Rich Hoffman's Blog, page 408
May 14, 2014
The DEKA Arm: New inventions inspired by ‘Star Wars’
I speak often about Star Wars not just because it is a cool story or that society has a need for escapism but that it has entered the realm of myth which will affect human civilization for millenniums going forward. Star Wars has more power than all the stories of the King Author legends, all the tribulations of Siddhārtha Gautama Buddha, the Greek gods of Athens or the gods of Norse legend. Star Wars has had such an impact on global youth from 1977 that we are now seeing the effects of a new generation of invention which is only just now manifesting. A few months ago I told the story of Leia Display Systems, CLICK HERE FOR REVIEW. That communication device is directly influenced by Star Wars. It is a case where the mind of invention desires to make mythology into reality. With just six films and a handful of television shows accompanied by books and comics, Star Wars over the last 30 years has had a major impact on world culture. And now, under Disney—it will become much more pronounced. I predict within ten years that Star Wars will inspire changes in religion, philosophy, education, science, politics, and every creative endeavor from architecture to engineering. Star Wars is reaching a critical mass in its mythological development that is driving us all in a new direction.
Yet again, Star Wars has inspired a new invention, this time a device for amputees. Anyone who knows the Star Wars films understands that both Anakin and his son Luke Skywalker both had to make use of robotic arms and hands to overcome handicaps. One of the central themes of the films are the reasons that individuals become mechanical—whether literally—biologically, or metaphorically by surrendering individual will to institutional necessity. Star Wars tackles a lot of deep issues including handicaps—and this has driven many science obsessed minds to solving these problems in the real world. CNN is among the many media outlets covering the results of this breakthrough endeavor.
(CNN) — Amputees will soon get help from a groundbreaking bionic arm, thanks to the inventor of the Segway and a little inspiration from “Star Wars.”
After almost eight years of research and testing, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration has approved the DEKA arm, a prosthetic controlled by signals from the brain. Unlike most current prostheses, the DEKA can perform such delicate tasks as zipping up a coat, unlocking a door with a key or handling an egg without breaking it.
Funded by DARPA, the research branch of the Pentagon, the DEKA project was overseen by Dean Kamen, who invented the Segway personal vehicle. Kamen nicknamed the DEKA arm “Luke” after Luke Skywalker, the “Star Wars” hero who was fitted for a prosthetic after losing his right hand in a light-saber duel with Darth Vader.
The FDA is calling the device the first prosthetic arm that can perform multiple, simultaneous movements via electromyogram electrodes, which detect electrical signals from the contraction of muscles close to where the prosthesis is attached.
http://www.cnn.com/2014/05/12/tech/innovation/deka-bionic-arm-kamen/
I see this device as a rather primitive version of a coming reality that is before us all. It is only a matter of a few years where there will be robots driven by complicated processors that can articulate movement as well as these prosthetic arms. Humans will simply grow new body parts in the future. But what is driving this science is the mythology of Star Wars. More and more we are seeing inventions dedicated to the inventor’s favorite film—often Star Wars and the frequency level is increasing.
When I speak so often about the miracle of Fantasy Flight Games X-Wing Miniatures table top game I am not just talking about a neat game—but a mythology that is boiling over into other aspects of culture where more inventive activity will transpire. My excitement about these events is that there is a creation of new things that will pave the way for a new kind of renaissance in human thinking. For instance, it does no good to have a great economic system like capitalism if philosophically society is following Immanuel Kant and is held by back religiously by a Roman interpretation of Christianity calling for sacrifice and altruism as the building blocks of civilization. Star Wars deals with these problems in a modern way that has more relevance. Adversely, it does no good to give away ourselves in sacrifice if nobody makes anything. In Star Wars, without Han Solo—the equivocal capitalist—Star Wars would fall apart. In fact, of the two most popular Star Wars characters are Han Solo and Boba Fett—both capitalists who are the most valued characters. The self-sacrifice of Luke Skywalker, Princess Leia, Senator Amidala, or even Obi Wan Kenobi are not as respected. Fans of the movies generally feel reverence for these characters, but they don’t respect them in the same way. This is an important distinction that sets Star Wars apart from other entertainment venues.
I read the early script of Star Wars as George Lucas intended it, and let me tell you—it sucks—“may the force of others be with you.” Yuck. Lucas needed the hot rod hero of Han Solo to give context to Star Wars—and to his own life. After all, here was a deeply concerned young hippie from the USC film program learning about the values of socialism in college who became one of the biggest and richest capitalists on planet earth. There is a lot of Han Solo in George Lucas—more than he’d like to admit. He wanted to think of himself as Luke Skywalker, but deep down inside, Lucas is still the race car driver from Modesto, California who wanted to grow up to be an anthropologist. So he took those two traits and put them together in the character played by Harrison Ford—Indiana Jones and science was changed forever for all different reasons. But Lucas was rich, and Star Wars to the business world is about making money by selling mythology to a world hungry for every morsel of value enshrined from it. Star Wars cannot be described by generalizations—because it is concerned with deep-seated primordial necessity.
Inventions dedicated to Star Wars will explode under the new Disney ownership and let me say—I am extremely happy about it. This new prosthetic arm is just the tip of the iceberg. I can see it as clearly as the words on this page. The next 50 years of human evolution will be among the most exciting in all history—and Star Wars will be a tremendous part of it—it will touch even casual fans in ways they cannot possibly imagine.
For those who are looking around and wondering if there is any hope……………there is. It’s not just in invention that Star Wars is reshaping the way we see the world. I think philosophy will be far more impacted than even science, invention and religion will mold itself around these new philosophies introduced by Star Wars. Those philosophies will not be limited the way humans have confined themselves under Kant, or Marx, but will prosper in a ways that Aristotle always intended. There is real power in the teachings of Yoda that extend well beyond conventional science fiction, and those lessons have raised a new generation who thinks nothing of naming their new prosthetic arm after Luke Skywalker. Behind these new ideas are parades of new inventions that will flood the marketplace with a new kind of human being—who have been taught to be a little bit like Han Solo, a bit like Luke Skywalker, wise like Ben Kenobi and even efficient like Darth Vader. It is OK to invent things that help all of society, and it is OK to make money at it. George Lucas did both with Star Wars, and all those who have been inspired by it have learned to walk that balance leading to a prosperous future in more ways than one. That future is an exciting one.
