Why do most human societies end up building houses, roads, and other structures?

The usual answer to that question is that people wish to provide shelter and protect themselves from the elements and other unpredictable threats, or some variation thereof.

I’ll submit that the physical growth of societies is an outgrowth of the human desire to reduce uncertainty. Human belief systems in lower-tech societies often reflect that desire as well, with prayers to the gods viewed as most capricious, which is why the native Hawaiians worshipped Pele as their most important deity.

Laws prescribe certain codes of behavior, with the goal of reducing the uncertainty caused by violence.

And that desire for certainty affects the political system as well. Older voters want to be able to count on Social Security. Most investors want comparatively predictable rates of return. Businesses worry about government policies that affect the cost of production unpredictably because they can’t plan for the future effectively.

People worry about large numbers of immigrants because they’re unknown quantities and therefore unpredictable and possibly dangerous.

Zoning laws have become increasingly stringent over the years because people fear, that without zoning, their property values could suddenly decline in an uncertain fashion.

One of the “downsides” of the “woke movement” is that its apparent goal or result to many people was to upset long-held beliefs about gender and ethnicities, creating social uncertainty. At the same time, modern technology is definitely increasing uncertainty in all areas in the United States and elsewhere in the world.

Whether they like it or will admit it, most people prefer certainty over uncertainty, and on all fronts, prior to the last election, and even now, the Democrats are perceived as creating uncertainty socially, economically, and politically.

Trump’s appeal to the majority of voters lay in the certainty he projected in a time of uncertainty. Out with immigrants! Build manufacturing jobs here in the U.S.! Decrease taxes!

For the Democrats to merely oppose Trump won’t create certainty, and right now the Democrats can’t unite on a positive program which radiates certainty, and while they might take back the House in mid-term elections, they won’t hold that without dealing with the certainty problem.

I don’t claim to be a great marketing guru, with reason. When I was younger, after a tour and a half in the Navy, largely as a helicopter search and rescue pilot, I spent a year as an industrial economist, technically a market research analyst for a company that manufactured compressed air valves, regulators, filters, and lubricators for heavy industry, largely automobile manufacturers. I wasn’t a good fit. The next year I got a real estate license, and in that year, I sold two houses, just two very modest dwellings.

Then I started writing science fiction stories, quickly discovering that the few stories I sold didn’t come close to paying the bills. But the writing and economic skills landed me in paid political positions for the next eighteen years, while I wrote and sold SF novels on the side. Those novels paid much better than stories, but not enough to leave the day job, not until I wrote my first fantasy novel – The Magic of Recluce.

When I started getting those first stories published, most of what was selling in the overall speculative fiction field was science fiction, particularly novels by Heinlein, Murray Leinster, Asimov, Simak, Poul Anderson, Arthur C. Clarke. While Lord of the Rings was first published in 1955 in Great Britain, it didn’t appear in the United States until 1965. Despite the fact that Lord of the Rings sold something like 150 million copies, it took a while for overall fantasy book sales to surpass SF sales, but by the mid-1990s, total fantasy sales were definitely eclipsing SF sales.

This trend appears to be continuing. The editors I know say that it’s getting harder and harder for SF novels to be published, while the fastest-growing segment of speculative fiction is Romantasy – fantasy novels with sexual and romance content verging on the pornographic.

Part of the decline in the sales of SF novels is that the wish-fulfillment aspect of those novels gets harder and harder to pull off (if the author wants to stay close to the scientifically accurate), given scientific discoveries over the past few decades. Venus can’t be a tropical planet because it’s a hellhole in reality, and Barsoom can’t really exist, although several authors have gotten around those facts by setting their stories in alternate universes, but that makes those books science-fantasy, rather than SF.

There certainly are exceptions, such as Andy Weir’s The Martian, but they’re getting fewer and fewer. Part of that may be because SF has historically been dominated by male authors writing for male readers, and the reading rates for men have dropped dramatically since the advent of the internet. Whatever the other reasons may be, from what I can see, publishers overall are releasing and selling less hard SF, and even less fantasy that doesn’t have either sex-related romance and heavy action-adventure.

But what do I know?

Now that Memorial Day has passed, in roughly two weeks Donald Trump will preside over a military parade on Flag Day, which also marks the 250th “birthday” of the U.S. Army, and incidentally is also Trump’s birthday.

