The Day of The Doctor! (With No Doubt Massive Spoilers, So Don't Click Until You've Seen It.)

Right.

This is going to be loaded with spoilers, so I will provide plentiful whitespace and meaningless blather to prevent burning the eyeballs out of anyone who hasn't seen it yet.

For the love of God, please don't read this without watching it first.

As a spoiler-less soundbite review, Day of the Doctor was amazing.

I was not disappointed.

For further spoiler-free information, this episode demonstrated that it had been in planning for a very, very long time.

After watching the episode, and looking back, there have been clues salted through the show, leading to this episode, as far back as the end of David Tennant's time on the show at an absolute minimum.

Is that enough blather to prevent spoilers showing on Facebook?

We shall see.

So, as far back as Christopher Eccleston, the Doctor has referred to the day when he "destroyed" the Time Lords and the Daleks.

And yet, Gallifrey was put into a Time Lock, a frozen instant in which it continues to exist outside the continuity of Time, and while that's absence, that's certainly not destruction... Is it?

That's a bit of dialogue ambiguity that's been ongoing in the show since the very beginning of the new series, and the element of the Doctor's regret for the destruction of his people...

...Which doesn't make sense if they were trapped in a Time Lock...

Watching the show, I didn't catch it.

Maybe you didn't either.

Maybe you did, and I'm a doofus; it happens. (12.7% of the time. That's just science.)

So, here comes the build-up towards The End Of Time, and we get the drums, we get the Master, we get the whole reincarnation plot, we get Rassilon...

...We get a massive, orchestrated subterfuge designed to draw attention away from the inconsistency between the continued existence of Gallifrey, and the "I destroyed my own people," angst.

And that's been a theme all through the Eleventh Doctor's time, hasn't it? Cracks in the universe, inconsistencies, paradox; literally every plot involving Amy and Rory revolved around inconsistencies in one way or another, and Clara is the "Impossible Girl," whose entire existence is a flaw in the universe...

...Because they've been playing a giant "hide in plain sight" gambit with the fact that Doctor Who cannot have simultaneously destroyed Gallifrey and saved it.

It's an inconsistency that they specifically warned us about; the whole episode of The End Of Time was a huge clue.

When these factors are brought together, they point to a contradiction: in the life of the Ninth, Tenth, and Eleventh Doctors, they've carried both realities within them - Gallifrey exists, Gallifrey was destroyed; the Time Lords exist, all the Time Lords were killed at the hands of the Doctor.

Which means that the showrunners have been planning this moment, this resolution, for at least 8 years.

I admire craftsmanship, when I can find it.

And to see them resolve it, to see them tie those threads together, with the heart they demonstrated there - "This time, you don't have to do it alone."

I could not be more satisfied. This was all I could have asked for, and more.

I can't wait to see how they explain Clara.

Three Equally Good Titles Means You Get "You Fool! NIMBY Douchebags Are A Thing!"

So, after reading the article I'm about to discuss, I came up with three titles for this post, all of which I felt had merit.

First, "NIMBY Strikes Yet Again," because NIMBY is a thing. (Not In My Back Yard, if you didn't know.)
Second, "Hipster Douchebags Smite Themselves" because, well, you'll see.
And third, "You Fool! Why Would You Build It In LA?" because... Well, I want to put on record my opinion that any company that builds anything industrial in Los Angeles is run by misbred, illiterate monkeys who are doing this to show off for the ladies rather than for any legitimate business reasons.

So, for those of you who are already confused as to what I'm blathering about, you can go look up the term "Srirachapocalyse." Or, you know, I will save you the time.

Basically, the popular and distinctive chili sauce sriracha, currently experiencing a massive upswing in popularity due to a tremendous outpouring of support by 20-30 somethings who think of themselves as amateur foodies, is in danger of huge price spikes and supply shortages thanks to a small group of Los Angeles residents.

See, in the U.S., sriracha sauce is primarily manufactured and distributed by a single company: Huy Fong, Inc. They're the ones with the green cap and the rooster on the label.

Although Huy Fong has been happily churning out their condiment for years from a single facility in Rosemead, CA, which has been in operation since 1986 without issue or complaint, they recently invested a tremendous amount of money to build a new, larger facility in Irwindale, CA, to handle the increased demand.

And that's where they ran into trouble.