Rich Hoffman www.OVERMANWARRIOR.com
May 13, 2014
The Jackie Robinson Story: Hiding bad behivor behind racism today
I had the opportunity to watch the movie 42 about Jackie Robinson, who was the first black baseball player in the Major Leagues. I normally avoid progressive films, and there is a fine line between progressive propaganda with a political agenda and genuinely good stories, which is what 42 was. The film is one that needed to be made and while watching provoked many thoughts that deserve comment.
Jack Roosevelt “Jackie” Robinson (January 31, 1919 – October 24, 1972) was an American baseball player who became the first African-American to play in Major League Baseball (MLB) in the modern era.[1] Robinson broke the baseball color line when the Brooklyn Dodgers started him at first base on April 15, 1947. As the first major league team to play a black man since the 1880s, the Dodgers ended racial segregation that had relegated black players to the Negro leagues for six decades.[2] The example of Robinson’s character and unquestionable talent challenged the traditional basis of segregation, which then marked many other aspects of American life, and contributed significantly to the Civil Rights Movement.[3][4]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jackie_Robinson
In the film Harrison Ford played Branch Rickey wonderfully which I thought was a heroic story in and of itself. I loved Ford’s role and portrayal and found myself wishing that more people in the world were like Branch Rickey.
Wesley Branch Rickey (December 20, 1881 – December 9, 1965) was an innovative Major League Baseball (MLB) executive elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1967. He was perhaps best known for breaking Major League Baseball’s color barrier by signing African-American player Jackie Robinson, for drafting the first Afro-Hispanic superstar, Roberto Clemente, for creating the framework for the modern minor league farm system, for encouraging the Major Leagues to add new teams through his involvement in the proposed Continental League, and for introducing the batting helmet.
Rickey played in MLB for the St. Louis Browns and New York Highlanders from 1905 through 1907. After struggling as a player, Rickey returned to college, where he learned about administration from Philip Bartelme. Returning to MLB in 1913, Rickey embarked on a successful managing and executive career with the St. Louis Browns, the St. Louis Cardinals, New York Yankees, Brooklyn Dodgers and Pittsburgh Pirates. The Cardinals elected him to their team Hall of Fame in 2014.
Rickey also had a career in the sport of American football, as a player for the professional Shelby Blues and as a coach at Ohio Wesleyan University and Allegheny College. His many achievements and deep Christian faith[1] earned him the nickname “the Mahātmā.”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Branch_Rickey
I found it interesting that Rickey is yet another innovative celebrity from Ohio and in the film the scenes that took place with the Cincinnati Reds at the old Crosely Field were stunning. It was a reminder again of how much Cincinnati and specifically Ohio helped shape the nature of America. I enjoy baseball, and love the role Crosely Field played in the early days of Cincinnati’s development, so it was fun to see Crosely Field alive in the film 42. To learn more about Crosely Field, click the link below for a complete history and lots of photographs.
Jackie Robinson and Branch Rickey were noble men from an era that I desperately love. I would never support racism, and respected Robinson’s crusade. I have been friends with many black men over my life, and my experience has been similar to the kind of people Robinson was. I respected their politeness, their manly swagger, and their deep commitment to goodness. Goodness does not know color and clearly, especially after watching Jackie Robinson’s story in 42, as a baseball player he wanted to do “good” and the world is far better off for it.
However, the premise of racism as it is today is to allow bad behavior to go unchecked because of skin color, and this is not right. Jackie Robinson if he were alive today would likely condemn rappers like Jay-Z and Snoop Dog for taking the very things he fought for as a black man and squandering them away using the color of their skin to be detrimental paradoxes of oblivious conduct. Robinson was careful to always present himself as a gentleman to the public and he ultimately won the battle against racism by capturing the high moral ground of the public. Yet against his memory looters, scum bags and social malcontents want moral judgment against their bad behavior obliterated behind a mask of racism. After watching 42 I came away feeling that Robinson loved his wife, loved his children, loved his teams, was honorable and appreciative of Branch Rickey and was a gentleman in every way to the press. That is the kind of person all Americans regardless of skin color should try to emulate.
Yet too many people of color today wish to hide their poor life choices from judgment by conjuring up memories of the kind of racism that Jackie Robinson dealt with—which is an injustice that is not forgivable. For the welfare mothers abusing the system to get free money from the government with out-of-wedlock children, they are disgracing the good work that Jackie Robinson conducted. To the dope smoking gangstas’ from the inner cities—Robinson didn’t fight so hard and put up with so much to have low moral values hide behind the race card. Or to the man who romps around the African-American communities like a bee to flowers impregnating as many women as possible without any sense of responsibility, Robinson did not fight so that you could be such a loser.
I loved the scene in 42 where the little African-American kid chased the train until it was out of sight because Robinson was on it. Jackie Robinson was the boy’s idol. Young people need those kinds of idols, and it doesn’t matter the skin color, it is the conduct of those people who can set the pace of young people forever and give them something to live up to. All Snoop Dog and Jay-Z are doing is justifying why people should stay down and shoot low—and if anybody questions them on their poor lives—call them racists.
42, the movie gave me hope for Hollywood. I loved the movie and will see it again. It was a very patriotic film which deserves its place in history. I’m glad it was made and I’m glad I took the time to watch it. It is my hope that other films like it will be made in the future. Because in such stories are the story of all of us who call ourselves Americans—and no place else in the world are such things done as they are in The United States—even in our games of leisure and evenings of entertainment—of which baseball has a long tradition.