The parade, which is estimated to cost $45 million, will feature tanks and other military hardware, but what of those whose deaths, sacrifices, and all too often unseen gritty valor and lifelong suffering seem ignored – except in high-flown and soon forgotten rhetoric?

It all reminds me, sadly, of the Kipling poem “Tommy,” written more than a century ago, which illustrates how soldiers are momentarily praised when needed and later ignored and discarded.

Trump is all in favor of triumphant trappings of military success, of shiny aircraft and unblemished tanks – as most dictators or would-be dictators are. And of course, he wants a bright and shiny new – or newer—Air Force One to carry him around the world like Apollo in his light-encrusted chariot of divinity, for he is, in his own mind, a god of sorts, who’s already proclaimed that he runs the world.

At the same time, he’s cut the Veterans Administration, the only arm of government dedicated to the support and health of veterans, especially those disabled and without other support. He’s also called those who served “suckers” and “losers.” But he’ll publicly praise newly commissioned junior officers, while reducing the support and benefits of those who served in the past.

I can recall all the times I flew a vintage H-34 (helicopter) on its last legs, with patches on the fuselage where it had been hit in Vietnam and later repaired. I also haven’t forgotten searching in the darkness for one of many H-2s that went down over the ocean because there wasn’t enough funding to upgrade those helicopters properly, an H-2 that was never found, although the body of one of the two pilots was recovered. The other, whom I knew, was not.

Those aspects of military service haven’t changed that much, from what I can see, where funding goes to shiny new aircraft, without enough spare parts, and where there’s never enough funding to keep everything flying or to keep pilots in training. Just last week, the Navy announced that it’s revamping pilot training to eliminate the requirement for pilots to make carrier landings before they get their wings, which translates to less rigorous training. Both Navy and the Air Force don’t have enough jet trainers to train the pilots they need to the level they require, and the training jets they have are old and worn out. But the services and the Congress seem unable to decide on and fund new trainers, while keeping open scores of bases they don’t need because of Congressional pressure.

In, the meantime, Trump offers empty words to new junior officers, billionaires get tax cuts, Congress, for all its rhetoric, ignores too many of the pressing needs of the armed forces, and Trump will blow $45 million on a parade for his ego.

Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth has been insisting that the armed forces of the United States need to return to a “Warrior Ethos,” along with removing women from any number of positions and eliminating anyone who isn’t “straight.”

Personally, I have a real problem with that crusade, and the way he’s approaching reforming the armed services is, in fact, an unthinking crusade. He’s also assuming that males of a certain physical type are the only ones with the “correct” mindset.

War is no longer, if it ever really was, just a massive struggle of big-biceped males. Even the Bible makes that point in the story of David and Goliath, where the slight shepherd boy destroys the giant with his skill and his sling, and in fact, back then most armies had slingers. And, so far as being gay, Richard the Lion-Hearted was, and he was certainly a “warrior,” if not always wisely, which might also suggest certain drawbacks to the “warrior” mindset.

Modern warfare requires an enormous array of skills from its soldiers. Even in World War II, infantry soldiers, who took seventy percent of the casualties, only represented fourteen percent of overseas forces.

In the Vietnam era, when I flew H-34s, each hour of flight time required between five and ten hours of maintenance, and I wouldn’t be here today if those techs hadn’t done their job. Today, for every hour of flight time, an F18E/F Super Hornet requires twenty hours of maintenance. The F-14 required 40-60 hours, one of the reasons it was phased out. An aircraft carrier requires 5,000-6,000 personnel onboard to support the operations of between 64 and 80 aircraft of various sorts, with roughly 180-200 pilots and NFOs.

The armed forces don’t require or need macho-muscled males to fill every position, and in terms of flying, women and shorter men can actually handle gee forces better than tall brawny males. While there are certain specialty positions in the military that require great muscular strength and abilities, they represent a small fraction of the skills necessary in a modern military force.

At a time when the United States is relying on an all-volunteer military force, and when the military is often failing to meet recruiting goals, does arbitrary and unwise removal of soldiers, sailors, and others make sense, when their only “detriment” is that they don’t fit an outdated “warrior” image?

This past weekend, General Stanley McChrystal made the observation on “Face the Nation” that Trump’s lack of character wasn’t the problem with the United States, but a symptom of a much wider loss of character in America.