See, sriracha sauce's popularity has taken off in recent years - so much so, that just since Q3 2012, the number of commercial food items using sriracha as an ingredient have more than doubled. This is almost entirely due to its popularity among 20-30 year olds; it's a fad food.

But the same people who love to eat the stuff in job lots, also don't want the facilities which manufacture it anywhere near their homes.

So, they began filing increasingly ludicrous air quality complaints against Huy Fong.

Why do I say they're ludicrous?

Well, it's a facility that processes hot peppers, to make hot sauce. So, saying there's a discernible odor is reasonable.

Claiming that it's poisoning the air so badly that asthmatics and small children can't go outside their homes is simply ridiculous.

But the business of government, at least in California, is to hold your precious little hand and wipe away your tears, and soothe your boo-boo.

So, the South Coast Air Quality Management District sent a team of investigators to see what was going on.

They couldn't smell anything.

So they went back again, and the second time, they said there was a faint, garlicky smell.

None of them were hospitalized, unable to exit their vehicles, or otherwise inconvenienced.

They found that there was insufficient evidence to cite Huy Fong for a violation of any kind.

And they went away.

Huy Fong responded to the complaints regardless, installing augmented air filtration throughout the facility, and ensuring that they were in compliance with all relevant and pertinent codes, requirements, and laws. This facility is critically important to them; it has enabled Huy Fong to triple their expected production for next year.

But this was not enough for the residents of Irwindale, because they didn't actually have an issue with the smell, or any kind of air quality issue.

They just want the factory gone.

So they got the Irwindale City Attorney to file a lawsuit against Huy Fong, once again alleging that they were causing air quality problems, and demanding that the plant be shut down until Huy Fong provides evidence that they are addressing the issue...

...Even though they've already addressed it once, even after the city inspectors were unable to detect an actual problem.

See, here's the thing.

Complaining, "it smells like garlic! Yuck!" doesn't get anything done; the city mostly doesn't care.

Claiming that it's actually a health risk to residents will get some action taken...

...But see, if you claim there's a health risk, that's easily disproven.

For me, it's hard to call the company a bad guy, at all, considering they installed extra air filtration after the complaints even though the inspectors found no problems.

But if you just don't want to live next to an icky factory, where they make stuff, which is gross, then the company's attempts to resolve your imaginary problems will of course never be successful, since your real issue is with the existence of the company, not an air quality problem.

For proof? The inspectors who couldn't detect a smell were standing less than 20 feet from the factory's exhaust system outlet.

So: they want the condiment, they just don't want to be anywhere near where they make it.

Not In My Back Yard.

And they'll be the first ones in line to screech about how unreasonable the company is for raising prices, too, I'd bet.

Fucking hipsters.

As a (near) final note, the city of Philadelphia, and the city of Denton, Texas, have both offered to host Huy Fong should the company decide they're tired of California's utterly silly government and residents. One City Councilman of Philadelphia, in particular, pointed out that they have tremendous areas of unoccupied, zoned industrial property available, and offered the following:

"so you never have to worry about upsetting your neighbors again."

Denton, Texas, said they would be delighted to host the 50 year-round, and 60 additional seasonal, jobs, as well as noting that they had plentiful sites away from residential areas, and that the Denton recycling plant specifically had the capability to handle the bottles used by Huy Fong.

And as a final note: the courts agree with me, even if you think I'm overly harsh. The judge denied Irwindale's initial injunction.

They're trying again, though. Because they really, really want sriracha to be manufactured somewhere else.

A Brief Discussion Of Dog-ness

I want to preface this post by saying that, on balance, I am generally a cat person.

What I mean by that is that as a pet, I prefer a cat; they're way more low-maintenance, much more self-sufficient, cleaner, less noisy most of the time, less messy virtually all of the time, and generally, as a pet, to me personally, preferable.

I want that clearly understood, before I get going.

Because I want to explain why I have the utmost respect and admiration for the canine, and such a discussion requires a bit of perspective.

As a pet, for myself, dogs are... Less preferable. They slobber, they want to lick me right after they lick their own butt, they want to sniff things I don't want them to sniff, poop in places I don't want them to, chew up my shoes, make lots and lots of noise, require constant attention, and generally are much, much more work.

But that doesn't change my basic admiration for the quality of dog-ness.