Rich Hoffman www.OVERMANWARRIOR.com
May 12, 2014
Education is Dead: How to properly teach
Friedrich Nietzsche only lived to be 55 years old and most of that last decade he was at a complete loss of his mental faculties. His thoughts at the time were extremely profound—but incomplete. He was on a journey that would require more tweaking over several centuries, but mentally he was going to places no human mind had ever quite dared. And his mind folded over on itself. I think about Nietzsche a lot because I am of that same age as he was and I know the pressure of going against a tide—and am always aware of the fragility of mental stability. The topics I am interested in, Like Nietzsche challenge our views of the world and the way we are all raised. When those foundations are challenged it is possible for a mind to lose its footing and fall into insanity. I came to know Nietzsche through Joseph Campbell’s writing and enjoy his views against institutionalism primarily. When I challenge education establishments with the promise that I could walk into their classrooms and teach better than any four of them put together I fully mean it. When I look out into the world and declare that the entire education structure is false and failing I am doing it with the same audacity that Nietzsche did by declaring that “God is dead.” Education has for many become a kind of religion, so by challenging their premise—they react in much the same manner as religious radicals do—with fearful aggression and empty dares—such as invitations to teach their classrooms.
Teaching for me has always been easy. I do it every single day of my life to people of all ages. But I enjoy it most with children. By the end of this article you will dear reader understand why. Because I cannot explain such a thing until the proper context has been established. But I offer it out there to those who read here from that education industry and are perplexed by my statements in much the same way that orthodox members of the church read Nietzsche and wondered how he could pronounce such an audacious declaration. I am different from Nietzsche as he only conceptualized the ideal of an overman. His body was sickly and his mind was not ready to deal with the weight of such realizations, and he crashed into his own thoughts. Hindsight provides good maps, and I know how to read them. This lesson I take seriously as I pronounce that “Education is dead.” Here is why.
My wife and I had our grandson for the evening over the weekend so we took him to Frisch’s for dinner. At this point he is only a year and a half old, so his mind is turning on rapidly and everything is an adventure. I enjoy this age in kids the best because their minds are unwritten by corruption, and everything is literally a possibility. I use these opportunities to teach. We arrived at the restaurant and I took my grandson out of his car seat. I did not carry him, but let him walk across the parking lot by himself, step up onto the sidewalk, alone, and proceed right along with his grandmother and me as an equal.
We were greeted by a kindly old woman who was a hostess and she was instantly dazzled by my grandson’s audacity. He confidently walked into the dining room like a big person very serious seeing for the first time a world approached in such a way under his own power. Along the wall by the pickup window were five young waitresses ages 19 to 25 who instantly fell in love with my grandson. Most children these sizes are carried in like a purse, and nuisance to tired parents. This little guy was self-reliant—at least he gave off that impression and it was attractive to see such an open mind so confident. I let him walk to the booth the hostess guided us to and only helped him a little into a seat next to me. The hostess asked if we wanted a booster seat which I declined. I didn’t want my grandson to be stuck in such a thing reminding him that he was different from us.
We ordered our food and I let my grandson conduct himself as an adult. I showed him how to color with the crayons the hostess had provided by letting him copy my efforts. I didn’t tell him to color in the lines of his kids menu, but to simply use the crayons to his desire. The food came, and he ate with us pleasantly. Occasionally he would spontaneously wave at the waitresses who were very happy to respond back to him. To me all these kids are only a few years apart, but to the girls and my grandson, they are about to inject themselves into relationships where they can have kids of their own and they of course hoped they could have children as cute as he was. But more than that, adults love the presence of innocence—of a mind uncorrupted by the perils of life—a mind filling itself with potential and it makes them feel happy. We often look at teenage kids and young adults with disdain because as they make choices that we know will fail them, we despise what they will become. 9 out of 10 adults know that those rambunctious teenagers will end up just like them in a few years—and sadness ensues. But for a child the age of my grandson, everything is yet unwritten and it is nice to see such hope in the eyes of a child. Most of the adults in the Frisch’s dining room was looking in our direction with a smile on their faces.
After dinner we conducted ourselves the same repeating the exercise of self-reliance. We then proceeded to Hallmark to make some Mother’s Day purchases. My grandson cannot yet talk in sentences, but he is very expressive and we spoke to him like he was a normal person—again equal to us. Of course we know he isn’t, but there is no need to show our superiority over him. Life will provide enough blowback to his enthusiasm. What little people like him need most is samples to learn from—they learn by example—so providing context to memorize is the most important attribute—and success to build from. For a kid his age every step in life is a success—so such evenings are opportunities to have a lot of little success. At Hallmark again I let him walk into the store on his own. Instantly every female in the store stopped and looked his way.
For my grandson the sights and sounds of the Hallmark store were too much for him. Everything was a new adventure and he quickly saw Disney characters he knew from television and wanted to pick up everything and carry it around with him. I let him. As he moved from object to object I put away the things he discarded as his mind filled with the feel of textures, the smell of various products, and the visual stimulation of their color tones. My grandson was erupting with enthusiasm.
Again the girls working the store were of the same age as the Frisch’s waitresses and they had the same reaction. They couldn’t help but be enchanted by him. He was the kind of child they hoped to have themselves soon. On their minds were not thoughts of saving the rain forest, or equal rights for same-sex couples, or even equal pay for women. They wanted to be moms and to have children like this little fellow and they would do so in less than a second if they could manage to find men in their lives who weren’t douche bags who wanted the sex, but not the responsibility of raising a family. Most of their boyfriends only wanted sex with them to satisfy their biological hunger so they could then return back to their Xbox to play games that are much more interesting than girlfriends. There was sadness in the eyes of these girls and I felt sorry for them.
I let my grandson roam about inside the store and outside it for about a half hour while my wife shopped. We discovered all kinds of things. I let him walk around the busy parking lot outside and stood in such a way to keep cars from running into him. If he wanted to walk across the street, I stopped the traffic to allow him the freedom of movement. We found outside lots of strange bugs, rocks, and varying surface profiles of the pavement. When he would step into one of these declinations in surface he would say, “down.” “Yes, that is down.” My wife bought him a new Mickey Mouse ball which was his favorite thing in the store and a nice memory to the evening. At the counter I held him so he could watch the cashier who was nearly in tears over his adult like cuteness ring up the ball. I told him, “we are conducting an exchange of currency so you can have your ball.” Two other girls standing nearby erupted into smiles and a woman who had been watching us for the entire half hour boldly said, “if he says that……….it will be too much for me. “ I kept my focus on my grandson and explained to him the value of the money my wife was giving the cashier was to evenly exchange the value of the ball that he would take home with him so he’d understand that something had to be produced to have something he desired.
