to New Luna. Those things are quick. It’s a “goo” ship, technically called a Fast Inertial Suppression Transit ship, commonly called a FIST ship, obviously.  Kinda gross really. But I wanted to get to New Luna and back in a week and this was the cheapest and best bet. No way in hell am I ever going to scan myself there. That stuff is just not for me, not my way to travel. I don’t care what anyone says.

At any rate, I got submerged in goo, the FIST ship got me to New Luna just under 2 hours. After a very long shower I hit the streets. Ah New Luna. Love that place. It has grown since I got there last. I honestly think they are just going to grow an grow until they’ve hollowed out the entire moon. Though of course, that’s a big exaggeration. They are only 60 or so square miles, roughly.

So anyway, on the first day I walked the main drag, ate some great Italian food, not as good as Little Italy in NY of course but still pretty good. I played a bit in the low grav sector. It’s actually neat how they’ve done it, some streets are low grav and some are Earth normal. Grave plates were a neat invention for sure.

The second day I wanted to go caving. They have tunneled out a massive caving system for tourists. Whole thing is all moon standard gravity. You can practically float from hand hold to hand hold down the caves. It’s a great day trip. There’s a lake down there they have, going swimming in log grav is a unique experience. They have life guards there though, even experienced swimmers can’t handle the uniqueness of low grav swimming.

Day three I decided for debauchery and gambling. I hit the casino district and just played poker for awhile. I actually won some money. And since I won some money I decided to play on the fourth day of my stay and lost it all back again. Ah, gambling.

I ended my week vacation with doing some site seeing. I went to a few museum’s, went to the home of the first president of New Luna, Constitution Hall and the a bunch of the other general tourist places.

After my excursions I grabbed a FIST ship, headed back to the North Atlantic elevator and went home. Was a great trip I must say. I once fancied the idea of moving up there but I couldn’t handle all the tourists. The one great thing about living in a terrestrial city is you don’t have as many damn tourists. No one cares about visiting DC anymore, well that’s not true, we do get our share. But no where near as many as you get on some of the other hot spots in the inner system. The outer system, of course, is more for the hard core enthusiasts. There’s still a sense of ‘wild’ out there and in many places it’s lawless. I much prefer the civil and ordered cities of the inner system. Next up, I think i’ll head to Sphere’s. That is a neat place!

Occasionally on this blogging experiment, I will feel the need to talk about things that simply bother me in today’s 24th century world. Right now, the biggest thing is of course, those crazy jocks who are trying to make this wackjob sport into an Olympic event. Are you kidding me? An Olympic event? Lets recap what these adreniline junkies do shall we.

Imagine you are sitting somewhere in the Mojave desert. You’ve just strapped on a space suit, kissed your girlfriend and waved to a throng of like minded morons. Now, you are waiting for the inevitable. You wonder how you’ll do. Will your equipment malfunction and you burn? Or will you ride the atmosphere for 60 miles straight down?

A lab coat wearing smart guy waves to you. You stand up, brush yourself off, and walk over to your on personal rocket ride to lower earth orbit. You buckle up, take a deep breath, wait for your green go light, as do your three competitors, and pray. One, two, three, GO. Your pod engine, and yes that is all it is, a capsule sitting on a rocket, blasts off and you get pushed back into your seat with several gravities worth of force.

In just a few minutes you reach low earth orbit at around 60 miles. Your rocket detaches and falls back to earth to burn up in the atmosphere. A sight that you will get to enjoy watching. Your pod seams crack, explosive bolts fire, the sides of your cocoon fall away and there you are, floating in space, with a space suit and a atmosboard.

You’ll hover there for a few minutes. I have to admit, I’ve seen the vids and virtuals, it’s a hell of a view. Beautiful really. But, you aren’t there to take in the view. Your mic goes off and the refs give the go ahead. You and your fellow fallers are to begin your descent. You have to wonder about a race where you get a prize for surviving.

You spin your board, give it a shot of thruster, point yourself towards the ground and hang on to your ass. At first it’s slow. the earth looms large beneath you but it seems as if you’ll never reach it. And then, the race begins.

