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#128: Character Gatherings

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This is mark Joseph “young” blog entry #128, on the subject of Character Gatherings.

With permission of Valdron Inc I am publishing my second novel, Old Verses New, in serialized form on the web (that link will take you to the table of contents).  If you missed the first one, you can find the table of contents for it at Verse Three, Chapter One:  The First Multiverser Novel.  There was also a series of web log posts looking at the writing process, the decisions and choices that delivered the final product; the last of those for the first novel is #71:  Footnotes on Verse Three, Chapter One, which indexes all the others and catches a lot of material from an earlier collection of behind-the-writings reflections that had been misplaced for a decade.  Now as the second is being posted I am again offering a set of “behind the writings” insights.  This “behind the writings” look definitely contains spoilers, and perhaps in a more serious way than those for the previous novel, because it sometimes talks about what I was planning to do later in the book or how this book connects to events yet to come in the third (For Better or Verse)–although it sometimes raises ideas that were never pursued.  You might want to read the referenced chapters before reading this look at them, or even put off reading these insights until the book has finished.  Links below (the section headings) will take you to the specific individual chapters being discussed, and there are (or will soon be) links on those pages to bring you back hopefully to the same point here.

There is now also a new section of the site, Multiverser Novel Support Pages, in which I have begun to place materials related to the novels beginning with character papers for the major characters, hopefully giving them at different stages as they move through the books.

These were the previous mark Joseph “young” web log posts covering this book:

  1. #74:  Another Novel (which provided this kind of insight into the first nine chapters along with some background material on the book as a whole),
  2. #78:  Novel Fears (which continued with coverage of chapters 10 through 18),
  3. #82:  Novel Developments (which continued with coverage of chapters 19 through 27),
  4. #86:  Novel Conflicts (which continued with coverage of chapters 28 through 36),
  5. #89:  Novel Confrontations (which continued with coverage of chapters 37 through 45),
  6. #91:  Novel Mysteries (which continued with coverage of chapters 46 through 54),
  7. #94:  Novel Meetings (which continued with coverage of chapters 55 through 63),
  8. #100:  Novel Settling (which continued with coverage of chapters 64 through 72),
  9. #104:  Novel Learning (which continued with coverage of chapters 73 through 81),
  10. #110:  Character Redirects (which continued with coverage of chapters 82 through 90),
  11. #113:  Character Movements (chapters 91 through 99),
  12. #116:  Character Missions (100 through 108),
  13. #119:  Character Projects (109 through 117),
  14. #122:  Character Partings (118 through 126).

This picks up from there, and I expect to continue with additional posts after every ninth chapter in the series.

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History of the series, including the reason it started, the origins of character names and details, and many of the ideas, are in those earlier posts, and won’t be repeated here.

Chapter 127, Hastings 84

Morgana’s lesson about true power has its own value, but it also explains why she’s not a villain here.
The lesson about not revealing the extent of your power is very similar to the one about magic being more about what they think you can do than about what you actually can do.  It’s a good lesson, re-couched here to cover that which is not magic as well:  the reputation of strength can keep you out of a fight.

Chapter 128, Brown 44

Derek notices the value of perspective, that an outsider sees similarities where an insider sees differences.

One aspect of Derek’s movements through TerraNova at this point is that it should increase the impression of how huge it is.

The reader of course recognizes Joe; Derek has never met any verser other than Lauren, so he reasonably expects to find her—and is quite reasonably surprised.

Chapter 129, Kondor 85

The comment about getting in trouble by carrying guns even when there weren’t any rules was supposed to recall the fiasco at the bank.

Once again Joe gets the advantages of learning about a new world from another verser who is already there and settled.

Chapter 130, Hastings 85

I had actually forgotten the aspect of sleeping in the daytime, but then, it’s probably because Lauren had changed her sleep schedule in the parakeet world and had not changed it again; plus the fact that in the Camelot and Wandborough settings it was not so simple to work at night and in the post-apocalyptic with Derek there was no reason for it.  I remembered it here, and wondered why Lauren had not been traveling by night, but of course it simply had not occurred to her, having adapted to a more normal schedule.

I liked the idea that she had been forced to stay awake until she told Bethany this.  I knew Lauren would die tonight, and the idea that God would not let her die without allowing her to convey that bit of information to her student had a lot of appeal.

Chapter 131, Kondor 86

Comparing ways in which they were killed is actually a common pastime of verser player characters.  After all, sometimes the stories are funny, and sometimes there’s an aspect of one-upmanship—a bit like comparing scars.

Chapter 132, Brown 45

Eric Ashley advanced the notion that universes had weak walls in specific places that resulted in versers landing in those places frequently.  Although it might explain gathers, I always thought he was taking as evidence something that didn’t really happen:  referees will often use the same worlds, such as the Mary Piper worlds, for different players at different times.  Eric took that to mean that those characters were landing in the same worlds, but I took it to mean that they were landing in different worlds that were nearly identical to each other.  No one who ever landed in any of my Mary Piper worlds ever met an indigenous character who had ever met any other verser.

Derek at this point becomes my impartial judge between Lauren’s supernaturalism and Joe’s naturalism.  He will continue trying to make that decision for a while.  It gave me a new way to put the issues in front of the reader.

Chapter 133, Kondor 87

Ed had never run kids in his experimental games, or I think in any of his games, until he began playing with us.  I had always had the rule that my kids could join our Dungeons & Dragons™ game when they could read and write and add and subtract well enough to take care of their own character papers.  Ryan was thus nine years old when he started in Ed’s Multiverser experimental game.  Not quite certain what to do with someone that young, Ed used a botch to age the character several years.  Finding ways to age younger player characters has since become a part of the game, and I ultimately do that some for Derek, but at this point Joe knows nothing of that.  From his perspective, Derek will always seem twelve.

Joe’s insistence that you would have to prove the existence of magic before accepting any possible instance of it underscores the failure of that view:  he has faced magic himself, but does not believe it exists.

I was stalling Lauren’s chapter a bit so I could establish Derek and Joe a bit better in TerraNova before I brought her into it.

Chapter 134, Hastings 86

The grouping of Tubrok, Horta, and Jackson was carefully considered.  Lauren would from this know that she could not win.  She would know that anyone she fought in the future she could not kill in the past.  Then, though, that told her that Bethany was similarly protected—having been alive in the future, it could not be that she would die now.

Chapter 135, Brown 44

I read about trinary computing systems in Omni in the early ‘80s.  Binary computers worked originally with on/off switches, and gradually were improved to charged/uncharged storage cells on a chip; we thus have millions of “bits” organized into “bytes” that hold the coded information for the computer.  However, the idea of a trinary system is that those same chargeable cells could be charged either positively or negatively, or uncharged, and thus where our binary bits are 0/1 our trinary bits are -1/0/1, or more functionally 0/1/2.  An 8-bit binary bite has potentially 2^8, or 256, potential values, but the same space converted to a trinary system has 3^8, or 6561, potential values.  Since computer speed is largely a question of how tightly you can pack information, this drastically improves performance, provided you can operate it stably.  However, the languages are completely incompatible, so an entirely distinct coding system is needed.

Biocomputers were also discussed in Omni.  They use something akin to RNA molecular coding instead of electrical coding.  Since they work on the molecular level, they are again an advance on miniaturization and thus a potential improvement in speed.

I hope these “behind the writings” posts continue to be of interest, and perhaps some value, to those of you who have been reading the novel.  If there is any positive feedback, they will continue.