That was just a sample of a few hours of one evening. There have been others like it and there will be many more and that is the task of learning. The reason my grandson was cute to the adults around him was not just his miniature mimicking of adult behavior, but the untarnished potential of the life in front of him. He literally has the whole world before him, and it is delightful to see the light come on in his mind. This is no doubt why many people become mothers and teachers—to experience this joy. However, when minds are stifled to statism and handcuffed by social prerogative which says that one is too small to sit in a booth by themselves, or the road is too dangerous, or you must color in the lines provided, or don’t pick up all the colorful contents of a store, or items they desire magically appear in their arms from a loving grandmother without having any idea how it came to be, we destroy the minds of those children and within a few short years, those bright lights in their mind’s eye go out.
Children grow up with the limits we give them, and it starts at a very young age. For every teacher, parent, or guardian too lazy to put back things on a shelf, or doubt their ability to protect children from a speeding car or to explain the value of money to a mind still assembling connectivity—everything they do or don’t do has an impact on the child. The limits they place will continue on with a child their whole life and will either destroy them, or benefit them. If teaching is not 100% concerned with this adventure in learning, but simply in compliance—it is failing. At that point it can be said that education in America is dead, and it will not be resurrected under the current pretense. It will have to be reinvented.
Rich Hoffman
May 11, 2014
50 Years of Marriage: The Rams draft Michael Sam–the first openly gay NFL player
It was a rare privilege these days to attend the 50th wedding anniversary of some family friends hosted at a church they had spent their entire life attending. Prior to the event my wife and I had just celebrated a few days ago our own anniversary of 26 years. My parents were there and next year they will celebrate their own 50th anniversary. Growing up I had two sets of grandparents who both went past the 50 year marriage mark which didn’t seem unusual back then. In the middle of the celebration came the news through social media that Michael Sam had been drafted in the 7th round by the St Louis Rams—which was significant because he is the first openly gay player to enter the NFL. Talk about locker room tension, or even on the field concern of being tackled by the guy who will unquestionably struggle to keep his sexuality in check around naked men every day. The kind of idiots who think that gay athletes can be paired together without circumstance are the same fools who can’t fathom being married for 50 years to a member of the opposite sex, raising a family and falling in rhythm with that person in a lifelong dance that builds good people as byproducts to the relationship.
A long time friend of mine gave a nice speech to the crowd amassed in the bowels of the Grace Baptist Church in Middletown about how important his parents had been to he and his sister over all those years. It wasn’t difficult for him to conger up many good memories of all the years his parents had been there for him like a rock to depend on. As I listened I knew my own children and now grand children had similar thoughts which would become that much more pronounced when my wife and I hit our own 50 year mark. That seems like a long time ago, but we realized during the speech that all these 50 year marriages had essentially all been present at our own wedding and they were at the stage then that we are now. I remember thinking at the end of the 1980s when divorce was becoming rampant and easy by lawyers looking to make money off other people’s misery that many then thought 25 to 30 years of marriage was impossible, yet many were present at our own wedding at the Becket Ridge Country Club. That in itself was sadly unusual.
Long marriages are not about sexuality. They are about teamwork, commitment, determination, tenacity, love, and a willingness to walk through the fires of life and spit out the flames one by one at whatever cost. No marriage over such a long time goes without pitfalls because life has a way of issuing out detours to such journeys without any compassion to our sensitivities. Long time couples find a way to work through things and come out on the other end and their families are stronger for it.
The news of the new openly gay NFL player is a judgment based on a person’s sexuality only. It is a progressive desire to destroy all resemblance of traditional family values and place before the world the progressive notion of an athlete that is gay as though such a thing could be normal. Regardless of how one believes another might become gay, the fact that Michael Sam is will without question cause difficulties in the lives of his teammates.
Being married for a long time I can declare with safety that if I were playing football and the cheerleaders had to shower in the same location as my team mates, my wife would not be OK with that. The reason is because sexuality needs to be focused and conducted in the bedroom of our home in order for her to manage all the other tasks of our family. Having nakedness and sexual temptation outside of our marriage would then weaken all the important tasks in our relationship, such as picking out new trees for our yard, keeping track of events in the extended family, needs that the children might have and so on. Seeing the naked bodies of many women even if the occurrences did not lead to sex would be distracting to our relationship. It introduces elements that would pull the context of our marriage maneuvers into the primal realm which is not sustaining to families at large. It’s not a matter of trust so much as sacrament. If every other young woman prancing around gets a nice view of the tripod and can go home to satisfy themselves to its memory—what sacrament is there for my wife who is then supposed to worship it as a phallic beast meant only for her appeasement. At football games she would know that all the little girls had the same knowledge of it as she. They may not handle it but the vision of it is there in their minds for their enjoyment.
NFL player wives already have to accept that their husbands are likely cheating on them while on the road for away games. That is bad enough. But now they have to worry that Michael Sam will be doing more than playing ball on a football field and even if it isn’t beyond just looking—the act will be a sexual one. For a man who likes to be under other men, nobody can legitimately ponder that for a gay male—being on the bottom of a football pile is not a fantasy that he will carry with him to his private acts. For each man who adds a bit of sweat and odor to the fantasies of Michael Sam, it is sexual essence robbed from the wives of the players who are left with almost nothing sacred for their own bedroom. Part of the appeal of a married couple is that their sexuality is committed to each other—not the world at large.
I do not like it when my wife goes to a doctor. Her nakedness belongs to me. Now, in the scheme of the human body we are all just clumps of flesh and once the soul is removed, the body decays away into dirt. Humans bring value to such nakedness through their relationships. If every other man out there has seen the naked body of a wife, then there is less sacred appeal in the bedroom—and anybody who has been married for a long time knows the need for such things. Sure you get used to seeing each other but there is still purity in knowing that every neighbor up and down the street has not seen her which makes her treasures a gift of the relationship. Without such enticements, fighting through the really hard stuff is not very appealing—and people usually give up. This is also why being married to a stripper will bring unusual tension to a relationship. It might be fun while she is young and attractive, but down the road when her old customers are lonely and looking her up online after she’s popped out a couple of kids—her naked body will be on their mind. They don’t want to talk—but to remember.
