Facebook and Twitter probably CAN legally censor your posts

A recent Supreme Court ruling may put the damper on efforts by the president and his defenders to stop social media giants from censoring and blocking accounts of people who make abusive, bullying, fascist, or other extreme posts, political and non-political. 

Manhattan Community Access Corp. v. Halleck, was actually about cable TV public access channels, but the court's ruling sheds light on the right of media companies to censor user-generated content.

Remember that the First Amendment does NOT guarantee free speech in all situations.  What it does is prohibit the Government from taking actions that limit free speech (including all levels of government).

The cable company in this case censured and eventually banned the plaintiffs from providing content for the company's community access channel, as the result of a program they produced that was critical of the cable company itself. The plaintiffs claimed that because the community access channel was set up as a public forum, their rights were violated.

The Supreme Court majority noted that although the cable company had a contract with the city, it was essentially operating as a private company, and not as an agent of the city.  Therefore, the court ruled, the cable company is not bound by the First Amendment.  It returned the case to the federal district court for review, taking into account this guidance.

It seems to me that this is VERY relevant to the question of social media companies removing content or banning users.  Facebook and Twitter are not in any way agents of the government. They are clearly private companies.  Thus they have the right to set rules and boundaries about allowable content, known as the Terms of Service. 

Of course, there are complications, like the false positives resulting from the use of algorithms to try to identify violating content, which implies that the companies need functional appeal processes. 

But when people post in social media, they need to remember that they are still really playing in somebody else's sandbox, and nastiness CAN have consequences.

Spock's Character Arc

The Star Trek character Spock is one of the best-known and beloved characters in American television. He is a central character in season two of Star Trek Discovery, and he began the story arc more...emotional than we might have expected.

How has Spock's character evolved over the years, spanning multiple series?

We first see Spock as the son of a Vulcan man and a human woman.  In The Animated Series, a seven-year-old Spock is bullied by other Vulcan children for being part human. He struggles with his emotions, particularly when his (very large) pet shelat, I Chaya, is critically wounded in the wilderness.  Spock chooses to allow an animal healer to provide I Chaya a painless death, rather than living on in pain. In doing this, Spock chooses to live his life in the Vulcan way of logic.

But in Discovery, we learn that Spock at a similar age also had affection for his older, human foster sister, Michael Burnham.  Their father, Sarek, had hoped that Michael would help Spock learn to balance the two sides of his personality, the more logical Vulcan alongside the more emotional human side.

But Michael unwisely drove Spock away, out of fear that "logic extremists" who were vexed that mixed-bloods were among them on Vulcan, would target Spock rather than herself. This rift, according to Spock in Discovery, caused him to pursue logic more ardently, but immediately after his youthful confrontation with Michael, Spock experienced a vision from the "Red Angel" telling him how to find the endangered Michael.

Thus we have competing influences in the young Spock that affect his balance between logic and emotion.  Fans generally accept the animated episode as "canon" for how Spock came to embrace the logical side of his makeup.  But the version of Spock who comes from the Discovery writers gives us a Spock who continues to be unbalanced between logic and emotion (as well as possessing a never-before-mentioned learning disability, which must have complicated his young life).

Sarek eventually arranges for Spock to join something the Discovery writers called the Vulcan Expeditionary Group, but Spock joins Starfleet instead. It has long been part of Trek continuity that Sarek actually wanted Spock to join the Vulcan Science Academy, and refused to speak to Spock for 18 years when Spock choose Starfleet. Discovery implies that Spock did not actually attend Starfleet Academy, but joined in some other way.  This is supported by Spock's statement in The Wrath of Khan that he had never taken the Kobyashi Maru test. Michael also did not attend the academy and made her way to a Starfleet commission via an alternative route.

We next see Spock as a lieutenant on the Enterprise a dozen years before Kirk takes command and a couple of years before he appears in Star Trek Discovery, which is set a couple of years AFTER the original series pilot. That pilot episode, The Cage, was the first time Leonard Nimoy played Spock and the character was not yet fully formed, but this Spock grins, often raises his voice, and generally behaves more emotionally that we expect today from a Vulcan character.