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Elections, Law and Politics

#127: New Jersey 2016 Election Results

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This is mark Joseph “young” blog entry #127, on the subject of New Jersey 2016 Election Results.

We provided some advance explanation of the two Public Questions which were on the ballot, and did a quick rundown of the major candidates in the twelve congressional districts, and now we’re following up with the election results.  After all, with a lot of these events there is a great deal of coverage in anticipation of the moment, and then if you blink, you miss the outcome.  That shouldn’t be.

In the Presidential race, New Jersey consigned its fourteen electoral votes to the loser, Democrat Hillary Clinton, as Republican Donald Trump won comfortably.

Map of New Jersey's Electoral College vote, from Google, 3:00 Wednesday morning.
Map of New Jersey’s Electoral College vote, from Google, 3:00 Wednesday morning.

Public Question #1:  Constitutional Amendment to permit casino gambling in two counties other than Atlantic County, went down hard, about four to one against.  That means for the present casino gambling will be confined to Atlantic City, and the city will have to figure out how better to manage what it has.

Public Question #2:  Constitutional Amendment to dedicate additional revenues to state transportation system, ran very close, but sometime after midnight had clearly passed by a narrow margin, under fifty-five percent of the vote favoring it.  That means the state government will be forced to put the gasoline tax revenue into a dedicated account strictly for use by the Department of Transportation, which was the justification for the tax originally.

In the House of Representatives, all the incumbents were re-elected easily except in Congressional District 5, where Republican incumbent Scott Garrett was hurt by Libertarian Claudio Belusic in his race against Democrat Josh Gottheimer.  The Libertarian’s two-point-two percent of the vote was the best of any Libertarian candidate in the state (Libertarian Presidential candidate Gary Johnson took two percent of the vote in the state, the best showing of any third-party candidate), but even apart from that Gottheimer would have edged out a victory, with fifty-point-five percent of the vote in his favor.

This tips the balance of New Jersey’s Congressional delegation, which for the past several years has been evenly split with six Republicans and six Democrats; with Gottheimer replacing Garrett we will be sending seven Democrats and only five Republicans to Washington.  Nationally the Republicans still hold the House, with two hundred thirty-six seats, a few lost from their current majority.  In the Senate, Republicans also lost one seat (in Illinois), but still hold a bare majority at fifty-one.

Here are the incoming United States Congressmen from New Jersey by district:

  1. Donald Norcross, Democrat, Incumbent.
  2. Frank Lobiondo, Republican, Incumbent.
  3. Tom MacArthur, Republican, Incumbent.
  4. Chris Smith, Republican, Incumbent.
  5. Josh Gottheimer, Democrat, Newcomer.
  6. Frank Pallone, Democrat, Incumbent.
  7. Leonard Lance, Republican, Incumbent.
  8. Albio Sires, Democrat, Incumbent.
  9. Bill Pascrell, Democrat, Incumbent.
  10. Donald Payne, Jr., Democrat, Incumbent.
  11. Rodney Frelinghuysen, Republican, Incumbent.
  12. Bonnie Watson Coleman, Democrat, Incumbent.

That gives us the shape of our Federal Government for the next two years.

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Bible and Theology, Elections, Law and Politics

#126: Equity and Religion

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This is mark Joseph “young” blog entry #126, on the subject of Equity and Religion.

I saw an article online, from the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, entitled Amendment 3:  A Stealth Attack on Religious Freedom  The title intrigued me, since I had no notion of what was happening in Missouri, so I skimmed the piece–and was rather surprised at what I found.  It struck me that the author did not have a very good grasp on exactly what “religious liberty” is, so I decided to pursue the matter here.

img0126daycare

The purpose of “Amendment 3”, apparently Missouri’s version of what we in New Jersey now call a Public Question, is to create a cigarette tax and use the money to fund early childhood education.  The tobacco industry has not made a lot of noise about it, at least directly–they have learned that people who smoke are very unlikely to stop simply because the amount of money they burn increases.  It seems like a positive idea, that if people are going to kill themselves slowly at least they can help fund the education of our children.

At issue is text that says the disbursement of funds raised will not be limited or prohibited by the State of Missouri Constitution’s “Prohibition of public aid for religious purposes and institutions” clause.  That means that if whatever method of distributing the money to help with preschool education would otherwise mean that a Lutheran- or Baptist- or Muslim or Jewish-run facility would qualify for some of that money, that facility is not automatically disqualified simply because it is administered by a church, mosque, synagogue, or other religious organization.  Opponents of the measure say that this is an attempt to bring funding of religious organizations in through a side door, and so force people to pay for religious education with public money.

It is not at all clear that that is what this is, and in fact from the description it sounds rather as if it is an attempt, not to show religious preference, but in fact precisely not to show it.  It is saying that the fact that a group of people trying to provide early childhood education happen to be believers of a particular religious philosophy will not disqualify them from being funded by this program–exactly what freedom of religion means, that we will not discriminate against you on the basis of what you believe.  As long as the program is administered impartially, part of that impartiality has to be that a program is not disqualified based on religious connections.

That is important for multiple reasons.

Social programs and particularly education have always been spearheaded in the Anglo-Saxon world by Christians and Christian organizations.  Our Ivy League colleges and many other schools and universities were originally founded by Christians to educate doctors, lawyers, and ministers.  Christians were the first to attempt to help the poor in England through education of their children.  In America, many settlers would arrive in a new location and build a church and a school as the fundamental institutions of society.  Meanwhile, the Jews have long put a heavy emphasis on educating their children, going back more than centuries, possibly millennia–a Hebrew boy became a man by proving he could read from the Torah, at least as early as the first century.  Religious people have been proponents of education, and education for all, even when the approved thinking was that education was for the privileged and powerful, to maintain their power and privilege.

Encouraging a group to do what we want them to do and they want to do anyway is good politics.

Besides, if the objectors are saying that it is a violation of the principle of freedom of religion to fund any organization that promotes a religious position, they’re going to have to stop funding public education as well.  St. Louis is a particularly interesting case, as it is the home of the headquarters of the Missouri Synod Lutheran Church–not the most conservative Lutheran group, but conservative enough that they honestly believe in a six-day creation.  You might disagree; I don’t know that I agree.  However, whenever the State of Missouri uses its collected tax money to teach the scientific views about the Big Bang Theory and the Theory of Evolution, it is spending money to promote a religious idea–the idea that the Missouri Synod Lutheran belief in six-day creation is wrong.  Our objectors say that they do not want their tax money spent to fund organizations that will promote religious notions with which they disagree; now they know how their Lutheran neighbors feel.

The only way to treat religious people and their organizations fairly is to make the question of religious belief irrelevant to the question of funding social efforts.  Otherwise, it would be the same as saying that the government will not fund a day care run by a black man, or a preschool run by a woman.  Not discriminating on the basis of religion means that religious views are not a factor in the decision.  That’s what the amendment is saying.

How those programs are going to work has not yet been determined.  The simple way, though, is for the government to provide scholarships or tuition reimbursement for needy families trying to send their children to whatever preschools are available.  Some have argued that this kind of “voucher” system unconstitutionally funds religious schools because the parents can give the money to those schools and the government winds up paying the church, as it were.  However, to do otherwise unconstitutionally discriminates against religious groups, requiring that parents send their children only to schools which reject religious views entirely–itself a religious view–or forego the government assistance they cannot afford to be without.

It would be akin to refusing to provide food stamps to any family that says grace before meals.