Imagine a 60 mile ride through compressed atmospheres causing a fireball with you in the middle of it. If you tilt your board at the wrong angle, you burn. This is not a sport for the feint of heart. Now, I know you are asking the same questions I am, why in god’s name would someone do this? The Borealis effect of course. When fallers reach a certain altitude, I forget what it is, they can release packets from their board of highly charged particles. Those particles interact with the upper atmosphere and create a Borealis effect. And, you guessed, it tilt your board, surf the fireball and you can make your own effects. Oh it’s crazy cool alright, crazy insane too.

Ok, ok, all you die hard fans out there are screaming at your vids right now. No,there hasn’t been a death in this sport in a long time.The suits are safe and can survive the burn on re-entry. Fallers rarely get hurt and most are long time veterans at the sport. Still, on a race by race basis, it is the most deadliest sport on earth. I make that distinction mind you, on earth, there are way more deadlier ones elsewhere in the system for sure.

So, the point of all this is, there is no way a sport as dangerous as orbit jumping will make it into the Olympics.  The fact that they insist and demand inclusion is driving me bonkers. It doesn’t matter how safe you think your sport is, it just isn’t. Yes, it is cool. Yes, it is neat to watch the Borealis effect from multiple fallers. But really, how can this possibly be an Olympic sport? If just one mishap occurred, the Olympics may be shut down for another 50 years just like during the 22nd century. That would truly be a shame. Especially since they just decided to include non-terrestrial governments in the mix. I personally feel that the Spatial Olympics is just fine without orbital jumping. It’s a nice addition to Winter and Summer Olympics and is full of enough of danger to keep things interesting without being too dangerous.

In my opinion, Orbit Jumping should be left to the fringe sports category and not included in the main stream. And all you fallers, jumpers, whatever you call yourselves, stop being so pissy about it. You’ve got your sport, it’s legit, you get respect, you get major time on the vids, virtuals and networks. Why do you want to be in the Olympics anyway? Give it a few decades, keep your safty up, don’t whine so much and maybe you’ll get in.

As part of my writings I wanted to share some historical facts and my view of them. I am a historian after all, so it’s only fitting part of this experience be about my take on history.

So, it is with great pleasure that my first entry into this section be about the first extra-earth habitation of humans that declared their own Independence. It was really an incredible time to be alive. 75 years after The Singularity event, 50 years after the colony was established, they declared their independence from the conglomeration of countries that founded it. It was an interesting situation, to understand some of the complexities, I’ll briefly go over the state of things then.

It was, as I said, 75 years after The Singularity event. Earth was literally tearing itself apart trying to figure out it’s new identity. Countries were going through periods of civil wars every few years. Twenty five years after the event, the countries of the world attempted to pull together and establish the first extra-planet colony on the Moon, New Luna.  The name was as politically correct as possible of course. They needed to call it something that wouldn’t offend anyway, and that was probably the most difficult task of all.

There were already dozens of space hotels, communities, etc. Some even had attempted to declare their independence. They were mostly ignored of course. No country, organization of any kind recognized them. On that note, the title of should really say the first recognized colony to declare Independence, but I won’t. It’s too wordy.

So, it was then in 2065, trillions of dollars were spent by seventeen countries and unions, over 50,000 volunteers were transported deep beneath the lunar surface into a massive cavern created by nuclear explosions and massive drilling automatons. It was a symbol of ingenuity of mankind, AI’s, Cy’s and Neo’s. It was an example that maybe we could all get along in this new world of post-Singularity confusion. The 50,000 chosen were a representation of every ethnicity and Sentientcy, even though no real declaration of sentient status was made by this time in history, they didn’t even use the word sentient to describe everyone.

With advanced hydroponics, water sources found on the moon, advanced technologies and methods of creating closed ecosystems, the colony was very quickly self sufficient. This was really the turning point of the colonies history in my opinion. Only ten years after it’s founding, it no longer required Earth for supplies.

New Luna thrived. Even though the original inhabitants were representative of the Earth’s population in religion, ethnicity, political views, they actually seemed to get along pretty good. Later sociologists would attribute this phenomena to a low population and a need to work together. Also, they shared a common ground in New Luna itself and being the pioneers they were.

It wasn’t a large surprise to some that the creation of New Luna did not ease any of the pains happening on Earth. Some even feel that it contributed to more hostilities. After all, ten years after it’s creation, they no longer required supplies, they didn’t even need Earth anymore. Whether that really made tensions worse on Earth is in some dispute, by myself as well. I think that though it was a great example of coming together, and the fighting did die down a bit while the colony was being established, once it was created everyone forgot about it and went back to fighting.