In Star Trek Discovery, Spock also begins his the season in a more emotional frame of mind, expressing anger, which Captain Pike, who had known him for some time, finds to be uncharacteristic.  Specifically, something triggers nightmares about the red signals, and Spock goes so far as to check himself into a psychiatric facility at Starbase 5. The writers were never explicit about what triggered this, but the implication is that Michael's mother, using The Suit, somehow triggered it, because it was needed for the overall defeat of Control.

By the Original Series, Spock had become generally logical and unemotional, but with strong friendships aboard Enterprise, presumably prompted by Michael Burnham's farewell admonitions to find people who seem farthest from him and to let them guide him to balance.  This is generally considered to be a foreshadowing of Spock's relationship with Kirk, but it also heralds his sparring friendship with McCoy.

In TOS, however, viewers had repeated hints that, when Spock was under stress, drugged, etc., his emotions were just below the surface.  As we have seen, this is true of all Vulcans.  They are not automatically logical.  They learn to actively suppress emotions.

Indeed, in The Motion Picture, shortly after the end of the Enterprise five-year mission, Spock undergoes the Kohlinar ritual to purge the last vestiges of emotion, suggesting that he wanted to end his balancing act between logic and emotion.  This would have been almost exactly 15 years after the Discovery season finale.

Maybe no longer being shipmates with Kirk, McCoy et al. meant Spock lost the balance they provided, although one would have hoped that the 15-year older Spock would have learned more self-regulation in the intervening years.

Regardless, Spock does not complete the Kohlinar, because Vger mentally calls to him across space, and an emotion, curiosity, gets the better of him. I can imagine Spock thinking, "Again?"  Was he secretly saying "this could be Control, I've got to return to Enterprise to check it out."

In the Motion Picture, Spock mind melds with the pure logic of Vger and finds it to be lacking. He comes to the realization that both parts of his personality, logic and emotion, must synergize. Possibly for the first time, he becomes fully comfortable with who he is and his ability to balance logic and emotion.

Of course, a few years later, he dies, has his katra refused with his body, and has to go through the process of discovering balance all over again.

Later in life, Spock becomes an unofficial ambassador to the Romulans. Because the Romulans were so driven by emotion, reuniting them would have meant the same epiphany for the cultures as Spock earlier had for his own personality. So he becomes a teacher, living in hiding, until possibly after the events of Star Trek Nemesis.

In the Kelvan timeline, weird things happen. Spock goes back in time and eventually dies. In the main timeline, we do not (yet) know Spock's ultimate fate (the movie rights and the TV rights are held by different companies and they are not obligated to conform to each other, however TV executive producer Alex Kurtzman has been involved in both).

From a storytelling point of view, episode and movie writers have enjoyed placing the logical and unemotional Spock in circumstances that disconcerted him and allowed his emotions to bubble out. From an in-universe perspective, however, we can see that Spock has ebbed and flowed back and forth, between more and less emotional orientations, more and less balance.

Of course, the season finale of Discovery provides a rationale for why Spock has never mentioned Michael, even to his closest friends. Spock is good t keeping secrets - remember that he also had an older half-brother, Sybok, who he did not mention for decades.

At the conclusion id Discovery season 2, Spock's character is ready for the mindset we see in the Original Series and beyond. If by chance a Captain Pike series happens, I hope Spock is fully recognizable as his in-balance TOS self.

(Photos used under Fair Use provision of copyright law, for the purpose of comment and criticism.)

Star Trek Discovery: Saints of Imperfection

Here are observations about the fifth episode of Star Trek Discovery this season, Saints of Imperfection.  There ARE a few minor spoilers below, but not full episode summaries.