To people who think marriage is a mystery and really have no clue to how relationships work, they are cheering for the progressive step forward society has taken as the St. Louis Rams drafted Michael Sam. They believe that putting a gay man in a locker-room with other guys will actually work but it won’t, mark my words. The two things are not biologically, or intellectually compatible and the tension of sexual premise will be distracting to the organization in a very negative way. Progressives are fine with the conflict, because they are out to change the essence of how human beings conduct relationships. They are interested in the social impact of changing behavior—especially in marriage.
An old friend sat at my table at this anniversary dinner—one I hadn’t seen in about 20 years. We picked up our conversation upon the last sentences we had uttered two decades ago only he filled me in on the three marriages he had over that duration. Such things are normal these days. Having children with one wife then children with a second and third and trying to see all those kids who are essentially being raised by other men who do not share the same kind of values as the original father is simply destroying children—and these days it is normal behavior. Nobody thinks twice about hearing his story—but when people find out that my wife and I have been married for a quarter century they almost act like they stumbled into a leprosy village. Yet everyone yearns for the 50 year anniversary. I doubt there is a woman alive who goes to her wedding day not hoping to someday celebrate 50 years of marriage to her husband. Yet increasingly, such thoughts are a fleeting fantasy.
The progressives have destroyed the lives of many millions of people by teaching them the wrong values; this latest stunt involving Michael Sam is just the most recent. Unisex bathrooms, easy pornography, and cheapened sexuality mixing gender roles attacking the family unit of tradition aggressively have destroyed our modern culture and left the children to be raised essentially by government schools. Behind every marriage these days is a parade of parasitic lawyers chasing after the couple like hyenas waiting for one of them to stumble so that legal action against the other can take place and the state can take control of the children. What my friend was thanking his parents for at the anniversary dinner was for giving him a sense of tradition and value as the trend has moved toward thinking that the Michael Sam draft is fashionable. Anybody coming from such long-term marriages whether it is my friend, me, or my children are lucky and we know it. But it will be up to us to protect such opportunities in the future as the trend is against it. Yet it shouldn’t be.
Rich Hoffman
Today’s………………………..Man: Something to cry over
This was yesterday’s man………………….
This is today’s NFL player………………..
This is today’s Speaker of the House……………………
This is America Tomorrow
I’ll stick with yesterday
Rich Hoffman
May 10, 2014
Ohio Rights Group: Exploiting children to legalize pot
Family Supports Medical Marijuana
How far would you go to ease your child’s pain?
Unless Ohio’s law changes, some families are considering relocating. Family Supports Medical Marijuana
That is the tag line of the progressive organization Ohio Rights Group who is attempting to exploit children in the same way that government schools do in order to pass school levies. They want Ohio passage of laws to use medical marijuana for children as a gateway to overall pot legalization. As usual, isolated cases of children suffering are being exploited by the masses to achieve an ultimate corrosive goal, the ability to smoke pot in public—and it is disgusting. If you voted in the recent primaries in Ohio dear reader you likely saw some of the activity this group was pandering as they are attempting to put the issue on the November 2014 ballot. Here is what they are saying.
Friends of the Ohio Rights Group, do you have one day, or even 4 hours this year to help put therapeutic cannabis and industrial hemp on the ballot in Ohio? Wondering how to use up your vacation time at work? On May 6, we will be executing a coordinated effort to collect a large amount of signatures. Signature gatherers will be provided with training, materials, a polling location, and rules about petitioning at polling locations.
Every single person who exits a polling place is guaranteed to be a registered voter in that county. Teams are being organized now to concentrate on target locations with the goal of obtaining the required number of signatures in 44 of Ohio’s 88 counties by May 7, 2014.
Sign up to be a Polls for Patients hero today. And please, reach out to your friends and family and encourage them to help as well. Click on the link above and someone will contact you to let you know how you can help. Share this link with others and ask them to do the same!
United We Win!!
http://www.ohiorightsgroup.org/
Let me make my position quite clear. I am against drugs of all kinds. I am against alcohol, especially for intoxication purposes, I am against cigarettes, I am against Viagra, Rogaine, aspirin—I don’t like taking substances that alter my state of consciousness, or attempt to trick nature, or change my genetic makeup in any fashion. If something is in pain it is because something is broken and needs to be fixed. It is best not to numb one’s senses to pain—it is best to solve the problem to begin with. We live in an age where there are cures for cancer, although the medical industry does not accept them—and regenerative growth is also an option—again, the medical industry does not support the repair of people. The medical industry advocates the degradation of people so that they can profit off their misery—so they do not support cancer cures and generative growth—generally. This is why they support legalization of marijuana for patients in pain instead of real genetic fixes for the ailments.
The goal of all progressives is interdependence and mass collectivism and marijuana helps them reach critical mass. Marijuana numbs the mind of users and drives down in the mind of participants their individual ambition which helps considerably the progressive objectives in society. Marijuana and alcohol are all about turning off a mind and surrendering thought to outside chemical influences. What make marijuana worse than alcohol are the lasting effects. The ingestion is not as violent as alcohol but it sticks around in the body a whole lot longer. Alcohol consumption is a quick experience. The drunken objectives can be achieved quickly and the body dumps the waste just as fast through the digestive system. Marijuana is much slower in that it doesn’t get processed so much digestively, but through the respiration system and attacks the mind directly.
I have known a lot of people who smoked dope yet I never have even under coercive circumstances. I have heard all the claims that people can smoke dope occasionally and still have successful and productive lives. Well, not by my measure which many think is ridiculously too high. My measure is the one that counts since it is the pace setter for conversation as the target objective. Smoking pot before sex, or to ease away the stresses of a hard day, or just to feel the euphoria of a high is weak and participants will amount to very little in life. I can always tell a pot smoker even a casual one just by speaking to them—so nobody on earth can tell me it has no effect on the mind. Marijuana smoke destroys thought and numbs ambition. Pot legalization advocates can conjure up the falsehood in their minds that pot laws were created to protect the monopolization of competing businesses, but ultimately the stuff is illegal because there is a real threat in attacking the very soul of a productive society by dramatically lowering the GDP of a nation.