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Bible and Theology, Law and Politics

#125: My Presidential Election Fears

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This is mark Joseph “young” blog entry #125, on the subject of My Presidential Election Fears.

I mentioned (originally in #68:  Ridiculous Republicans back in March, most recently this past week in #123:  The 2016 Election in New Jersey) that this election was going to be about whom you vote against.  A lot of people are afraid, very afraid, that one of these candidates will win–probably equally applicable to both candidates, and some voters are afraid of both.  I have thought about it, and agree that there is reason to be afraid, but I think I am afraid of only one of them.  So permit me a moment to explain.

img0125candidates

I am not afraid of a Donald Trump Presidency.

I recognize that Trump presents a lot of bluster and arrogance.  He is perceived as a buffoon, a cartoon, a joke.  However, he probably has laughed all the way to the bank more than once.  He is a successful businessman, with experience in the real world both nationally and internationally.  He knows how to run a business, even several businesses.

The perception of Trump from the outside is that he will make many rash decisions.  One does not become ludicrously wealthy by making rash decisions–bold, yes, rash, no.  Rather, there are two things which someone successful in business learns very early, or he does not continue to be successful for long:

  1. Hire experts who know their subject, listen to their advice, and follow it.
  2. Hire executives who know their jobs, and let them do them.

This, incidentally, appears to be how Ronald Reagan ran his White House:  surround yourself with people who know what they’re doing, and trust them to do it.  I don’t say that Trump is another Reagan; I do expect that he would follow that same effective pattern.  Presidents who think they know how to do everything and try to control it all are generally viewed as lesser successes–Wilson, Carter.  Those who know how to obtain good advice and delegate important tasks and decisions prove to be the best executives–and the President of the United States is ultimately an executive, not different in kind from the president of a multi-national corporation.

I don’t know that he has always been completely honest, but I believe that he has avoided doing anything illegal, and I think that he means what he says even if he’s a bit dramatic at times.  I think in those senses he is trustworthy.  He might rattle the big stick quite a bit, but under the bluster he obviously has enough sense to make things work.

As far as some of his “crazy policies”, well, despite the nonsense our present President has tried with his executive orders attempting to end run the legislature, Presidents do not get to do whatever they want.  I don’t see even a solidly Republican Congress rubberstamping his ideas, and I’m doubtful we’ll have a solidly Republican Congress.  The laws that do get passed will be no more nor less ridiculous than those passed in the past, because we have a good system that works well in that regard.  The legislative branch is totally independent of the executive, and has a fair amount of influence over executive appointments and actions, so there is a check in place for all of that.

I am afraid of a Hillary Clinton Presidency.

The simple reason is that I do not trust her.  I believe that she lies to obtain power, wealth, and fame.  I don’t see that changing simply because she gets it.  There are serious concerns about whether she and her staff are guilty of treason in leaking classified information through carelessness–and while one might thereby excuse it because everyone makes mistakes, there are also serious allegations of influence peddling when she was Secretary of State.  There is the potential that she will be indicted for any of these offenses before she can take the oath of office.

I do not want our President to be available to the highest bidder.

I do not want our President to lie to us about her intentions or her actions.

I do not want our next Supreme Court nominee, or appointee to the State Department, or any other government official to be selected from the short list of Clinton Foundation donors.

I have had enough of government corruption and overreaching with the present administration, and would like to see it ended.  A Clinton Presidency would more likely escalate it.  There is good evidence that she has lied, cheated, and stolen in the past, and no evidence that she will do otherwise in the future.  I would prefer not to give her that opportunity.

I believe that we are all in God’s hands; that does not mean He will protect our nation.  We will get either the government we need or the one we deserve.  That might not be the one we like, but God knows what He’s doing.  My fears might become reality, or they might be allayed; I might be wrong in my assessment of the dangers in either direction.  However, I am going to vote against the candidate I most fear.  We do not need a Democratic version of Richard Nixon.

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Elections, Law and Politics

#124: The 2016 New Jersey Public Questions

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This is mark Joseph “young” blog entry #124, on the subject of The 2016 New Jersey Public Questions.

We previously gave a quick overview of the New Jersey Congressional candidates in #123:  The 2016 Election in New Jersey, and promised to return with a look at the Public Questions, two issues on which the voters are being asked to vote.  Both of these involve amendments to the New Jersey State Constitution, a popular topic for such questions since there are quite a few things that the constitution does not permit the state government to do without the immediate consent of the voters, many of them involving taxing and spending.

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Public Question #1:  Constitutional Amendment to permit casino gambling in two counties other than Atlantic County.

This appears to be a long-sought hard-fought compromise, and a bit of a history lesson is in order.

About forty years ago Atlantic City was dying.  It had long been a vacation hot-spot and convention go-to, but was fading.  Transportation had gotten cheaper and easier (despite the gasoline crisis of the seventies) so wealthy vacationers could easily visit Disney World.  The Boardwalk had been overshadowed significantly by Great Adventure and several other theme parks in nearby Pennsylvania.  Other tourist-dependent cities such as Las Vegas pushed for the convention business, and convention centers were springing up everywhere.  Meanwhile, the originally pleasant locale was becoming a dirty, crime-ridden city where tourists weren’t always safe.  The city had to do something.

Noticing that the state had made a lot of money running a lottery–the first concession to gambling as a legal activity beyond contests run by non-profit organizations–they pushed for permission to open a few casinos.  At the time, Las Vegas was the only place within the United States where casino gambling was legal, and that was far enough away that an east coast establishment would be a serious competitor.  There were a lot of concerns, including questions about organized crime, but ultimately the state agreed and approved casino gambling in Atlantic City.  It was a huge success which significantly benefited the city, in no small part because the law stipulated that Atlantic City would get the lion’s share of the tax revenue from the venture to rebuild its failing infrastructure.

It is still debated whether in sum casino gambing has been good or bad for the city.  Many of the jobs go to people in its suburbs.  However, it has become an established part of the world, and many east coast states have followed suit, opening casinos on a limited basis.

Many New Jersey cities have wanted to have the same deal Atlantic City got, but Atlantic City and other southern New Jersey groups have argued against this.  After all, the revenue from those casinos keeps the city afloat, even though it has been declining over the years as other states attempt to compete with them.  Open casinos in Newark, it is argued, and northern New Jersey gamblers will save a few miles by going there; do the same in Camden, and the southern New Jersey crowd will be split.  Another casino anywhere in the state will mean lost business for Atlantic City.

Two things are evident in the information presented on the ballot.

The less important is that no city within seventy-two miles of Atlantic City will be permitted to have a casino.  That means that it is more than an hour’s drive between them, although it also means that some people will be within perhaps forty minutes of both locations.  That distance excludes Camden; it excludes Jackson Township, home of Six Flags Great Adventure.  It appears that it might permit a casino at the very tip of the western end of Salem County in Pennsville, but is intended to help the northern half of the state.  Seventy-two miles might allow one in Asbury Park, north up the coast, Freehold, and of course just about anywhere north and west of that arc, including Trenton, Newark, and nearly all of what is called “north Jersey” by people who live at least as far north as Burlington County.  (People who live down here by the Delaware Bay tend to think that Camden is in North Jersey–it’s clear up across the river from Philadelphia.)  Clearly the new casinos are intended to benefit the northern half of the state at the expense of the southern half–which is why it was such a fight.