1. May refers to transporting Tilly across the "dimensional plane."  So the thing Discovery is temporarily stuck in is basically an inter-dimensional portal.  Like a Stargate event horizon without the actual Stargate. Maybe THAT'S why the parts of the Discovery saucer need to rotate.  Because Stargates rotate in setting the destination address.  (In reality, CBS can't overtly use elements from MGM's Stargate, due to copyright, but the visual portrayals are reminiscent.)
2. Pike is seen entering the bridge from Lorca's Ready Room, even though Pike made a big thing a few episodes ago of not liking it and moving elsewhere. We can still see the stand-up desk through the doorway.
3. Pike and Georgiou were classmates at Starfleet Academy, although maybe not the same class year.
4. When Pike, Georgiou, and Burnham get into the turbolift, it starts going without anybody saying the destination.  In fact several times people get into the turbolift and don't say where they are going in this episode, but this is the only scene in which we see them continually after the doors shut.
5. A reference to "alligators" on Cestus III, was likely a reference to the Gorn, although supposedly Starfleet didn't know anything about the Gorn until the TOS episode Arena.  On the third hand, Lorca appeared to have a Gorn skeleton on display last season.
6. Also a reference to Deneva, one of the first Earth colonies, where Sam Kirk and family eventually live (and some of them die). 
7. Georgiou is eating an apple to show how cool she is, kind of like how the J.J. Abrams Kirk ate an apply in one of the movies.  She drops it when Burnham gets in her face.  She isn't as cocky as she pretends to be. Since they are getting ready to make a series about her, I HOPE that she is a nicer person than she lets on.  Here "oh look at the cute baby" moment last episode gives me some hope.
8. The new chief of security, Commander Nhan, is still wearing the skirt-and-tights version of the Starfleet uniform, except in Discovery blue.  Note that when Pike first came to Discovery, he identified her as an engineering staff member.  Now she's heading security.  Was she Security pretending to be Engineering, as a safety detail for Pike?
9. Once they find Tilly and...what else (spoiler) they find...they fritter away a LOT of time when they urgently need to be heading back.
10. Tyler has a radio integrated in his com badge, like TNG and later comm badges.  Nobody else has ever heard of that before, through the TOS movies.
11. The Section 31 ship does not have invisibility, but apparently is able to make its shields look like a big asteroid.
12. The tractor beams in this episode need a receptor or "tractor rig" to pull against.  The only time I remember the 1701 Prime using a tractor beam was in Space Seed, and they may well have placed a receptor on the Botany Bay, which we just didn't see.
13. Now we have two "we will meet again" foreshadows: Tilly and May, and Pike and Jacob (on New Eden). 
14. Leland is apparently in charge of Section 31, but he made a reference to "control" last week, and now we find out who "control" is.

Note: Photo is a "fair use" screen capture used for purposes of review or criticism, and thus complies with copyright law.

Star Trek Discovery: Points of Light & An Obol for Charon

Here are observations about the third and fourth episodes of Star Trek Discovery this season, Points of Light and An Obol for Charon.  There ARE a few spoilers below, but not full episode summaries.