If you look at the donor lists of progressive organizations like Ohio Rights Group you will eventually find people like George Soros and his other wealthy friends who are ultimately looking to profit off the fall of America. Wealth redistribution of American assets to a global government led by the United Nations is their goal. Pot is being used to destroy the American workforce and the ambition that drives it. It is nearly impossible for a child to attend a public school or college and not have interaction with a pot culture of some kind and progressive groups are behind the effort. It is a military strategy against American life pure and simple. It has nothing to do with saving a few children from seizures. It’s about attacking American productivity by destroying the minds of its youth, and nothing else.
Play chess with an habitual marijuana user, or even play Xbox with them. Two drug induced players against each other may think that they are both good, but if they play against a person who does not engage in drug activity of any kind the match isn’t even close. Marijuana changes the thinking process of a human being for the worse—and that is a trade-off that is not worth any measure of pain relief. A body can be in terrible pain but if it has its mind intact—it is still superior to the pain-free body of a person intoxicated. There is nothing good about mental inebriation. There is nothing sexy about a girl so stoned or drunk that she doesn’t even know if she is wearing cloths any longer, there is nothing cool about being so drunk that a person can’t count or string together two sentences, and there is nothing cool about seeing everything in life through rainbow colors and unicorns induced from THC consumption. The reality under such conditions is a false one, and not one of any merit.]
Ohio Rights Group wants to bring to a conservative state more purple tendencies to fulfill a progressive strategy of conquest. They don’t really care of families move to drug induced Colorado or socialist driven Seattle. They want to spread progressive belief everywhere and the best way for them to do that is by getting people stoned so they are too stupid to think otherwise. Like scum bag boys who want to have sex with a girl, but don’t want the challenge of winning her over traditionally, they seek to get her intoxicated so she’s easy. Progressives want Ohioans high on marijuana so that they are too stupid to vote other than the socialist collectivism they are advocating. And that is the beginning and end of their story. It certainly isn’t about helping people. It is about destroying them.
Rich Hoffman
May 9, 2014
Primary Victories for the GOP: The glee of establishment thinking
Those who love the status quo enjoyed the primaries of May 2014. After failing a school levy in November, Fairfield got their money six months later putting the issue on the ballot again and having next to nobody show up to vote. Cindy Carpenter kept her Butler County Commissioner seat, the Butler County police got their money in Liberty Township and across Ohio 90% of all school levies passed—again due to extremely low turnout. Several Tea Party Central Committee seats were thrown back to the GOP loyalists and the biggest GOP representative of all, John Boehner easily kept his seat against Tea Party type challengers. Big government lovers, like the Cincinnati Enquirer enjoyed thoroughly the retention of the safe old and beatable GOP strong holds and big tax initiatives against challengers. Here is how they described Boehner’s win:
Tea party challenger J.D. Winteregg, a 32-year-old high school French teacher from Troy, could do nothing to push Boehner from a spot on the November ballot.
Throughout the night, Boehner blasted Winteregg, taking 66 percent or more of the vote.
With 41 percent of precincts reporting, Boehner had 71 percent of the vote with Winteregg trailing at 23 percent. Liberty Township businessman Eric Gurr had 6 percent.
The GOP and its supporters are happy that they were able to survive a challenge to their authority. They are short-sited enough to believe this primary year will get them off the hook forever with the Tea Party—which they supported in 2010 to take control of the House of Representatives, but abandoned by 2012 leading largely to the reelection of Barack Obama. In the end Obama and Boehner are a lot closer together in political ideology than an average farmer or member of the Tea Party. In GOP circles the common belief is that everything will now return to normal. Radical Tea Party types—those who believe in the United States Constitution will drift away into oblivion once again to hide in discontent behind the shadows. The statists once the polls closed Tuesday night celebrated. Good times were back—there would be a return of the dinner parties, the back slapping, and the golf games—and gone would be all this crazy talk of Constitutional value. Progressive advancement of the old socialist doctrine would continue unencumbered—at least that’s what they believed.
I listened with patience to my many friends that night disappointed with the results and their showings in the election. The school levy issue is a predictable strategy—in Fairfield if they didn’t get their money this time, they’d try again in November—and again and again until they were successful. This is the way of the game, if the public does not give the money the first time, take away some services, make it hard on the public, then ask again once the extortion measures have taken place. In a lot of ways, the GOP has done much the same thing. They simply waited out the storm, dumped large amounts of money at public perception, and put selections to the public during a primary season where most people are far more concerned about the upcoming NFL draft, and the new summer movie releases.
The Enquirer was very happy that most of the potential voters out there stayed away from the polls and those who did vote, supported their social concerns. They will continue to be happy so long as this cycle continues. But it can’t. The GOP is operating in an unsustainable fashion, the communist oriented Democrats are even further out of touch, the school levy increases cannot continue forever, and eventually the police levies will run out because their wages like their teacher counterparts are too high for the services they provide. The reason the GOP and Enquirer enjoyed their primary night was not because their social objectives are superior, but because most people just don’t care anymore. They don’t want to vote because they don’t see the point.
When it is said that “Boehner blasted Winteregg, taking 66 percent or more of the vote” the enthusiasm wasn’t even hidden, yet 66 percent of nearly nothing is the reality. Boehner had 66% of a voting group that was small and already behind him to begin with, so the results are not a surprise. The tragedy is in the apathy of the voters who see so little hope in going to the polls to vote, that they didn’t even bother. And in their absence, public school looters, career politicians, and general scum bags were allowed to resume their activities of treachery.
Oblivious to them all while they knocked glasses of wine together and whispered in each other’s ears about their plans for the next golf game is the end game of this whole election mess. What happens to them when the next generation simply doesn’t care enough to vote—because most of the voters in this primary are from the old days—those over 50 years of age and still believe in civic responsibility? What happens to the GOP when those people are gone?