While General McCrystal was absolutely correct, in my opinion, I would agree, partly because of what I wrote in February of 2018 (more than seven years ago):

“Trump is not so much primarily either solution or problem, but a symptom of what’s gone wrong in American politics and society…”

In part, in that earlier blog, I was talking about intransigence and not listening to anyone “on the other side,” but General McChrystal made that observation as well, and the fact that he did suggests that American beliefs – and the unwillingness to compromise with or listen to the other side – haven’t changed much, if at all, over the last seven years, except possibly for the worse.

The current budget legislation in the House of Representatives is a reflection of that. The legislation that failed in committee was essentially a mirror image of every budget proposal passed in the past decade – more spending for defense, mostly maintaining social programs currently, but with severe/modest (depending on viewpoint) budget cuts/reforms promised for the future. The Republican hardliners want more defense spending, heavy cuts in social programs and large tax cuts, primarily for the wealthiest taxpayers, while the Democrats want to maintain and often expand social programs, increase taxes on the wealthy, and cut defense spending, except where it impacts their own districts and/or states.

Neither side is being realistic, but it’s hard to expect realism from a nation that gorges on social media and reality shows, a nation that has watered down education so that everyone can pass, even if they haven’t learned anything and can’t write a coherent paragraph, and where far too many young people idealize cultures that are brutal and oppressive, while trashing their own country, which is far more open and freer than the cultures they support in their protests.

While Trump is, in my opinion, a miserable excuse for a human being, the majority of those voting elected him… and that strongly suggests that General McChrystal and I not only share views, but also are correct in viewing Trump as a symptom and not a cause.

I dislike touchscreens, iPads, and the like. Part of that is that, while my muscular gross motor control is good to excellent, I don’t do as well with fine motor control, one of the reasons why I gave up trying to be an artist, although I actually won a scholastic art show in high school.

The other reason is that I have flat oblong fingertips, which means that it’s a bitch to compose anything on my iPhone. That’s why I use a mouse on my surface pro when I travel. For me, precision is far easier and quicker with a full-sized keyboard and a mouse. As for signing anything electronically, on those occasions, my barely legible signature turns into abstract art.

In a way, I could claim that iPads and touchscreens are discriminatory against people with large hands and broad or fat fingers, but then, if we really look at the physical world, every device and structure could be said to be discriminatory against someone. In fact, even the environment discriminates.

The sun blisters fair-skinned people in tropical climes and induces vitamin D deficiencies in dark-skinned people living in arctic areas (unless they take vitamins or watch their diet carefully).

Genetics discriminate, because some people are born more intelligent or stronger or faster or more coordinated than others.

Societies and governments usually discriminate in various ways, sometimes for the public good, as in locking up lawbreakers and forbidding children to drive some killing machines (i.e., automobiles) while often allowing young teenagers to drive smaller killing machines (i.e., ATVs). Often, societies discriminate on the basis of appearance, skin color, gender, and age, or religious faith or the lack thereof, and the culture/society into which one is born determines the degree of discrimination and challenges faced.

We all can cite blatant and obvious cases of discrimination such as slavery and lack of civil rights for African Americans in the U.S.; the holocaust in Germany; the Armenian Genocide in Turkey – and that list is long. But moving away from the blatant and obvious, “discrimination” isn’t always so easy to define or remedy.

Recent studies show that family backgrounds, especially their degree of prosperity, have a great impact on children’s futures. So does the physical environment. But to what degree should governments address the conditions that disadvantage children?

Both the right and the left have been debating and fighting over this question for generations, and while conditions have improved in the U.S., in many areas, obvious discrimination still exists. At the same time, some groups have filed lawsuits against governments and universities claiming that certain anti-discrimination measures discriminate against them.

But how much discrimination is structural? How much can be addressed by laws? And how much is chance?

I have no sense of pitch or rhythm, and I’m extremely fortunate to have been born into a culture that doesn’t require a high degree of linguistic inflection and pitch change, because I’m fairly certain that I’d be at a great disadvantage in China, Japan, or Vietnam. I couldn’t even hear the changes in inflection and pitch in Vietnamese when I was being prepared to be sent to Vietnam as a junior Navy officer.

All of which illustrates, in an odd way, why dealing with “discrimination” can be fraught with pitfalls. Even laws requiring perfect equality of opportunity wouldn’t make touchscreens any easier for me or allow me to sing professionally.

And while that seems far-fetched, how far can we take “anti-discrimination?”