Points of Light

1. A lot of Points of Light has to do with establishing Section 31, Phillipa, and Ash as major players in the story.  Section 31 first appeared in DS9, but also appeared in Enterprise, so it has been around for a while.  But I could live without ever seeing Klingons again, if you must know.  So tired of them.
2. Tilly and May talked for a LONG time, but Tilly caught up with the other running cadets in short order.
3. When Sarek's ship approached Discovery, it was JUST like when Reliant approached Enterprise in TWOK.  Pike knew the rules about activating tactical systems when communication has not been established with an approaching vessel.  Kirk, true to form, ignored the rules. 
4. The transporter room (or at least the one in this episode) is on Deck 4.
5. The Klingon D7 starship, seen here in its design or early construction phase, has been seen throughout Trek. 
6. My wife and I both thought that L'Rell's residence looks a bit like Rivendell.
7. That data storage device looks a LOT like a 3.5 inch floppy disk, complete with write protection hole.  But is also looks a bit like the storage disks they used in TOS, which is presumably their intent.
8. "Post-war the Klingons are growing their hair again." Referencing the short hair on TOS Klingons, which was yet another time of war between the Klingons and the Federation?
9. In the jogging scene, there was Tilly, another woman, and two men.  In the bridge exercise later, there were two men, Tilly, and a couple of Mays.  Did the other woman wash out already? Or was she a training officer (she had a different colored shirt)?
10. May thinks Stamitz is the captain of the ship, and thinks he is terrifying.  But she needs to talk to him, or her plan will fall apart. Somehow Tilly is special to her, and her only chance...for something.
11. The "red angel" told Spock where Michael was when she ran away from home, years ago. Furthermore, Spock followed Michael around like a shadow, until she pushed him away and hurt him irreparably. She believed that the "logic extremists" would target him, if they could not target her.
12. May is some sort of apparition from the Mycellium, but so was Hugh appearing to Stamitz during the jumps, right?  Are they working together or at odds?  In both cases they have been helpful, but there is certainly an agenda at work.  Note that both Tilly and Stamitz have had spores get inside them.
13. House Kor is a reference to the Klingon character or, played by John Colicos in the TOS episode Errand of Mercy.
14. The Section 31 ship is reminiscent of Spock's warp shuttle in TMP, but presumably much bigger.
15. Didn't you love Phillip making googly eyes at eh baby, until ash looked at her?
16. The Klingon monastery at Boreth was mentioned in the TNG episode Rightful Heir, which featured Worf visiting it.
17. The look Phillipa gives the baby at the end the the episode is tender, but she hardens her face when she sees someone is looking at her.  To be the lead on her own spin-off series, she NEEDS some redeeming qualities.

An Obol for Charon

1. May gives us a moderately big reveal in this episode about why she is there, grooming Tilly for something.
2. This episode also makes a major character development for Saru.
3. Number One has been described in some non-canon sources as being a genetically perfect example of her species, making the name both a starship title, and possible a real name. But what's with her eating a cheeseburger and fries? I guess if she IS biologically perfect, she doesn't need to worry about healthy eating.
4. Note that she mentions Enterprise Chief Bouvier, presumably a reference to the chief engineer.  That suggests that Scotty is not yet in that job.  Also, they retconned NOT using the kinds of holographic displays on Enterprise in 10 years that Discovery has now.
5. Also note that her PADD is taller in the back than in the front, a bit like TOS PADDs (but not exactly). However later in the episode, the doctor's PADD and Michael's is just an ordinary flat screen.
6. Oh, great, there's some sort of conspiracy in Starfleet, causing Spock's case to be classified more highly than it should be. Conspiracies in Starfleet have been done to death.
7. Did Commander Nhan show up really abruptly in the briefing?  She she really her, or a mycelium entity, appearing to everybody, not just Tilly? 
8. There is a chief engineer on Discovery who we have not met.
9. There is more than one sickbay on Discovery. There was a reference to "take non-critical to sickbay 2."
10. Doctor Pollard's comm badge is NOT the overlapping circles for "sciences" like on the TOS Enterprise, but rather a little black version of the red cross denoting medical.
11. Saru and Michael seem very close in this episode, even though in last season he was telling her how dangerous she was and how he resented her for keeping him from being first officer.
12. Discovery has EPS systems, even though they were never mentioned in TOS and were allegedly new in TNG. They used antibodies to slow the virus progress, but it wasn't until Voyager that ships had bio-neural gel packs that contain synthetic neural cells for circuitry.
13. So the sphere is 100,000 years old and now we have everything it has seen and experienced.  Kind of like Vyger, huh? And there was a reference to "all library computers" implying more than one.
14. Discovery's jumps harm the residents of the Mycelium network, which is maybe why TOS, TNG, etc, never heard of it. One is reminded of the Voyager episodes Equinox, in which the smaller ship was killing alien lifeforms to get a boost toward home.