For the next 35 years, fighting on Earth intensified. Old ideologies simply would not die. What did it mean to be Human? The Singularity event changed everything and many were having a hard time adjusting. New Luna, however, found that there really wasn’t much difference between Sentients. Though, I will admit, the Cy’s were always a bit arrogant and full of themselves, but they too got along fine in New Luna.

It was Tuesday, in May of 2113 that started the declaration. Though this too is in dispute. It really amazes me with the level of available documentation, vids, and in some cases actual virtual, how arguments can happen about how things developed. Anyway, I digress. In my view the rumblings of revolution started years before, perhaps even all the way back to when Luna found themselves resource independent. But the actual meeting to discuss the reality of independence came in May of 2113.

Alexis Sommers, Thomas Davies and my dear friend aCompius met and discussed the realities of independence. I say my dear friend, but honestly, the aCompius I know is a third generation copy of the original AI. But it was still fascinating to speak with someone who shared the memories of that incredible day. The three sat for nearly a day discussing the possibilities and realities of what they were doing. They thought for sure that the Prime’s would not agree to this under any circumstances. I often think there’s a prejudice towards Prime’s, that since they choose to remain as Humans have been since evolution that they are somehow inferior. I do not share this belief. I think they are as accomplished and capable as any Sentient.

Regardless of such prejudices, the Prime’s went along with the choice whole heartedly. It isn’t a big surprise really, people have been revolting since the first societies of man. It took another two years for the movement to gain steam, bring in the major political parties of New Luna, draft the declaration and announce it to the combined countries of Earth.

Of course, by this time, the countries of Earth were in no shape to do anything about it. Sure some of the super powers would have been able to launch a military attempt to quell the revolution, as many saw it. But, honestly, no one really cared. New Luna had long ago repaid it’s debts though tourism, asteroid belt mining, docking fees of Luna’s massive space port and the technological innovations that streamed out.

Today, New Luna is one of the most innovative, successful and thriving governments in the system. They had a tremendous jump start on the extra-earth colonies and really are responsible for most other colonies being created. Their support, ability to coordinate and provide a jumping off point for the solar system allowed the system to grow as strong as it has. We really are in debt to New Luna and all Lunar Citizens and cities that exist today.

In keeping with the motif of this site, I wanted to start posting little factoids that I researched about the past. As i’ve said, this experiment is based on the blogging phenomena of the past, roughly 300 years ago at it’s height, and I wanted to occassionaly post about things that happen exactly 300 years ago. So, on this day, September 27, the actor Paul Newman died 300 years ago. I honestly don’t know much about entertainment of the past. Some of my friends love watching old style movies from that day, and sure some are really interesting. But honestly, why sit and watch something when I can hop into some vNet, not the vNet, and do whatever is in those movies yourself.

But back then they couldn’t. They watched full length feature films. And one of the best was Paul Newman.

Well, i had a fun day today. Thought i’d share. I woke up a bit late, was drinking late out at the local bar, after coffee and breakfast I decided to spend today in vSpace. Why not after all. It’s been awhile and I wanted to see some old friends. So I slapped on my med patches, made sure the house was all locked up, I didn’t bother with a feeder though, didn’t think i’d be on that long, and headed on in.

After a rough patch getting connected, I may need to get a new rig, I made it to the central hub for DC. Man was it packed. Guess lots of people are visiting. Anyway, I didn’t want to hang around a bunch of tourists so I typed in the address of some old friends and dived in. Now, i’m an old vNet junkie, so I know my way around vSpace pretty well. And being plugged in for so long i’ve met my fair share of hardcore netters and casual visitors alike. This group I was visiting was more in the middle of the road. I didn’t feel like listening to whiners complaining about the vNet loss, move on, there’s lots of networks these days to get plugged in to. And if you can’t find one you like, just create one. Anyway, I don’t want to go down that road too far. Suffice to say, I was hopeing for a mellow evening of casual chat, maybe a little fun and even a few stims, why not right.

