Andrew Ferguson dot NET

I’m just over 80 episodes into Star Trek: Deep Space Nine and there’s a couple of episodes that I think people should watch because they offer a really great commentary on what I see in America today.

To me:

• Duet is about a persons right to have a fair trial, no matter where they came from or what they did. It echoes some of my feelings about Guantanamo Bay detention camp. I also recommend listening to NPR’s This American Life: Habeas Schmabeas 2007.
• In the Hands of the Prophets is about Christians demanding that religion be taught in schools and/or decrying the teaching of evolution.
• Homefront and Paradise Lost are about power, fear, and control. They are about what happens when something you love so much (freedom and America) are taken away from you because a few people threaten you. It’s not a perfect analogy, yet there are definitely a lot of parallels to what has happened over the last six and half years. I think the best quote comes at the end: “If the Changelings want to destroy what we’ve built here, they’re going to have to do it themselves. We will not do it for them.” - Benjamin Sisko. Now, replace Changelings with terrorists.

What I think is interesting is that these episodes are about 12 years old. I don’t think the writers intended this as a commentary on the current events of the time. Yet, somehow, twelve years after their air dates, these shows provide such a great reflection of the current times!

Other thoughts I’m going to throw in:

• There are a surprisingly large number of sci-fi TV shows with episodes named “Paradise Lost”.
• I am now 51.59% the way through all the Star Trek episodes/movies made.
• I have seen 372 episodes/movies with 364 (actually, 365 if you count the upcoming Star Trek movie) left.
• I have watched about 286 hours of Star Trek thus far in this project.

A little while ago, I was wondering to myself how much power the brain uses. Today, BoingBoing helped me answer that question:

The brain consumes 20 percent of your body’s energy, but what for? Turns out a third of the energy is spent on “housekeeping.”

I crossed check this and 20% appears to be dead on (see http://hypertextbook.com/facts/2001/JacquelineLing.shtml). As it turns out, it’s also about 20 Watts of power to run the brain (on a roughly 2000 food calorie diet).