The more important aspect of the amendment is that a signifcant amount of the tax money raised by these casinos goes to Atlantic city for the next quarter century.  This should minimize the impact of losses there, in what we might think the short term, and is undoubtedly the compromise there to reduce southern opposition.  The total amount of revenue from casinos should increase, and the amount going to Atlantic City should also increase.  The revenue is also intended for property tax relief for the elderly and disabled.  There is also a provision to assign some of the money to aiding New Jersey’s horse breeding industry, for both thoroughbreds and standardbreds.

Of course, the host cities will also benefit from the increased tourism revenue–people who come to casinos also sometimes see the sights, eat in local restaurants outside the casino hotel, and otherwise spend money in the area.  Property taxes on the hotels also go into local, not state, coffers, so there are significant benefits here.

The law apparently gives preferential treatment to those already operating casinos in Atlantic City; they have half a year to produce proposals for the new sites before bidding is opened to others.

There are quite a few who oppose the amendment, mostly because it is vague leaving too much to the legislature and giving too much influence to those running the casinos, although some have suggested that the present model for casinos in New Jersey is not working and expanding it to include northern locations will only complicate that.

The text of the amendment is available on Ballotpedia.

Public Question #2:  Constitutional Amendment to dedicate additional revenues to state transportation system.

Remember that abrupt increase in the price of gas this past week?  That’s the new tax passed a while back now coming on line.  The government who raised the cost of gasoline did so because the Department of Transportation is, frankly, broke–they can’t afford to maintain the state-run roads and bridges and tunnels, and are facing serious layoffs.  Tolls were increased on our few toll roads, but the revenue from that is relatively small next to the costs, and the limitations on the use of that money leaves a lot of roads in serious trouble.

The complication is that the government can authorize the tax, but not restrict the spending.  They are now collecting more money on every mile we drive, and on the petroleum industry generally, which is going into the general budget.  It can be used for transportation, but it can be used for anything else.  Supporters of the amendment claim that this puts that revenue it into a “lock box” that goes directly to the Transportation Trust Fund, and so can’t be raided to pay for other programs (New Jersey governments have raided state trust funds in the past, only to find that money wasn’t there when it was needed.)  The amendment also dedicates that part of the tax on diesel fuel not already bound to transportation to that fund.

Opponents have several arguments.  One is that this Transportation Trust Fund doesn’t pay solely for roads and bridges, but also covers mass transit costs such as rail lines, and the government is hoping to spend a lot of money on those.  It is also noted that a law has already been approved which permits the state to borrow a lot of money for transportation projects–about three times the anticipated revenue–if the amendment passes.  As with Question 1, they say there are too many holes in the proposal, too many points on which the legislature would be given a lot more power than the voters anticipated.

It is also to some degree seen as asking the voters to endorse the recent 575% increase in the state gasoline tax–from four cents per gallon to twenty-seven cents per gallon.  To be clear, that tax does not get rescinded if this question does not pass; it is merely a question of whether the revenue from it will be limited to use by the Department of Transportation or available for the legislature to use however it wishes.

It is also worth noting as an aside that the same law that authorized the gasoline tax also reduced several other New Jersey state taxes, including (in 2018) a slight reduction in the sales tax.

Again, the text of the amendment is available on Ballotpedia.

Although the arguments that the proposals are incomplete is a sound one, on balance Question 2 seems to be an important control on the use of the money from the gas tax, despite concerns that government officials have some pet transportation projects they want to fund from it.  Question 1 is more difficult, but seems to be a reasonably fair compromise that should in the short term increase revenue to Atlantic City, help two as yet not selected northern cities, and resolve the long-standing conflict concerning casinos elsewhere in New Jersey.

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Elections, Law and Politics

#123: The 2016 Election in New Jersey

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This is mark Joseph “young” blog entry #123, on the subject of The 2016 Election in New Jersey.

We are days from the quadrennial presidential election here in these United States, and I have, perhaps negligently, not written about the election at all since March.  At that time I published Dizzying Democrats and Ridiculous Republicans,img0123candidates
a pair of articles in which I decried the nonsense happening in both parties and concluded with the words

…we are looking toward a highly polarized election which at this point looks like the exit poll question will be, “Whom did you vote against?”

(Those who follow this web log will already have guessed that I am far more afraid of Clinton than of Trump; those who do not follow my writing probably are not particularly moved by that.)

But even if it has not been negligent for me to have ignored this ludicrous Presidential race between the Jackass and the Snake (I’ll leave it to the reader to decide which is whom), the fact is that the election is about more than merely choosing the next President of the United States.  Here in New Jersey, at least, we are electing a dozen members of the United States House of Representatives, and have two significant Public Questions on the ballot.  You can learn more than you want to know about the Presidential candidates anywhere; I owe you the opportunity to learn more about the local candidates.

After the brief assessment of the candidates, we have some thoughts about voting for people, for parties, and for third party candidates, that apply to everyone, so if you’re not from New Jersey (or you are and have found the information on your district) skip down below the numbered list and read that part.

Fortuitously, we provided sufficient coverage of the election of the current office holders in 2014, including the election results, and so it is simple enough to find your incumbent–and since probably your incumbent has been the familiar name bombarding you with political ads in your mailbox, you can work backwards from that to your district.  It is a bit tougher to find the opponents, but with the aid of sites like Ballotpedia you can usually find just about any politician in the country and his positions on a wide range of issues.  Here’s a quick rundown, with links to that site for more information.

  1. In the First Congressional District, covering most of Camden and parts of Gloucester and Burlington Counties, Democratic incumbent Donald Norcross is defending his seat against newcomer Republican Bob Patterson, writer and lobbyist, along with three other third-party candidates including a Libertarian.
  2. In the Second Congressional District, covering all of Salem, Cumberland, Cape May, and Atlantic Counties plus portions of Camden, Burlington, and Ocean Counties, Republican incumbent Frank Lobiondo is defending his seat against young Democrat Dave Cole, a Rutgers political science graduate who sought this seat in 2014 but lost in the primary, and against five other candidates including a Libertarian.
  3. In the Third Congressional District, covering most of Burlington and portions of Ocean Counties, Republican incumbent Tom MacArthur faces Democrat Frederick John LaVergne, who lost this same race two years ago, plus a third-party Libertarian candidate.
  4. In the Fourth Congressional District, covering most of Monmouth and parts of Mercer and Ocean Counties, long-time Republican incumbent Chris Smith faces Democrat Lorna Phillipson, failed candidate for the New Jersey Assembly who was put on the ballot here when the winner of the Democratic primary dropped from the race, and by two other candidates one from the Libertarian party.
  5. In the Fifth Congressional District, covering northern portions of Warren, Sussex, Passaic, and Bergen Counties, Republican incumbent Scott Garrett defends against Democratic newcomer Josh Gottheimer, a well-educated former (Bill) Clinton speechwriter and Microsoft executive.  Again there is a Libertarian party candidate in this race.
  6. Democrat Frank Pallone is the defending incumbent in the Sixth Congressional District, covering parts of Monmouth and Middlesex Counties, against Republican newcomer and small businessman Brent Sonnek-Schmelz, along with third party candidates from both the Libertarian and Green parties.
  7. Republican incumbent Leonard Lance is defending his seat in the Seventh Congressional District, covering Hunterdon and parts of Essex, Somerset, Union, and Warren Counties, against Democratic newcomer Peter Jacob, union supporter from an immigrant family, and against both Libertarian and Conservative Party candidates.
  8. Democratic incumbent Albio Sires defends in the Eighth Congressional District, covering parts of Bergen, Essex, Hudson, and Union Counties, against unknown Republican Agha Khan, and two others including a Libertarian.
  9. Democratic incumbent Bill Pascrell defends his seat in the Ninth Congressional District, covering parts of Bergen, Passaic, and Hudson Counties, against Republican Hector Castillo, previous candidate as a Republican for New Jersey State Senate and as an independent for New Jersey Governor, and against two third-party candidates, one a Libertarian.
  10. Democratic incumbent Donald Payne, Jr., continuing to hold his father’s seat in the Tenth Congressional District, covering parts of Essex, Union, and Hudson Counties, defends it against Republican David Pinckney, twice-failed candidate for the New Jersey State Assembly, and against two third-party candidates.
  11. The Eleventh Congressional District, covering parts of Morris, Passaic, Essex, and Sussex Counties, has long been held by Republican Rodney Frelinghuysen, who is defending against Democratic newcomer Joseph Wenzel plus two third-party candidates, one a Libertarian.
  12. In the Twelfth Congressional District, covering parts of Mercer, Middlesex, Union, and Somerset Counties, incumbent Democrat Bonnie Watson Coleman defends her seat against former Libertarian now Republican Steven Uccio, failed candidate from both of those parties in several previous races, and against five third-party candidates including a Libertarian and a Green.