Their extinction is a forgone conclusion. They cannot continue. The system will not withstand the pressures and apathy of the future. The Enquirer is happy that Boehner had 66% of the vote from a group of participants who are in the extreme minority. The majority cares more about who the Bengals will draft in the first round of the 2014 NFL draft than they do if Boehner is Speaker of the House. And because of the choices everyone involved in the 2014 victories made, from the Enquirer to Boehner’s handlers—the end of the road will hit them hard sooner than later. When that happens, the Tea Party will still be there when the mountainous network of lap dogs have left the GOP vulnerable and chewing their own tails. When that happens it will be remembered the choice of words used in those elections. And “blasted” will find a resurrection to fit the cause of the new day against the old GOP.
Rich Hoffman
May 8, 2014
A Fox and Her Babies: Being cunning, free–and ALIVE!
I found it fascinating and ironic that a family of foxes made a home in the drain pipe at the end of my driveway. For as long as I have been alive I have loved the character of Zorro which means “fox” in Spanish. They are nocturnal creatures who are extremely difficult to catch. As a young man in Liberty Township I knew plenty of people who trapped foxes hoping to catch them for their pelts. I always hoped that the foxes would evade capture—like Zorro—my favorite defender of justice. Only a few times did I see them captured, but otherwise they were like mysteries of the night. I would see them occasionally like ghosts sneaking across the yard—cat like, but large like dogs with their big bushy tails flowing out like the cape of Zorro. As soon as your eyes focused on them, they were gone again leaving their presence to be in question—as if doubt could be placed on their existence. So it came with some shock that a fox came to my home to give birth to her pups. It is highly unusual to see a fox in the daylight but because the babies had no idea what night and day was yet, they were up at all hours blowing the cover of the normally nocturnal fox. Here is a video of their activity at the end of my driveway.
Zorro is a character created in 1919 by New York–based pulp writer Johnston McCulley. The character has been featured in numerous books, films, television series, and other media. Zorro is the secret identity of Don Diego de la Vega, a Californio nobleman and master living in Los Angeles during the era of Spanish rule.
The character has undergone changes through the years, but the typical image of him is a dashing black-clad masked outlaw who defends the people of the land against tyrannical officials and other villains. Not only is he too cunning and foxlike for the bumbling authorities to catch, but also delights in publicly humiliating them. That last part is a trait that I have personally carried with me most of my life. It is what a fox does and if I had to identify with an animal, it would be that of a fox.
That left a question in my mind as to why if that fox were so smart, why would she decide to have babies at the end of my driveway right next to a road that has frequent travelers just feet from their play area? A fox should be smarter than that. Her nest was quite well out in the open causing many people to drive by and slow down in disbelief wondering if they were really seeing what they thought they saw. I watched the fox and her cubs playing and nursing just feet from the crushing tires of the large cars going by and found it interesting that the little animals never jumped out under them even by accident. The mother was secure in her knowledge that her children would escape danger. She seemed unconcerned.
Even when I went out to film the fox and her litter she seemed unconcerned by me. I deliberately stayed away so that the little ones would not become complacent to my presence, because they needed to stay vigilant. Not all humans they encounter will respect them they way I do. Many will want to make a coat out of them. So it is important that the little fox cubs not let down their guard. But the mother had made her decision after very careful assessment and her pick of birthing location was no accident. The nature of a fox is always a planned escapade that has elusiveness in their prerogative.
In the morning several times the mother fox would sit next to my driveway as the sun came up and I would drive my loud motorcycle right by her and she would not move. She had determined by some unknown method that I was not a threat to her or her children—but how did she know? As I thought of her strategy she was actually quite clever in her endeavor to give birth in that particular location. The success rate of having babies in the drain pipe is that coyotes, cats, and other small carnivores won’t have easy pickings of her cubs while she’s away hunting food. Her dangers are minimized if only she could have assurance that the humans who can see her in plain site will respect her space. The cars that go by are much less of a concern to her dashing children than the natural predators of the nearby woods.
The more I watched her over the last few weeks the more respect I had for her. A few times I had to chase off gawkers who were being too intrusive of her space, and the Butler County Animal control people had to be talked off the wire a few times—thinking that they needed to take some kind of action. My wife told them that the little ones would be big enough to go to the woods on their own soon, so their services were not needed. A few other nosy people behaved similarly thinking that it was their job to remove the little creatures from human eyes—because foxes are known carnivores and do kill cats and small dogs. To them a small army of foxes growing up under my driveway was a threat to their lives in some way. At our home we have an outside cat that lingers in our garage but is out and about in the day and the cat and the fox do not pay each other much attention. In our backyard is a ground-hog that is a full-time resident and harasses our two dogs with his pudgy body wobbling across the yard when he sees them. The fox has shown no desire to bother any of these animals. They are all living happily on my property without fanfare.
They will soon be gone and it is unlikely that I will ever see anything like them again. The more I watched them, the more cunning I came to understand the mother fox to be. Like Zorro, she knew how to hide from her enemies in broad daylight in much the way Don Diego hid in society disguised from his foxlike justice seeking alter ego. The mother fox had made the ultimate strategic move to preserve the lives of her children from the natural predators of the wild—she found safety under my driveway knowing well enough that my family would not be a threat to hers. And she hedged her bet that she would gain enough human support to fight off the parasites of humankind as she insulated herself away from the threats of the woods—until her children were big enough to care for themselves. The cars were surely dangerous, but not as much so as snakes, and other carnivores looking to feed themselves on the young babies—so the fox placed herself between the dangers of two worlds to find that perfect balance of safety for her children.
It was a bold move by the mother, but I am happy to have assisted her—a fellow fox of outsmarting the very nature of life itself and mocking it with her bold presence. Her daylight presence was almost like giving the middle-finger to the nearby woods and all the animals there wishing to make an easy meal of her babies. She knew what she was doing and I’m glad she did. It was a sight and trust that I will not soon forget. From one fox to another…………………………..adios.