Let me back up a bit.

I am messed up. Everyone who knows me, is at least peripherally aware of this, and I make no pretense at normalcy. But a component of that that others may have noticed, even if they never really analyzed it, is that I have serious difficulty forming emotional attachments to things, people, pets, whatever, to the degree that other people do.

I am, in part, a cat person because I understand and share a degree of cat-ness.

For most people, I can be friendly, provided you're rubbing my metaphorical fur the right way, but if you drop off the face of the earth tomorrow, there won't be tears. 

Yes, I recognize that that makes me a horrible person.

But here's the thing.

Whether or not you admit it to yourself, you feel the same way. Maybe not to the same degree as I do, but it's there nonetheless.

That guy who does your dry cleaning? Your real, legitimate concern if he suddenly vanished would be a vague concern over how long it will take to get your clothes back.

You don't have any real attachment to that person; because you have limited slots for such things and that person's degree of ongoing proximity to you is such that their priority is quite low.

Cat-ness.

Cats don't care about you; they care quite a bit about the things you do for them. A cat can find a mouse or bird if they get hungry; they don't need you, you're just a convenience. You change litter boxes and open cans of food, and that's all they care about; you're a convenient labor-saving device for a cat. "This back won't pet itself, you know!"

Some of you are nodding.

But here's the thing.

As much as I like cat-ness as a quality for a pet to have, dog-ness is way more admirable.

Dogs love you.

They love everything.

Dogs love chasing small animals. Eating grass. Pooping. Barking. Running. Lying down. Chasing things. Chasing themselves. Bushes. Fences. Open places in fences they can go through. You.

Mostly you.

But dogs are nature's fanboys and fangirls; everything under the sun is the best thing ever.

They are fanatically loyal to their owners; dogs will do things you'd think beyond the physical - or intellectual - limits of a dog, to protect or rescue a human in danger; willingly give their lives in your defense; face off against any challenger (small yapyap dogs have faced up to grizzly bears for their owners. I wouldn't do that for most people.)

And they love their owners with fierce, unrelenting, unconditional devotion and loyalty.

I admire the hell out of that quality of dog-ness.

Which is what makes animal abuse such a horrible thing.

If you abuse a dog, that animal does not possess the mental capacity to interpret that in any way other than "this is happening because I am a bad dog."

When you abuse a cat, it'll never come near you again.

When you abuse a dog, it'll come back, even with fresh whip marks, and lick your hands and try to understand what it did wrong.

And that makes abusing a dog ten times more contemptible.

A dog is - dog-ness is - the eternal, unlimited hope for redemption. Even if you hospitalized your dog, that dog will come back, hoping you will be a better person this time. The dog may not understand that, but that's what it represents; that's what dog-ness means.

And if you fail that test, you are lower than any other.

I am not a dog person. Dogs are noisy, attention-whoring, slobbery train wrecks.

And I am unreservedly on their team.

More than once, dogs - particularly "rescue" dogs, but any dog - with nasty reputations or good reasons to hate and fear humans, have come right up to me and sniffed, and immediately accepted me.

Because, regardless of my preference, they can tell the one relevant point about me:

I would never, ever abuse a dog.

Full stop.

I think less of anyone who does, even by hearsay; if I see someone abusing a dog, I will stop it. They might not - in fact, are very very likely not - to enjoy how I go about that.

Dogs can tell.

I am not a dog person. But I admire the hell out of the quality of dog-ness.

Dogs represent a walking, (slobbering, butt-sniffing) opportunity for anyone to redeem themselves, just a bit. They're a target; they will love you, obey you, and remain loyal, even if you treat them wrong, which means that - to someone who would do such things - the temptation is always there.

Redemption exists in making a choice not to do that. Not to BE that.

And that's only one of many, but it's a path to a certain degree of redemption that wouldn't, couldn't, exist without dog-ness.

They trust you, love you, obey, follow, and honor you; deserve it.

Dogs are good for your soul.

Representative Taxation As A Concept

Fair warning before I begin: even if you agree with my views here, the system I am describing in this article will, with likelihood approaching certainty, never exist in any country, anywhere, ever. Please bear that in mind as I describe it; there is no functional way to put this system in place in an existing country. A new country would have to be created, and that country would have to be created by people with the moral interests of their citizens at heart, rather than the governance and control of those citizens.