There is an argument in favor of voting for the candidate who best represents your views, regardless of his party affiliation.  There is also an argument in favor of voting for the party that has the best chance to bring at least some of your views into action.  Several of the candidates in various races this year are Greens, and quite a few are Libertarians, both parties representing some significant worthwhile positions–and yet their presence in the race actually decreases the probability that those policies will be enacted.

We have discussed the two-party system in our piece on Coalition Government, that particularly in Presidential politics but to a significant degree at every level elections are won by forming coalitions of disparate groups who can agree on a few policies they consider most important.  The Democrats agree with the Greens on critical environmental issues, but the Greens feel that the Democrats do not prioritize these sufficiently; the Republicans similarly stand with the Libertarians on limited government, but the Libertarians believe that the Republicans do not go far enough in this direction.  Yet every vote for a Green party candidate is one less for the Democrat who might have been elected and who would to some degree have supported Green policies, and every vote for a Libertarian is one less for the Republican who similarly might have advanced Libertarian causes.

The argument in the other direction is, of course, that the two parties which currently exist are not the original two parties, and over time coalitions dissolve and reform anew.  Prior to the Kennedy administration the Republicans were the Civil Rights party and the Democrats the oppressors of minorities.  Libertarians and Greens hope that they will attract enough support to become one of the two parties.  Yet they are viewed as single-issue parties, and single-issue parties, again as we previously noted in The Republican Dilemma, fail to form the coalitions necessary to win elections.  They work, generally, when a single issue has so divided the nation that many voters will support one side or the other above any other question and the two major parties have failed to take clear sides; but that is not the case in the present despite the severe polarization of our nation.

It is also worth considering that particularly in legislative bodies the party with the best representation often controls the procedural aspects of the agenda–a major advantage frequently that goes beyond what your individual representative can do.  Thus if you prefer Republican policies but like the Democratic candidate, you should at least consider voting for the Republican you don’t like, because that will make it more possible for Republican policies to advance even if your representative does not support them entirely.

So with that advice, I encourage you to vote in this election, and promise to return before then with a look at the two public questions on the New Jersey ballot.

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Books by the Author

#122: Character Partings

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This is mark Joseph “young” blog entry #122, on the subject of Character Partings.

With permission of Valdron Inc I am publishing my second novel, Old Verses New, in serialized form on the web (that link will take you to the table of contents).  If you missed the first one, you can find the table of contents for it at Verse Three, Chapter One:  The First Multiverser Novel.  There was also a series of web log posts looking at the writing process, the decisions and choices that delivered the final product; the last of those for the first novel is #71:  Footnotes on Verse Three, Chapter One, which indexes all the others and catches a lot of material from an earlier collection of behind-the-writings reflections that had been misplaced for a decade.  Now as the second is being posted I am again offering a set of “behind the writings” insights.  This “behind the writings” look definitely contains spoilers, and perhaps in a more serious way than those for the previous novel, because it sometimes talks about what I was planning to do later in the book or how this book connects to events yet to come in the third (For Better or Verse)–although it sometimes raises ideas that were never pursued.  You might want to read the referenced chapters before reading this look at them, or even put off reading these insights until the book has finished.  Links below (the section headings) will take you to the specific individual chapters being discussed, and there are (or will soon be) links on those pages to bring you back hopefully to the same point here.

There is now also a new section of the site, Multiverser Novel Support Pages, in which I have begun to place materials related to the novels beginning with character papers for the major characters, hopefully giving them at different stages as they move through the books.

These were the previous mark Joseph “young” web log posts covering this book:

  1. #74:  Another Novel (which provided this kind of insight into the first nine chapters along with some background material on the book as a whole),
  2. #78:  Novel Fears (which continued with coverage of chapters 10 through 18),
  3. #82:  Novel Developments (which continued with coverage of chapters 19 through 27),
  4. #86:  Novel Conflicts (which continued with coverage of chapters 28 through 36),
  5. #89:  Novel Confrontations (which continued with coverage of chapters 37 through 45),
  6. #91:  Novel Mysteries (which continued with coverage of chapters 46 through 54),
  7. #94:  Novel Meetings (which continued with coverage of chapters 55 through 63),
  8. #100:  Novel Settling (which continued with coverage of chapters 64 through 72),
  9. #104:  Novel Learning (which continued with coverage of chapters 73 through 81),
  10. #110:  Character Redirects (which continued with coverage of chapters 82 through 90),
  11. #113:  Character Movements (chapters 91 through 99),
  12. #116:  Character Missions (100 through 108),
  13. #119:  Character Projects (109 through 117).

This picks up from there, and I expect to continue with additional posts after every ninth chapter in the series.

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History of the series, including the reason it started, the origins of character names and details, and many of the ideas, are in those earlier posts, and won’t be repeated here.

Chapter 118, Hastings 81

The introduction of Sagrimore’s ghost was a sudden inspiration; I’d not given it any thought.  I needed something to happen here that was not just another vampire fight, and the introduction of a ghost made some sense.  Making it the departed spirit of her perhaps best Camelot friend gave it poignancy, and she was able to deliver one of her life lessons here.

Chapter 119, Brown 41

I needed to get past the part where Derek gets integrated into this society, somehow, and at present they were going to treat him as a lost child and a vandal, which wasn’t going to work.  So I had him go on the offensive here.

Derek notes that being confined to a psychiatric care facility is not functionally different from being confined in a prison.  That’s definitely true, from the client perspective.

My limited cybernetic abilities are probably evident to someone who is more literate in the field, but I think I did credibly well in describing Derek’s means of hacking into their computer system and reading his own police report files.

Chapter 120, Kondor 82

The gag about the dance steps proving that he was not in his own universe is funny to me; I don’t know how anyone else reacted.

I remember in college recognizing the difference between attending school for the knowledge versus attending it for the credentials.  I was there for the former.  It has adversely impacted my life in some ways—I might have done better with better credentials—but I think that the knowledge is the more important.  Joe had something of the same feeling, particularly as he knew that jumping from universe to universe would make certificates a bit less than completely useful; at the same time, the feeling of recognition for what he has contributed is significant.