27 Things you may have missed in Star Trek Discovery

Screen capture under copyright fair use

I believe that I have seen every Star Trek episode and movie so far, so of course I am interested in Star Trek Discovery.  I enjoy looking at story lines and visual elements, but I also enjoy watching for the little details that other reviewers often don't mention.

There are no significant spoilers about the story line, but here are some details I notice in the first two Discovery episodes of season two, Brother and New Eden.

1.  Spock told Pike about Michael ("He said you were smart") but not Kirk about Sybok.  Is there a chance that Kirk DID know about Michael, but it never come up on screen? 

2.  Change of command cannot be transferred without DNA authentication witnessed by the entire bridge crew since the war.  Tell that to Matt Decker and that other guy who appropriated Enterprise ten years later.  

3.  Pike served on the USS Antares, poor ship (it's the one that Charlie X blew up). 

4.  The Enterprise "new uniforms" are exactly the same design and cut, except with different colored fabric.  The design makes the Discovery uniforms look like jumpsuits, but the same design makes the Enterprise new uniforms look a separate top and trousers.  The trousers that go with Pike's gold shirt uniform have zippered pockets, by the way, and I believe that e have never seen pockets in a Starfleet uniform before. 

5.  In episode one, Tilly talks about living with ghosts, which actually happens to her in later episodes. Foreshadowing.  

6.  Michael's pillow is on her bed vertically, now horizontally, like most people have their pillows. Maybe it's pre-positioned for sitting up in bed.

7. Their phaser pistols DO have the little phaser 1 on top. They look a lot more like TOS phasers than the ones Pike had on Talos IV.  Plus, why did they take the bigger pistols to New Eden when they wanted masquerade as locals? With no threat obvious, the littler ones would be more inconspicuous. 

8. During the Klingon war, which the Federation almost lost, Enterprise was too far away to come back?  That means months at high warp (or what was high warp back then) because the war lasted at least ten months.  Were all of the Constitution Class ships that far out? 

11. The ships we see outside the window in Brother tractoring Enterprise look a lot like Miranda Class, with old-style nacelles. 

12. When Spock gave up the Kolinahr because he sensed Vyger from a distance, maybe his consuming curiosity came from the fact that he'd been through it all before with the still-mysterious Red Angel. "Wait - another one?"

13. In episode 1, Pike says he needs a new Ready Room.  By episode 2 he has one, and it is apparently NOT right off the bridge, as the old one was.  The new one has a surprising number of decorative items for a temporary captain. 

14 In New Eden, when Michael arrives on the bridge, Tilly says she has been using Michael's station to run calibration modeling programs, but the things she has open on the desktop are Command Training Program manuals, checklists, a "to do" list, and private messages. 

15. Identifying the location of the New Eden red signal needed better technobabble. Discovery uses a momentary warp jump to get closer to a signal in order to pinpoint its location, but being in maximum warp for five seconds is inconsequential compared to the 51,450 light years away the signal actually was. This compares to the roughly 70,000 light years Voyager was swept by the Caretaker, past the Beta Quadrant into the Delta Quadrant. Did Captain Janeway ever consider going to the known human colony on New Eden?   

16. Nice that Discovery mentions the ban on human genetic engineering that was featured in Star Trek Enterprise episodes and that resulted from the Eugenics Wars. 

17. "Be bold, be brave, be courageous" sounds like an embryonic catchphrase. 

18. The Discovery is under red or yellow alert, little motion graphics appear at the upper left and right of the bridge view screen to remind everybody. Presumably Black and Blue alerts, also.

19. Saru can determine how long the radio message has been transmitted based on "audiophonic degradation"?  Technobabble failure. 

20. Lots of people have comments on the reference to reframing Arthur C. Clark's third law. Suggesting that "any sufficiently advanced extraterrestrial intelligence is indistinguishable from God" pretty well lays out that this a YAGLA story arc (the term used by fans for "Yet Another God-like Alien"). 

21. Tilly referred to her metreon-charged asteroid and metreon-charged dark matter.  Metreons have mentioned several time in Star Trek's past, including as particles that interact with dark matter.  Nice technobabble continuity. 