So take it as a hopefully interesting intellectual exercise.

As a rallying cry, the Founders put the phrase "No taxation without representation!" to good use.

I admire the results.

But these days, technology has advanced beyond what was possible in those days, and complications - both technological and political - have arisen that the Founders never envisioned, and never could have.

Accordingly...

There are a few base premises from which any source of government funding through taxation must be built if a society is to have any legitimacy at all.

First, the tax burden must apply in equal measure to all its citizens.

In recent years, many people have tried to pervert the intent of this concept, calling for "fairness," which they claim can be achieved by the most unfair of means - namely, applying progressively heavier percentages of the tax burden on individuals as their income goes up.

This is manifestly wrong; it relies on the false premise that "wealth" is inherently a property of the society, not of the individual whose actions have produced that wealth, and punishes them for their achievement, a standard guaranteed to produce mediocrity over the long term.

For the tax burden to apply in equal measure, the solution is simple; a flat tax. This can be nothing but fair, as 15% (pulling a number out of a hat,) of $100,000 is more than 15% of $10,000, and yet the impact in terms of the share of your earnings is identical.

Second, the items and services purchased through use of those tax funds must meet one of two standards: they must either benefit all citizens in equal measure, directly, or they must be chosen by the citizens whose funds are being used.

There are precious few things which meet the first standard; the roads, law enforcement, the military, emergency services; you can argue health care, if you are basing your idea on "citizens already pay for health care through their taxes, and as such there is no charge to them directly for such care, and health insurance has no need to exist," but putting that system in place would require a new nation to be constructed from the ground up; such an effort cannot succeed in this country thanks to the existing, entrenched interests. (Likewise the internet; you can make the argument that the internet is justified, if the government were to provide it at no additional charge to every citizen, but this is actually impossible, as not all citizens have homes; the best you can go for is only excluding the homeless, who quite frankly are already excluded from enough.)

Because there are so few things which meet the first standard, the second - through representation in Congress - has always been the primary standard for expenditure of "public funds."

I have a suggestion as to how that may better be accomplished.

Thanks to modern communications, recordkeeping, and use of computers for bookkeeping, there are new ways available for a citizen to represent their interests.

As such, I think our entire system of taxation and government funding should be scrapped.

From the flat tax, a fixed percentage of the funds from each citizen should be assigned to each of the "universal benefit" functions of government; say 25% each to health care and the military, another 15% to law enforcement, and another 10% to emergency services; a further 10% - and never more than that - should be used to maintain the machinery, staffing, payroll, and function of the federal government itself.

That leaves 15% of each individual's funds.

That 15% should be a mandatory contribution to the society, whose use can be determined by the individual.

For example, each year with your tax form, you receive a ballot, offering a list of the discretionary programs offered by the government, as well as the option to turn over the remaining funds, or any part thereof, to one of the universal benefits.

Upon receipt, your funds are diverted as you selected.

Under this system, none of the various government departments possess the capacity to borrow money; they cannot operate on credit, full stop. Each project, plan, agency, or idea, must operate within a fixed budget each year, because there are no further funds.

...This seems weirdly limiting, until you understand that this process necessarily makes the "business" of government entirely predicated on the rational self-interest of the persons employed in any capacity by that government.

As things stand now, the federal employees have no real reason to know, care, or even think about, whether the country as a whole prospers.

Under the system I am describing, if they do well, and the country as a whole benefits, then people's incomes rise - which inherently raises the budget the government has to make out paychecks to those employees.

If it does not, they do not - and the federal budget correspondingly suffers.

Thus, each individual federal employee has their own best interest at stake; they have a vested interest in doing the very best job, at their job, of which they are capable, because their ability to pay bills and eat depends in direct measure on the success of their performance.

At the same time, projects - like the programs collected under the rubric of "welfare" - which do not offer benefit to each citizen, are funded in the exact measure the citizens who pay into the system are willing to pay for them.

Currently, you see, your tax dollars, and those of businesses, fees at the gas pump, and everywhere else the government soaks you that you don't necessarily see, go into a giant slush fund, from which Congress pays for, well, whatever they want. This is not "representation," as witness the fact that Congress' approval rating stands around 9% right now.

But think of this.