Chapter 121, Hastings 82

It was my wife whose direction sense amounted to knowing how to get everywhere from her childhood home.  After college we moved to a house several towns away, and for much of the next year whenever we needed to go anywhere she knew and I didn’t, we went to her home town first and then went from there.

It seemed inevitable that at some point Lauren and Bethany would be overwhelmed by their opponents; it would not have been interesting if they always won easily.  Four vampires would be a challenge they would have trouble meeting.

The idea of bringing Bethany’s mother in as a vampire was quite abrupt here.  It was clear that Lauren probably could beat four vampires with Bethany’s help, so there had to be a way to take Bethany out of the picture without serious injury.  Seeing one of your loved ones as a vampire would be a shock for anyone—and as the story explores next, it has another layer of ramifications in the question of how you fight someone who was once your mother.

I often wonder what parts of a story the author anticipated.  This thread just happened.  I brought Bethany’s mother in as a vampire not knowing how I would handle it or what it would mean, only knowing that it would compromise Bethany’s ability to fight and I would have to find a solution for it (and I did not yet know the solution, I think).  I also did not anticipate that it would prefigure Lauren’s own confrontation with someone from her past in For Better or Verse, but it made good sense and gave me a lot of good story tensions.

Chapter 122, Brown 42

I always envision Mary Parker as a forty-something black female social worker, very sure of herself, a bit bossy, and very patronizing.  That’s typecasting, but it plays that way.

I love the line about the smile.

Derek counters the patronizing by insisting on addressing her formally.

Chapter 123, Kondor 83

Joe’s reflection that having the piece of paper legitimizes his claimed title reveals that he always felt it something of a pretense.  He never before earned a doctorate; now he has.

For us, the idea that space travel would be a dull routine is difficult to imagine.  One of the reasons Star Trek does well is that it maintains the feeling that this is always new and different.  It probably isn’t, and the seasoned space traveler probably feels about as much excitement as most seasoned professionals.

Not believing in divine guidance, Joe oversimplifies it.

Interestingly, Dr. Breyer in essence teaches Joe that the lack of information about his identity can easily be covered by the idea that he works in top secret projects.  He will use that again in the fourth book.

Chapter 124, Hastings 83

Almost everything in this chapter surprised me.  I needed something to make the fight tougher, so I abruptly created the idea that Bethany’s mother was one of the vampires.  I needed to save my characters so I abruptly thought to bring a rescuer, and then thought it should be Morgana.

I also brought in the idea that Bethany had to recognize that the vampire was not her mother.  Presumably Morgana could have killed the vampire, but then Bethany would have watched her mother die without reconciling to the fact that it was not her mother.

I took it that Morgana was changed by the passage of centuries; I deal more with that in Lauren’s next chapter.

One thing I thought was probably happening in the minds of the readers is the expectation that the characters are going to converge on the same world soon.  Lauren’s near death probably plays with that expectation.  I had not actually decided when or how she would leave.  I wanted her to find Merlin but not free him (she couldn’t free him, but she had to show Bethany where he was).

Chapter 125, Brown 43

I have a very clear image of Raeph in my mind, and not a clue where I got him.  He’s like one of those composite characters I have in dreams.

The name probably comes from the composer, Raeph Vaughn Williams.  The British probably spell that “Ralph”, but I didn’t want it pronounced that way.

The observation that more recent systems are always reverse compatible with earlier ones held true for most of my life.  Most computers still have a floppy disk drive somewhere, and old standard connectors for a lot of peripherals remain on new computers.  It’s not always so on every system, but they take a very long time to disappear entirely.

In creating Raeph through Derek’s eyes, I was discovering how he perceived Lauren; it was revealing to me to see Lauren “pirated for parts” as it were in the creation of another character.

Chapter 126, Kondor 84

I had to give some thought to what kind of medical classes Kondor could take that would teach him something he could apply in other universes.  After all, he would not have access to anything he couldn’t take with him.

The difference between designing a technological device and building one is built into the game rules.  Neither skill necessarily includes the other.

An electrical transformer converts alternating current of one voltage to another voltage.  (The current changes in the opposite direction, so the input and output power, that is, wattage, are the same.)  In essence, the alternating current in the primary, input, side creates a constantly changing magnetic field, which overlaps the wires in the secondary, output, side creating an electrical current.  The ratio of the windings in each side determines the output voltage.  Because what we have is in essence a large block of packed metals constantly subjecting itself to changing magnetic fields, the entire object vibrates to some degree, and the greater the power the greater the vibration (an undesirable effect, as it is in itself a loss of power).  As a result you can often hear the hum, usually at 60hz (55hz in much of Europe), somewhere in the lowest octaves of a piano.

Superconductors are in their infancy, but in general the use of supercooling systems reduces line losses.  Electrical resistance creates heat, and heat increases electrical resistance, so by cooling heavy cables with systems such as liquid nitrogen we reduce the amount of power that is lost to heat (and prevent conductors from melting).

I was finished with everything I really had for Joe in the Vorgo world.  The medical certificates were gravy, and I could have kept him there doing that sort of thing a bit longer, but I wanted to get him to the gather and I had no reason to keep him here.  Having what he would have recognized as a foolish attempt to build a huge kinetic blaster provided a good way to do it.

I was before this point aware that the second novel was growing to be longer than the first.  This chapter was particularly significant in that, because this is the last numbered chapter for the first book, but there is still quite a bit to tell in this one.

I hope these “behind the writings” posts continue to be of interest, and perhaps some value, to those of you who have been reading the novel.  If there is any positive feedback, they will continue.

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Bible and Theology, Music

#121: The Christian and the Law

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This is mark Joseph “young” blog entry #121, on the subject of The Christian and the Law.

This is a rough presentation of the teaching I delivered at Living Water Connections Dinner Theater on October 21st, 2016.  It was drafted prior to that appearance and polished afterwards, but is not intended to be a transcription.

img0121commandments

Good evening.  My name is Mark Joseph Young.  It’s an easy name to remember–it’s a sentence:  mark Joseph “young”.

I apologize for that; it’s not my fault.

I have been asked to share briefly tonight, and since I am a composer and musical performer I will be doing several songs–but I am also a teacher, and it would be negligent of me not to share something valuable you can recall later.  And it happens that that first song [The Secret] gives me a wonderful opening, because it touches on an issue that is a huge problem for many Christians.  It was a problem for me for a long time, even after I had earned two degrees in Biblical studies: what is the Christian’s relationship to the Law?

We hear a lot of answers to this.  There are some who will tell you that the Christian is responsible to keep the entire Law, and that Jesus helps us do that and forgives us when we fail.  However, I don’t see a tabernacle or sacrifices, and I do see Paul making sacrifices in Acts, so I think maybe these people aren’t trying very hard.

A much more interesting solution suggests that the Law is actually several kinds of law, a ritual law, a dietary law, a civil law, but that the only part we are obliged to keep is the moral law.  Thus on this theory when I see a commandment like “Do not kill” I know that this is a moral law and everyone is obligated to obey it, but when I read “Do not boil a lamb in its mother’s milk” I conclude that this is dietary and doesn’t apply to me.  However, I notice that my Bible does not label individual commandments, this is ceremonial, this is moral, this is civil.  What about the directive that we not eat sharks?  Is this just a dietary rule, or is there some moral basis for the idea that sharks are a higher life form–not as high as man, but above ordinary animals and deserving some kind of special respect?  And what of that command about keeping the Sabbath?  That’s one of the top ten, but sounds more like ceremonial law than moral law.

