[B5] Season 4's End

We watched only three episodes last night, "Endgame" and "Rising Star" from the end of Season 4, and in place of the relatively inessential Season 4 finale "The Deconstruction of Falling Stars" the series finale "Sleeping in Light". "Sleeping in Light" was shot during the fourth-season production run, at a time when it wasn't clear whether the show would be renewed for a fifth season. Fortunately, Babylon 5 was picked up by TNT, and "Sleeping in Light" was displaced a season.

( Analysis. Spoilers, needless to say. )

[BRIEF NOTE] My alma mater's nerve broke

My first alma mater, rather.

At the University of Prince Edward Island, a student newspaper became one of the first Canadian papers to reprint the incendiary editorial cartoons when it published them in its Wednesday edition.

The drawings were included in 2,000 copies of the UPEI Cadre that were distributed on campus. University administration promptly ordered the papers taken off the stands, however.

Ray Keating, the editor-in-chief of the campus newspaper, defended his decision to print the cartoons. He said they were published along with commentary to provide the information people require to make an informed decision.

"We decided that prefaced with our comments, showing the cartoons for what they are was the only way to allow people to have their own opinion on the matter (of) whether they're offensive or not," Keating told CTV Newsnet.

"So many people seemed to be ready to condemn the cartoons and say it was a terrible thing based on the events that were happening in Syria. But most of the people, if not all of the people we spoke to had never seen the cartoons."

The university's administration took a strong stance against the publication of the cartoons, calling it a "reckless move," and defending the decision to pull the newspapers.

"The administration has taken this action on grounds that publication of the caricatures represents a reckless invitation to public disorder and humiliation," said a statement. "The university acknowledges the debates about press freedom and responsibility generated by this matter."

My thanks to london_calling for calling this news item to my attention. I'm just sorry that this news item didn't cover the school administration's straightforward defense of The Cadre.

More on this later.

[BRIEF NOTE] Itchy and Scratchy in the Levant

Via CBC.

Acting Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, in his first interview since taking power last month, will tell the Israeli public he intends to hold on to Israel's three major settlement blocs as well as West Bank communities on the border with Jordan, the interviewer told Army Radio on Tuesday.

This would be the first time that Olmert went into detail on Israel's final borders as he sees them, and position his Kadima Party more clearly ahead of March 28 elections. The interview with Olmert was taped Tuesday morning and is to be broadcast Tuesday night. Asked by Army Radio what the highlights of the interview were, reporter Nissim Mishal said it was the first time that Olmert went into detail on what Israel would retain.

Pressed on whether Olmert specified whether he intended to hold on to the three settlement blocs and the Jordan Valley settlements, Mishal replied, "Yes, yes. This is the first time that a sitting prime minister . . . has mentioned the communities that you mentioned - the Jordan Valley, Ariel, Gush Etzion, Maaleh Adumim."

Such frontiers would leave a Palestinian entity in the West Bank without any land frontiers with a country apart from Israel, and without very many territorial resources with which to support and to control the the densely Palestinian-populated urban and periurban areas that will make up a non-Israeli West Bank entity. The similarity of this landlocked and isolated situation to that of South Africa's bantustans is, of course, eminently debatable. More's the pity that it has to be debatable.

[LINK] Shanghainese Online

Via Language Hat, this interesting homepage for the Shanghaineae regiolect.

[MUSIC] Fiona Apple, Extraordinary Machine

My thanks to D. for the kind birthday gift of Fiona Apple's latest, Extraordinary Machine. Yes, she's a brilliant songwriter and a wonderful singer. I'm surprised that none of the reviews mentioned her obvious sense of humour.

[REVIEW] Harry Turtledove, A World of Difference

One major problem with Cold War-era interplanetary space opera is that the solar system just isn't that interesting: no habitable environments to settle, no obviously valuable resources to exploit, no contentious native populations to clientelize. Harry Turtledove's 1988 novel A World of Difference neatly alters this setting by replacing our small cold barren Mars with the much more Earth-like planet of Minerva. It stretches credulity that the first impact of a planet ten times as massive of our Mars on human history came when, in 1976, the landing Viking spacecraft was attacked by a spear-wielding hexapodal native, and that the only impact this had on human history was the unfortunate premature death of Gorbachev in 1986. Further, as this reviewer notes, Turtledove's Minervans are psychologically rather human-like despite their serious physiological, while the leaden dialogue of Turtledove's latest books has a clear genealogy in this, one of his earliest.

All these problems keep A World of Difference from being anything more than a pleasant minor science-fiction novel, but it achieves the bare minimum nicely, with its the transposition of Cold War tensions into an alien civilization only partly understood. What legacies will historical materialism and late-modern capitalism leave on Minerva? Will females remain doomed to premature death in birthing? Can humans and Minervans be friends? A World of Difference's answers may be obvious, but I liked reading each answer as it appeared. Not everything has to be at the level of Clarke or Asimov, after all.