Right now, welfare fraud is a thing - but it's practically impossible for Joe Average to get any hard facts and figures on how prevalent it really is, because both the major political teams have issues with honesty and truth; they both lie through their teeth in any way they think makes them look good, is what I'm trying to say.

But voluntary allotment of funds from your taxes, essentially eliminates the ability of anyone to "ride" welfare; there's simply not enough money in the system to provide for that. This changes welfare programs into something inherently structured to provide strictly temporary assistance, while allowing them to continue to exist.

Or maybe citizens will voluntarily allot more money to those programs.

Either way, the money those programs get, is all there is.

Someone who could work - able-bodied adult, in other words - who doesn't, can receive only so much help as their fellow citizens are willing to give them freely.

This is fundamentally different from the current system, under which they spend literally a trillion-plus dollars a year on such programs whether or not you want to give them money for that, based on the threat of force and coercion.

Under my system, you are still required to pay taxes; that doesn't change. The AMOUNT you would pay would change drastically, and more importantly, you would have control over any funds that aren't returned to you directly in the form of services only a government can provide.

Personally, I am a horrible person, who feels that there is no such thing as a paying job that is beneath the dignity of a thinking person who desires to continue to eat, and as such, I would commit no funds of mine to support people who do not agree with me; my funds would be entirely spent on the military and law enforcement.

The lovely thing about my system as described here, is that if you choose to devote the entirety of your "discretionary" contribution to welfare programs, you can.

You can choose to do that.

As I can choose not to.

See, the fact that it's voluntary makes all the difference.

And in this day and age, the possibility of each citizen representing themselves actually exists.

As such, it is a moral obligation on the part of our society - a society based entirely on the concept of voluntary, elective social obligation - to provide each citizen with the ability to represent themselves in this way.

The fact that such individual self-representation does not yet exist merely stands to prove that our government has lost sight of those ideals, and instead is pursuing an agenda of control and gradual tyranny.

The Moral Value Of Firearms

Now, some of you may look at that title and think "Errrr, wat?"

Some of you may think you know where I'm going with this.

Some of you may actually know.

We'll see.

So, a few weeks ago, I was riding in my truck with two coworkers, one who is a good friend, and one who was a relative stranger. My friend and I were discussing the idea of "weapons of mass destruction," and why they are morally different from, say, a rifle.

For those of you who don't know, the difference is simple; a rifle can be aimed. WMDs cannot, in any meaningful way. A firearm is a weapon which can be used against single targets, allowing the user to limit its impact to morally allowable combatants, that being soldiers.

WMDs cannot; by their nature, their effects are uncontrollable; the person who uses such a weapon accepts in advance that collateral damage - civilian collateral damage - will happen; he or she accepts in advance that they are setting off a device of destruction whose effects cannot be controlled, limited, targeted; they're using a weapon whose intent and purpose, whose reason to exist, is to create horror.

Therefore, they are not morally the same.

So, fine and good, but listening in to our discussion gradually had the effect of perking up the ears of our other coworker, who began somewhat shyly to issue forth questions from the back seat.

She asked first, "So, WMDs are different from guns, because guns can be targeted, and I get that, but... Why not ban guns? If your purpose is self defense, why isn't a knife or baton enough?"

And I said, "Will you let me expound a bit? That's an important question, and the answer isn't short."

She made the mistake of agreeing.

So.

You may not realize this, but human beings are equal only in the eyes of the law.

Some are taller, therefore having a longer reach; some are stronger, some are quicker, some are better trained; but we're all different.

So melee weapons are a fool's game.

Wait, wait, let me back up a bit and try that again.

In a world where guns don't exist, and hand to hand is all there is, everything you have belongs not to you, but to the first bigger, stronger person who attacks you.

Wait, wait, that's not how I want to say this.

Ok, let's put this in perspective.

Let's use a real-world example. Say we have a fit, well-trained, ~20-year-old American who got busted out of the Army in one corner, and an average woman in her 30's in the other. She has money, and he's been broke for months and doesn't have a great sense of moral conviction.

She's armed with a knife.

He wants her purse.

He approaches, threatens her, she pulls her knife.

Now, in the comforting fantasyland a lot of people seem to live in, this evens the odds instantly, and he will of course back off.

In real life, however, he's quite likely to take the knife away from her, and then hurt her quite badly while he takes her stuff; she would have been better off to throw her purse at him and run away.