What we find with this solution is that there really is no objective law but the one we decide–we make ourselves the lawgivers, and decree that God said these things and intended for them to apply to everyone, but these other things don’t apply anymore.  That’s not really a law; that’s us using scripture to support our own opinions.

It is obviously a vexing question, and you’d think that for something as important as this the Bible would have given us an answer–but it did give us an answer, it’s just that the answer is so radical that we don’t like it, so we ignore it and try to find a different answer.

You’ll find the answer–well, all over, really, but particularly clearly in the fifteenth chapter of Acts, what we call the Jerusalem Council.  The heart of the church was in Jerusalem, and several of the original apostles were there.  Jerusalem, being in the center of Judea, was populated almost entirely by Jews, and so the church there was comprised of Jewish believers who all kept the law, made sacrifices, ate kosher food, and circumcised their children.  However, up the road in Syrian Antioch Paul and Barnabas were part of a different kind of church.  Syria had some Jewish residents, but the majority were not Jews, were what we call gentiles.  Many of them had come to have faith in Jesus.  It was a mixed church.  And it was from that church that missionaries had been sent to carry the gospel to people elsewhere, so they were carrying the gospel as it was understood in Syrian Antioch, and it reached many more gentiles.

Some of the Jews in Jerusalem thought that these gentile Christians needed to keep the whole law as they did, to be circumcised and make sacrifices and stick to a kosher diet.  After all, the church’s own understanding of itself was that it was the correct denomination of Judaism–kind of like the disagreement between the Lutherans and the Catholics at the time of the Reformation, the former believing that the latter no longer represented the true faith and that they did.  If you were not Jewish but became Christian, that made you a child of Abraham and a true Jew, and that meant you should keep the Law as completely as every other Jew.  Paul and Barnabas disagreed, so they came with a delegation to Jerusalem to discuss it, and the church came to a conclusion and wrote a letter to the gentile Christans living in places like Galatia, part of modern Turkey, to tell them.  The answer was this:  you gentiles who have come to faith, you who were never Jewish, do not have to keep the Law at all.  It does not apply to you.  Oh, they suggested a couple things that should be done to prevent creating tension with the Jewish believers who were also part of the church, but these weren’t the Ten Commandments–one of them was don’t drink blood.

So does this mean that we can completely ignore the Law and do whatever we want?  Well, yes and no.  Paul explained it well when he wrote to the Galatians, probably just before this meeting, but he uses a word for which we don’t have an English equivalent because it identifies a specific household servant in households in the Roman Empire for whom we do not have a corresponding job in the modern world.  This person was almost always a slave, but he was given the task of raising the children and so was given complete authority over them.  He told them when to get up, what to do, when to go to bed; he could punish them, even beat them if necessary.  He was to see to it that they learned their academic subjects, did their homework, got their exercise and physical trainng, learned how to act in polite society, and altogether grew up to be responsible adult members of the household.  Then once he had accomplished that, he lost all authority over them.  His job was finished.

The Law, Paul tells is, is like that:  it was assigned to train us so that we would grow up to be responsible adult members of God’s family.  We who are Christians, we have become those responsible adult members of the family.  We act the way we do because it’s how our Father acts, and He expects us to act like Him.  We don’t follow rules; we act appropriately.

I have a wonderful example of this; I love this example.  How many of you remember Mommy saying, “Don’t touch the stove?”  Many of you have probably said it to your own children, because stoves are dangerous.  But gradually the rule changes, becoming “Don’t touch the stove without Mommy to help you,” then “Be careful when you use the stove,” then “I don’t have to tell you to be careful when you use the stove,” and ultimately the rule disappears–not because stoves have become safe, but because we have learned to use this dangerous tool safely.  Many of our childhood rules are like that, morphing into something else as we grow.  I still don’t fight with my brother over toys because I have learned that this is not a good way to resolve our differences.  I no longer hold my mother’s hand when I cross the street because hopefully I have learned to use the same care that she used when I was young.

This is not something I made up; the church has always known this.  It is exactly as Augustine said it was:  “The law for the Christian is love God and do as you please.”  He knew that was right because he understood that if you love someone, you try to be someone they approve, to be like them.  You don’t have any rules you have to follow; just be like God, showing love to everyone.

Which is a good segue into this next song [Free].

Video of the beginning of my portion of the evening is available on Facebook.

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Bible and Theology, Elections, Law and Politics

#120: Giving Offense

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This is mark Joseph “young” blog entry #120, on the subject of Giving Offense.

A couple days ago I was asked whether I had again offended a Specifically Named Person by writing another piece on homosexuality.

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I had no idea how to reply to this.  I was unaware that I had offended this individual previously by my writing; I have no reason to believe he identifies as homosexual.  I obviously know that some people in my circle of relationships disagree with me on any subject you care to name, and this is one on which there are some significant disagreements–but I don’t keep track of who holds what positions on which issues, so I could not have told you that he disagreed with my views on this one.  It does not surprise me if he does; I know he disagrees with me on some issues, but then, everyone disagrees with everyone on some issues.  As the anonymous wise Quaker is quoted as having said to his closest friend, “Everyone’s a little queer ‘cept me and thee, and sometimes I’m not so sure of thee.”  I know of no one with whom I am in complete agreement about everything.  That does not bother me.  After all, I know that everyone is wrong about something, and I know that that includes me, but it also includes everyone who disagrees with me.  The trick is figuring out where you’re wrong and where you’re right, and not being more certain of it than you can justify.

What bothers me is that he would be offended by my opinion, or perhaps by my expression of my opinion.

I have probably written about tolerance before.  Being tolerant does not mean not caring about an issue.  It means having a strong opinion but treating others respectfully who hold a different opinion.  Many people who are not religious believe that they are tolerant when they are actually indifferent and condescending.  That is, their attitude is “all religious ideas are nonsense, so it really does not matter what nonsense you believe.”  However, changes in society are forcing these people to recognize that this is not true–that it really does matter what one believes about God, because that in turn controls what one believes about many practical issues, such as abortion, homosexuality, and the “norms” of society.  The criticism is that some religious people–those who disagree with the current attitudes on specific issues–are intolerant; the truth is that those who hold to those current attitudes are proving to be less tolerant.

Being tolerant does not mean that we all agree.  It means that we agree to disagree amicably, and to allow each other to hold differing opinions, to live by them as our own beliefs dictate, and to discuss them openly.  That’s all First Amendment:  the absolute protection of religious and political opinion.  Today those who hold certain viewpoints also hold the opinion that to disagree with those viewpoints ought to be criminal.  We encounter it in the homosexual marriage debate; it is rampant in the environmental field; it appears in issues related to reproductive choice.  If you do not agree with the approved opinion (whether or not it is held by the majority), you will not be tolerated.

On the specific issue of homosexuality, I agree that homosexuality is “natural”; it is as natural as heroin addiction:  you can encourage it, and once you’ve got it you probably can never really be fully rid of it.  There is sufficient evidence that homosexuality is not fixed in the genes, but involves environmental factors and choices on some level.  The position that the unborn are as human as their mothers and deserve equal protection equal to that extended to their mothers–and probably then some, as they are the more vulnerable class–is certainly defensible.  The issue of whether global warming is heading us into an environmental disaster, or whether it is instead staving off potentially disastrous global cooling and an ice age, can also be debated.