Last Thursday, David H. Souter died at his home in New Hampshire. The former Supreme Court Justice is likely to be remembered, at least by Republicans, as a Republican in name only, because he voted so often with the “liberal” justices.

From what I’ve read and heard, Justice Suitor had only two passions in life – the law and the outdoors of his home state of New Hampshire.

What few of those Republicans who felt “betrayed” by Suitor’s Supreme Court votes and opinions understood, or wanted to, was that for Souter, the law and the Constitution were sacred. He had few illusions that the Constitution was perfect, but he said, if not in so many words, that laws should be interpreted in the spirit of the Constitution. He also understood that, as I’ve written before:

Never mistake law for justice. Justice is an ideal, and law is a tool.

Justice Souter also understood that the way that tool was used – or misused – made all the difference for society.

There are two fundamental approaches to making or applying laws. One is along the lines that Trump is currently pursuing, which is to make and apply laws and regulations to obtain a predetermined goal, regardless of the Constitution and/or other existing law and precedents, while disregarding the harmful direct and indirect consequences of such a course.

The other approach, the one seemingly followed by Justice Souter, as best I can determine, is to interpret and decide laws based on both the text and the spirit of the Constitution. This approach used to be more common, particularly among moderate Republicans, and even some rather conservative Republicans.

Justice Souter, and his example, will be missed, not that most current Republican officeholders will ever understand why.

During the 2024 Presidential campaign, Donald Trump came out strong for states’ rights, particularly when it came to the abortion issue.

Trump has also trumpeted his support for states’ primacy on other issues such as disaster aid, education standards, public lands, and other issues where conservatives have opposed federal laws and initiatives.

Yet, for all the talk about states’ rights, since Trump became President for the second time, he’s attacked states and state programs that don’t agree with his rhetoric and agenda.

Just one day after Donald Trump’s inauguration, Acting Deputy Attorney General Emil Bove wrote a memo to the Justice Department calling on U.S. attorneys to prosecute state and local officials who do not cooperate with the deportation efforts of the Trump administration.

On March 25th, Trump issued an executive order directing an independent bipartisan federal agency, the Election Assistance Commission, to impose voter registration mandates on all fifty states; place restrictions on the deadline for states to receive legitimately cast ballots; and threatened to withhold funding for election safety programs if states fail to comply.

Tom Homan – Trump’s “border czar” — has threatened to go after states and cities that refuse to comply with the president-elect’s deportation plans, including arresting mayors, despite the fact that past Supreme Court decisions have held that the federal government cannot force local authorities to carry out federal laws, nor to incarcerate local leaders for not adhering to an administration’s policy.

Just this past week, Trump issued an executive order week directing the Justice Department to stop states from enforcing their own climate laws. The order targets a broad sweep of state policies, from environmental justice reviews to decade-old carbon markets, as well as taking aim at states suing fossil fuel companies for damages related to climate impacts. He also issued an executive order pushing the building of coal power plants and ordering attacks on state laws that would prohibit or limit coal fired power plants.

The bottom line?

The only rights and principles Trump supports are those that get him what he wants. When states’ rights suit him, he’s for them, but when the states oppose him, they’re the enemy to be destroyed.

…in the heights of Cedar City last bloomed untrammeled by late snow and frost?

Not this year, although, so far as the lilacs are concerned, this spring has been a half-glass proposition because the lilacs actually got to bloom, but the weather got cold enough that while the blooms were gorgeous, the frost nipped them to the degree that there was no fragrance.

That’s a first in thirty years.

When you live at 6,000 feet between two mountain ranges and near the top of a sizable hill, you come to expect extremely variable weather, as well as frequent high winds.

We’ve had springs where the lilacs avoided the unpredictable inclement weather and they bloomed and perfumed the yard, and springs where they were snowed out or frozen and we had neither blooms nor fragrance. And quite a few springs where they budded and the buds immediately froze enough that when they thawed, they just dried up without opening. And even a spring or two where the wind was severe enough to blow off the blooms before they fully opened.

But full blooms with no fragrance? Never before.

Then, again, we’ve seen a lot this year that we never thought we’d see, and it’s not just here. Even Paris was just bombarded with intense hail and flash floods. Why should the lilacs of Cedar City be immune?

So… I’ll wait for next year and hope for both blooms and fragrance.

What’s with Boeing?