Please note I am not advocating anything as a course of action yet. That part comes later. I'm just describing the likely outcome.

Now, change it up a bit. Same two, but this time, when he threatens her, she pulls a gun.

He's way, way more likely to run away instead of attacking.

Why?

Simple. A gun has range. In order for you to attack with a knife...

...Well, the Army has a saying about opponents who are equally armed; "If the enemy is in range, so are you."

And at that point, training, physical fitness, strength, size, skill, simple bulk, all come into play.

If a good small man fights a good big man, assuming equal levels of skill, the big guy usually wins; in hand-to-hand, strength matters.

But.

A gun doesn't require hand to hand. A gun requires moral conviction - "defending myself is the right thing to do" and a couple of pounds of pressure from your index finger.

Even if the perp is wearing Kevlar, if you zap him center mass, he's going to fall on his ass, and be extremely disinterested in continuing to pester you. Regardless of caliber; you shoot someone, they're pretty much done for the duration of that fight, or at least long enough for you to get away.

...A lot of guys mock smaller caliber weapons as "girly guns." GOOD. If a female can be comfortable with a bitty .22, let her. I guarantee if she shoots you in the face with a 22, you will be just as dead as if I tag you with a .45 jacketed hollowpoint, and - and this is the important bit - she will have successfully defended herself.

Paint the fucking thing pink if it makes her willing to carry it.


Put Hello Kitty decals on the goddamn thing, I don't care. Because the point of a gun is protection.

You see, a gun is a tool nearly unique in human history in its capacity to level the playing field.

If you have a gun, and you're farther than a couple of yards away, it literally doesn't matter anymore how fit, fast, strong, or deadly in hand to hand your target is, if you commit and can point your finger correctly, they're dead, or at least unable to pursue.

Which is the whole fucking point. 

Any other tool leaves the potential victim at far greater risk. Mace? Some people can resist it. Pepper spray hurts me like a motherfucker, but I guarantee you can spray me full in the face and I can still take you.

Tazers are likewise iffy. Again, they hurt like hell, but unless they're super juiced up - like, beyond what the cops can legally carry - it's possible to drive through it.

Batons? Knives?

I don't recommend you come at ME with that stuff, anyway, but you're free to think it makes you Billy Badass if you want.

A gun is different for the same reason longbows - and to a smaller extent, crossbows - were responsible for the demise of the mounted knight as a force for battlefield control. It takes less training, less skill, less time, less effort...

In fact, anyone can pick up a gun, and defend themselves successfully.

What do I recommend?

I recommend - to everyone, regardless of gender, skill level, age, or circumstance - to take a firearm safety course.

Learn about them. You won't be as scared, if they're familiar to you.

Then go to a shooting range and beg for help. I flatly guarantee that the proprietors of any such establishment that's open to the public will quite happily take you in and help you find a firearm that is comfortable for you to use; right size, not too much recoil, not too loud (for those easily startled,) even, as I previously mentioned, the right color.

Carry a gun.

You have that right; the entire intent and purpose of the Second Amendment was to guarantee forever your right to defend yourself, even against your government.

Because our Founders understood the moral value of firearms, too; firearms are the only tool, the only weapon, that puts an average citizen on a relative plane of force with those who would victimize them. No other means of defense can do so; only a firearm has the ability to give Joe or Jane Average the ability to protect their lives and property against an assailant with a good chance of preventing harm entirely.

They created the Second Amendment to write that protection - that specific protection - into the most basic of our country's laws. They did so not because they thought the courts and police would be unable to deal with street crime, but because they had just fought a ruinous war against a tyrant whose first step was to try to disarm them, so they couldn't defend themselves.

And they were afraid that despite all the protections they'd built in to our government, at some future point, such a war might need to be fought again.

And they acted specifically to give us the best chance in such a conflict that they could.

The moral value of firearms is that they alone, unlike any other tool, can secure your right to your life, which is the fundamental, inherent right upon which all other rights are based.

They are the only tool that gives you parity of force; no other device can do this.

So carry one.

And if anyone tells you guns should be banned, you shouldn't be asking about school shootings, gun-free zones, or statistics.

You should be asking, "what agenda do you wish to pursue that requires me to be unable to stop you?"