I hold some opinions which are apparently minority viewpoints, but I hold them honestly because of what I consider solid rational bases.  To say “I am sorry if that offends you” is not really an apology; it is more an expression of compassion for your disability, that you are such a person as would be offended by the expression of an opinion with which you disagree.  I think better of you than that.  I respect you and your opinions, even, or perhaps particularly, where I disagree.  I am willing to hear your evidence and your arguments.  I expect only the same courtesy in response.

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Books by the Author

#119: Character Projects

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This is mark Joseph “young” blog entry #119, on the subject of Character Projects.

With permission of Valdron Inc I am publishing my second novel, Old Verses New, in serialized form on the web (that link will take you to the table of contents).  If you missed the first one, you can find the table of contents for it at Verse Three, Chapter One:  The First Multiverser Novel.  There was also a series of web log posts looking at the writing process, the decisions and choices that delivered the final product; the last of those for the first novel is #71:  Footnotes on Verse Three, Chapter One, which indexes all the others and catches a lot of material from an earlier collection of behind-the-writings reflections that had been misplaced for a decade.  Now as the second is being posted I am again offering a set of “behind the writings” insights.  This “behind the writings” look definitely contains spoilers, and perhaps in a more serious way than those for the previous novel, because it sometimes talks about what I was planning to do later in the book or how this book connects to events yet to come in the third (For Better or Verse)–although it sometimes raises ideas that were never pursued.  You might want to read the referenced chapters before reading this look at them, or even put off reading these insights until the book has finished.  Links below (the section headings) will take you to the specific individual chapters being discussed, and there are (or will soon be) links on those pages to bring you back hopefully to the same point here.

These were the previous mark Joseph “young” web log posts covering this book:

  1. #74:  Another Novel (which provided this kind of insight into the first nine chapters along with some background material on the book as a whole),
  2. #78:  Novel Fears (which continued with coverage of chapters 10 through 18),
  3. #82:  Novel Developments (which continued with coverage of chapters 19 through 27),
  4. #86:  Novel Conflicts (which continued with coverage of chapters 28 through 36),
  5. #89:  Novel Confrontations (which continued with coverage of chapters 37 through 45),
  6. #91:  Novel Mysteries (which continued with coverage of chapters 46 through 54),
  7. #94:  Novel Meetings (which continued with coverage of chapters 55 through 63),
  8. #100:  Novel Settling (which continued with coverage of chapters 64 through 72),
  9. #104:  Novel Learning (which continued with coverage of chapters 73 through 81),
  10. #110:  Character Redirects (which continued with coverage of chapters 82 through 90),
  11. #113:  Character Movements (chapters 91 through 99),
  12. #116:  Character Missions (100 through 108).

This picks up from there, and I expect to continue with additional posts after every ninth chapter in the series.

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History of the series, including the reason it started, the origins of character names and details, and many of the ideas, are in those earlier posts, and won’t be repeated here.

Chapter 109, Hastings 78

I think when I put this vampire here, I didn’t know what it was doing.  I developed that as I went.

It was simple good fortune that I had decided previously on two ghouls—well, not exactly.  I had done so precisely because I wanted each of my heroines to have exactly one opponent, so that Lauren would not be able to kill the enemy quickly enough that Bethany did not participate in the fight.  It thus worked out that the vampire here, looking for those same ghouls, was looking for two persons, and Lauren had the momentary fear that it would be she and Bethany.

The verse that begins, “Wail, for the day of the Lord is near,” is one that Lauren uses that my character does not.  It comes from Isaiah, and I probably recalled it from Randall Thompson’s The Peaceable Kingdom (where it would have been, “Howl ye, for the day of the Lord is at hand) and then looked it up for a modern version.  All my character’s verses came from the New Testament, and my character delivered them in the original Koine Greek.

Bethany’s verse comes from a Hebrew song.

The idea that a vampire could “play dead” was something new here; the way Lauren managed to deduce that it wasn’t was also new.

Chapter 110, Brown 38

Derek’s internal argument amounts to the recognition that if you don’t try deceit first you lose the opportunity, and that honesty in this situation was unlikely to be believed.

I didn’t want Derek’s hack to seem simple, so I gave the impression it took several days in which he ate his rations and slept in hidden corners.  It still happens quickly in the context of the book, because I didn’t see this as a terribly interesting aspect of the story, but it should feel like it took several days to do this.

Derek fails because of specialization:  he is so good at computer security he fails to consider whether there might be another kind that would be a problem.

Chapter 111, Kondor 79

I think at this point I realized that I had dropped Joe in a relatively dull storyline.  Even if it might be fascinating to read about the development of a new technology, a new scientific discovery, the fictional account of such a thing not actually discovered in reality was much less interesting.  I was creating the background but in a way still looking for the story; much of what was happening here really was that Joe was getting an education in fields he would want to know in the future.

The fact that he, a nineteen-year-old fresh-from-high-school military recruit, was now at graduate student level in a field he only began studying on arrival here should convey that he has been working on this for several years, without dragging out the years.

Chapter 112, Hastings 79

I needed to extend the search and keep the girls together longer, so I decided that Lauren’s magic either failed or was opposed at this point, sending them in the wrong direction.  I don’t think I’d yet decided which as the chapter started.

Lauren makes the point that it is possible not to know an answer not because you have no idea but because you have too many.  Her process of elimination is an effective means of reasoning through problems of all sorts, not just spell failure.

Chapter 113, Brown 39

We see police dramas in which they leave a suspect sitting in an interrogation room for a while to “sweat” him, to get him worried about his situation.  Derek considers that as a possible explanation for why he is sitting alone in such a room, but recognizes that he knows so little about this world there could be what to him is an entirely fantastic reason.

It also gives him a chance to think about his situation, which he does.

Derek is again thinking in terms of his life being like a movie:  this is what happens in scenarios of this sort.

People tend to say that the coral bushes of NagaWorld fire laser beams, but Derek, having studied some advanced physics and electronics, would know that that’s probably not the case (it isn’t—they use mirrors and lenses to fire focused light) and would not use the wrong word.

Derek recognizes that it is entirely possible that he is dreaming all of this, but that if he is that’s not going to be something he can prove even to himself.

Chapter 114, Kondor 80

I was in essence inventing the technology as I went along.  It was going to matter, ultimately, that Joe understood it.

The comment about everything he knew being the equivalent of a high school physics class in some universe reflects the observation that as our knowledge increases, the amount we regard as basic also does.  The math and science classes my kids took in high school contained at least some things that I didn’t learn in college.

Chapter 115, Hastings 80

Lauren hits several possible explanations for who might be misdirecting them.  I could probably have given more, but the point was only to establish that it didn’t have to be vampires.

Downhill is actually harder than uphill, but it doesn’t feel as hard, and the cart makes a difference, too.  Most people think uphill is harder, and thus psychologically it is.

Chapter 116, Brown 40

It makes perfect sense that a verser telling the truth to authorities in a modern setting would face a psyche evaluation.  Derek realizes that that’s what this is, but doesn’t quite know how to get out of it unscathed.

Derek’s ultimate defense is that the authorities do not have a better explanation for him than the one he gives.  That proves nothing, really, but it does shift the burden of proof significantly.

Chapter 117, Kondor 81

It was important that Joe was involved in the project and sometimes contributed, but equally important that he didn’t solve everything himself.  So I had him make suggestions and mixed them with the work of others to get the combination.

The Pernicans at this point were connected effectively to the Phoenicians, among the earliest of those traveling the oceans in large ships in the west.

I hope these “behind the writings” posts continue to be of interest, and perhaps some value, to those of you who have been reading the novel.  If there is any positive feedback, they will continue.

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