Not only did the aircraft manufacturer create a disaster by failing to inform buyers of the 737 Max-9 that the new version of the Maneuvering Characteristics Augmentation System (MCAS) was considerably different from previous systems, but Boeing also initially failed to inform the FAA. As a result, two crashes killing 346 people ensued, and the 737 Max aircraft were grounded for 20 months, during which time the FAA lifted Boeing’s ability to issue airworthiness certificates for individual aircraft. In July 2024, Boeing pleaded guilty to criminal charges regarding the fatal accidents.

In January of 2024, Alaska Airlines Flight 1282 suffered a mid-flight blowout of a plug filling an unused emergency exit, causing rapid decompression of the aircraft. The FAA grounded some 171 Boeing 737 MAX 9s with a similar configuration for inspections.

Previously, in 2018, a $3.9 billion contract was awarded to Boeing to build two new 747-8 aircraft for use as Air Force One. The two aircraft were to be delivered by December 2024, but subsequent delays by Boeing led to that being pushed back to 2028, with another delay announced earlier this year pushing delivery back to 2029 or later. This tends to raise questions, given that the basic 747-8 that is the starting point for the new Presidential jet currently goes for around $400 million, and Boeing claims it can’t come anywhere near the contract price.

Boeing has also suffered problems with the 787 Dreamliner, including manufacturing flaws with the fuselage, battery fires, and significant production issues in South Carolina, with numerous flaws found in quality assurance checks.

The Boeing 777, particularly the 777X variant, was projected to enter service in 2020, but technical problems have delayed entry until 2025, at the earliest.

In the military area, Boeing had restructure the KC-46A Pegasus, designed for aerial refueling, in order to redesign its remote vision system due to visibility problems that could affect stealth aircraft refueling, resulting in significant cost overruns, totaling billions in losses for Boeing due to fixed-price contracts.

Multiple other programs, including the T-7A Red Hawk jet trainer, have faced substantial delays. For instance, the T-7’s critical design review was pushed back by nearly two years. Since its introduction, the V-22 Osprey has been involved in accidents that have resulted in at least 62 fatalities. This figure includes incidents from the 1990s through to recent years.

In addition, the Boeing Starliner is not only behind schedule, but suffered multiple technical issues, including propellant system valves, flammable tape, parachute issues, helium leaks, and propulsion system design vulnerabilities, which led it its being not safe enough for the manned return flight.

And Boeing’s reward for all these disasters?

An apparent award from Trump and DOD to develop and supply the next generation F-47 fighter.

So much for fiscal responsibility and competence.

Over the span of more than a few decades of voracious reading, admittedly more in science fiction and fantasy, but also in other fiction genres, including, horror of horrors, standard literature, I’ve occasionally run across dogs, but never across a dachshund. I searched Amazon and B&N and found exactly one “adult” book featuring a dachshund, and a few children’s books, and I had to wonder about the absence of dachshunds, those fiercely loyal protectors of those they love.

At times, they can be too fiercely loyal, because we’ve seen dachshunds go after German shepherds, horses, elk, and deer, not to mention unwanted or unannounced intruders. Yet they’re usually portrayed, when portrayed at all in other media, as comical “weiner dogs” or ferocious ankle-biters.

As some of my readers know, I have upon occasion committed fictional dachshundry, that is, included a dachshund in my work, three of them in fact, if one reads closely. The latest commission of that literary crime was a short story – “The Unexpected Dachshund,” which appeared in Instinct: An Animal Rescuers Anthology, published in 2023.

That story was inspired by our latest and youngest dachshund, who turned out to be very unexpected in more than a few ways, which I’ll not detail here, except to say that he continues to display the unexpected, both in similar and in different ways than Rudy, “The Unexpected Dachshund” of the story.

Earlier, in Haze, one of my hard SF novels, I also included Hildegarde, one of our earlier dachshunds, or actually a painting of her, as a silent companion to Major Keir Roget, as well as one other dachshund, in his efforts to bridge more than a few gaps between disparate future cultures.

So… why aren’t there more dachshunds in fiction?

I find the treatment of religion in fiction quite interesting, and I have to say that of all the treatments I have seen, the fictional religion of the world of the Imager series is the most appealing to me. If I were to choose a religion from the fictions I read, this would be the one. Is there a “real world” religion that you drew from to create this faith?

Although I don’t have a degree in divinity studies, I’ve studied quite a few religions and their histories over the years, and I’m not aware of any religion like that in the Imager Portfolio. That doesn’t mean there’s not, but if there is, I haven’t run across it.