22. In Brother, Michael has several holographic candles burning in her room, whereas in the New Eden church, real candles are burning during the day, plus flaming torches outside at night, with none of the locals around. Apparently the locals have plenty of candle-making and oil refining capability.  In addition, the basement lights are bright and have wires running to them.  They can keep them lit, but not the lights upstairs? Plus the power to run the transmitter for years and years?  Inconsistent portrayal. 

23. It looks like each of the seven red signals is leading Discovery to a rescue mission, but each of them seems to be a manipulated event - by May or somebody else?  Seven signals equals half of the season.  Will the second half of the season be a different story arc, like last season? 

24. I don't get how the entire 365 degree ring is heading toward the planet, but pulling away just some of the debris in one place pulls all the debris everywhere away.  By the way, the "donut in a starship" wasn't all that great a special effect.  A donut is a 360 degree skid.  Sorry, producers - the visual effect didn't pay off. 

25. Transporters can't lock on to the Metreon asteroid rock (Brother) but tractor beams can (New Eden)? Plot device. 

26. There did not appear to be a bell in the church belfry.  They should have one, plus lights there.

27.  The episode preview at the end of New Eden shows the Discovery commissioning plaque.  She is Crossfield Class, presumably a reference to famous pilot Scott Crossfield, the first pilot to fly at twice the speed of sound.

So, yes, these are the kinds of things I look at when each new Star Trek episode, along with the more obvious things like story line, script, visual presentation, and acting.

Does The Wall really make sense?

As a college teacher, I avoid expressing political opinions in class.....but the new semester has not yet started yet, so, here are my comments on the proposed border wall, which is the consuming sticking point on the federal government shutdown.

1.  Big/long walls are not effective.  The full extent of the Berlin Wall required watch towers and guards, and people still got across.  The Great Wall of China (I've been there) is really a series of watch towers and an elevated road connecting them, not a barrier.  A good extension ladder would get people over The Great Wall pretty easily. 

2.  A border wall would require intensive guarding.  It would cost billions annually  for cameras, drones, aircraft, and ground patrols along nearly 2,000 miles of fence.  It would require hundreds of not thousands of guards.

3.  In spite of that, people WILL find a way over, under, around, or through the wall, when guards happen to NOT be looking. Humans are ingenious, particularly when their lives are in danger.  

4. The real cost of The Wall would be $30+ Billion, which that does not include the huge ongoing personal and programmatic costs mentioned in #2 above.  

5.  The wall would require condemnation of private property and destruction of wildlife sanctuaries.  In Texas, at least, one-third of the land needed for the border wall is owned by the federal government or Native American tribes. The rest is owned by states and private property owners, some of it owned before statehood. 

6.  The proposed wall would violate Christian teaching and whether or not you are Christian, it is hard to defend in terms of ethics and morality, particularly since the focus of stopping people is refugees seeking asylum because their lives are threatened back home.  

7. Drugs do not come in via refugees seeking asylum, but rather come hidden in luggage through legal checkpoints, or tunnels, drone flights, etc.  Any drug argument related to advocating for the wall is specious. 

8.  Illegal immigration has been down every year since 2007. I don't like the family separations and internment camps of the Trump administration, but what we have been doing for the last decade is working. 

9.  Most "illegal immigrants" have been in this country for more than a decade, such as overstaying their visas. A high percentage of them have children who are citizens by birthright.

10.  I am sorry, buy I do not trust the president to make wise decisions.  His constant logical fallacies, outright lies, and the way his actions reveal his morality have left me feeling that virtually everything he does lacks any semblance of critical thinking. So I am suspicious of his rationale. 

The conservative Cato Institute says, “President Trump’s wall would be a mammoth expenditure that would have little impact on illegal immigration.”

For the president and the current GOP, the Wall is a symbol of fear that would cost a huge amount of money and would not be effective, because it is not based on evidence or a solid plan.

The better solution is comprehensive and realistic immigration reform, period.