Well, when I showed up at my friends, I was thinking this may be a long and boring day. The shack was empty. Not a soul in sight. I was dissappointed and a little surprised. I walked around a bit looking for anyone but after about 10 minutes I got frustrated and said to hell with it and left. And thank goodness I did. I decided to head over to the shootem-ups, shooter games, and play a few rounds. What a blast. The maps were crazy. We fought in an urban setting, jungle, even a cavern. I got shot more often than I shot someone, and they had their pain settings up a bit high, some of those shots hurt, but all in all was a great time.

Afterward I decided to treat myself to a nice long walk on the Titan Feed. Was nice, met a few nice Titans. They are having more and more problems with renegade Cy’s though. Man those guys are just never satisfied. I sat for awhile on a methane beach, watch some neo’s swim for awhile. I don’t know why everyone finds them so disturbing. They’ve been around since the Singularity event nearly 250 years ago, give it up already. But I digress.

I left Titan and decided to hit one of the vClubs. I danced, stimed, played and even got into a fight. This slimeball said I grabed his girls ass and tried to hit me with a destab. Are you kidding? Amateur. I wrapped him in a bubble, sent him to the ceiling and let him bounce around until he had to unplug. Ha! Course, none of that was very legal, so I decided my time was up. I doubt anyone would care but the bouncers were looking at me with concern. Not just anyone throws bubbles around after all.

So, I left the club, ditched vSpace and headed down into the vDen. Best to lay low in the biggest criminal network in the system after all rather than sit around waiting for a sniffer to find you. I doubt they could but you never know. I’ve heard of a few of us that decided to go to work for the man. I could never do that.

I won’t go into details of what I got into in the vDen, probably can’t honestly, would get me busted for sure. Suffice to say, I stayed low, met some friends, waited to see if a sniffer was on me, there wasn’t, and unpluged. All in all was a great time. I know a lot of my fellow netters think vSpace is for tourists, wannabe’s and the like, but I kinda like it. It is largest network out there and really, at the end of the day, it’s about the people.

It’s hard to believe we’re already at another general election in these Eastern States. The candidates are yet again at each other’s throats attempting to sway as many of the voters block they can to win the election. What boggles my mind is how they are so willing to fight each other and not tackle any of the relevant issues of our day. Peace is still not attained in the wars, the economy is tanking, though admittedly there does appear to be some rebounding mostly from bail out help through the Republic, and the scientific community has decided to embark on another quantum engine design. Don’t those eggheads remember that the last time they used that thing it nearly blew up their own precious Inner System Orbiting Research Station?

But I digress. I don’t want to this post to get into a long tirade about singularity events or the out of control nature of the scientific community. What I do want to focus on is the complete inadequacies of these candidates. Alfons thinks that just because he’s the first ever AI running for a major political party that he should have special treatment. Sure, it’s a milestone in Eastern American politics, even in politics as a whole, and many other countries are looking at this intently, but special treatment? No way. I mean, I’m not belittling the AI plight in sentient society, they really have, surprisingly I might add, gotten the worst of it from all the non-human sentients, but they were given full sentient rights just as with everyone in the Accords of Rights back in 2211. That’s nearly 100 years of equal rights, representation and access to all Sentient Society has to offer. Let alone the full rights they have in the outer colonies, bunch of nut jobs out there though. Don’t blame any AI, neo-human, Cy or anything else from leaving that place.

Pinchia is almost as bad mind you. This guys is incredible. I mean how one person can lie, lie, lie and still not take any heat for it is beyond me. Yes, we know you served in the Luna and Martian wars. Lots of Americans did, and not just Eastern Americans either. Western, Southern, Republic Americans fought their hearts out for those whining low grav’s. Now, I’m not trying to take away from his service to society and the Americas, but, honestly, that should not be the reason he gets elected.

Who should I vote for then, that’s the big question. Of course, for me, the issue is the issues. I want to know who will quiet down the recent spat of inner system wars, who will do the tough job and negotiate with Cy’s? Of all the sentients they are the most insane of the bunch. Their ‘General’ is really quite insane if you ask me.

At the end of the day, I think these politicians need to stop it with the partisan rhetoric and start it with problem solving. We’ve got more than our fair share of problems, complexities and subtleties that need to be ironed out. We must have someone that will take the reins. I know both of these Sentients passed the exam, but maybe that exam needs to be re-examined.

Just one Sentients opinion.