“Z”
Rich Hoffman
May 7, 2014
The Grand Lie of Public Education: How to fix a broken system
When anybody uses the term, “we must educate our children to compete in the global marketplace,” or any variation of that term the instigator is totally ignorant as to what makes education valuable. They falsely believe that education consists in teaching children left-winged ideology and work habits of a 100% commitment to institutionalism and that since the rest of the world is moving in that direction, that American education must consist of these erroneous premises. After all, political “leaders” see how things are done in China, and Japan, and they believe they must copy those methods—which is probably the dumbest thing that could be introduced to an American workforce and the people who make it up. People who believe that “education” as defined by Common Core standards is the way to direct young minds might as well be crack addicts instructing others on responsible living. The point of education eludes them making them a menace to the discussion of learning.
The most important attribute public education could and should implement into an instructional system of any kind, is the ability to think. The second thing it could do would be to teach students to be competent human beings. Anything outside of those parameters is useless to a human mind, and merely ornamental. Education is not a race against the socialists of Europe, the communists of China, or the kamikaze driven Easterner. Americans are imaginative, intuitive, and utilize large amounts of horse sense in their utilization of productivity and their education system needs to reflect this trend.
Americans fix tractors often with shovel handles, solve complicated engineering feats with bubble gum, and produce more patents than anyplace else in the world—because they are a free people who are at liberty to think. However modern education which leans way to far to the political left, is about chasing the rest of the foolish world teaching our youth to be just as stupid as everyone else, and to turn off their minds to the process of thought—and to embrace blind submission to institutional authority. This is the most damaging attribute that can be taught to an American.
If those who support government education want real success, not just statistical success relative to the rest of the world’s false methods they would teach young minds to “think” not just remember facts given to them by the state. Even conservatives are guilty of this tendency of believing that by committing resources to “education” that they have done their job. They don’t consider the quality of education, only that someone is doing something educationally related. They don’t think of what the implications of education may be if the wrong things are learned, or the wrong interpretation of history is broadcast to young minds awaiting programming of their brain by trusted adults.
Michelle Rhee the popular education reformer at the heart of the movie Waiting for Superman is wrong when she says that education is the key to the success of American children. That cliché is overused and ridiculous. It is a mythology designed to preserve the education culture and their utopian vision for the world. Most of those people are well-intentioned human beings who simply love children and teaching them—but they do not consider in those assessments the quality of their love, or their intelligence as factors that can hold back children from living otherwise fruitful lives. They assume that they are qualified to teach just because the state has given them a license to do so—a license that meant the teacher had to comply with the state’s version of reality.
The way to alleviate these faux pas in education is to teach children to think. Why is Common Core so vile and evil? The reason is that the only way it can work is to limit the intelligence of the most brilliant and force them to only be as good as the weakest links. Our modern education system does not like making such value judgments—which is why they ultimately are failures. The belief with Common Core is that if children spin their wheels copying off students from countries reeking with statism, that success will abound and that such success can be had by not asserting value to the quality of the students or their educations. It cannot. If students aren’t taught first how to think, or how to be competent human beings, the education system will fail 100% of the time.
If the value is to produce students who will mindlessly serve the state, then modern education throughout the world is doing its job. But if the goal is to teach human beings to invent new things, start businesses, vote correctly, or mentor a child—they are way off the intended target and have no hope of getting there under the current circumstances. Education is more than just lip service—it is a philosophy. It can’t be memorized; it has to be a part of an individual mind. There is no way to cheat it. If garbage is put into a mind, then garbage will come out.
My daughter sent me a text the other day that featured a cartoon of a young person reading a book. The caption read, “Uploading data to the human brain.” What we feed our brains is what we ultimately become. If we read good books, think good thoughts, and use our imaginations to explore possibilities, we will have reasonable success in life. But before that can happen, “good” has to be identified, and stood behind. If on the other hand we put into our minds garbage like pornography, sports stats, trivial nonsense like global warming issues, political diatribes and that kind of thing, our minds over time will become encumbered with sluggish thought processes. Education is not good unless the value of good accompanies it. A well-rounded education is not exploring sexuality, worshiping the earth, or supporting teacher unions. It is about learning to think and living as a competent individual.
It is utterly shocking how many functioning adults in 2014 are incompetent fools. The only way I can avoid this incompetency is to not leave my driveway in the morning, because there are some really stupid people functioning in the world—which is evidence that our education system is a complete failure. Yet politicians want us to do more of this foolishness so they can get their fingers on federal money dangled like bait in a trap to supersede our state sovereignty. That is just idiotic.
It is easy to make clichéd comments about education without considering the implications and it happens all the time. But the answer is not in just hiring more teachers, giving more money to teachers, or building more schools. That is not enough. The real intent of education is in teaching people to “think.” Without thought there is no education, there is no mind, and there certainly isn’t any kind of future. Without thought, there is nothing—but empty promises and misery. And I want no part in that.
Rich Hoffman
May 6, 2014
“May The 4th Be With You”: A long weekend of “HOPE”
My long-awaited Rebel Transport came to my home at the conclusion of the new international Holiday, May 4th. I was ecstatic to put my hands on that new creation from Fantasy Flight Games and without a doubt; it will load my spare time with countless adventures. The sheer joy of the new game X-Wing Miniatures is wonderfully articulated in the picture below. This is literally what its like at my house. And it will get worse—I promise. Over the weekend while playing a game of X-Wing, to celebrate May 4th, the official Star Wars day which happens every year with great fanfare, my one and a half-year old grandson wanted desperately to play the game with me. So I let him roll my dice and he loved it.
For the first time that I can think of the official Star Wars weekend launched a spectacular amount of news over the first weekend of May. First the new cast was announced for the new films—which had their first script read together last week. At midnight the new Rebels television show released their new preview which can be seen below. Guess who was watching it at 12:01 AM in the morning of May 4th? Me! On top of all that even the Cincinnati Reds dedicated a whole weekend against their first place division rivals the Milwaukee Brewers. It was Star Wars weekend at Great American Ballpark in Downtown Cincinnati. My family went on Friday night when after the game there was a spectacular fireworks display to the music of the famed musical conductor John Williams that ignited the sky. From the premium seats in Great American Ballpark it was the best fireworks display I had ever seen. Just a bit behind home plate, most of the people who normally sit in that section had got up and left leaving us nearly alone in the coveted section and completely untouched by other human beings. However most of the 30,000+ crowd stuck around with their children and they loved the show with much emotion. During the entire game Friday night, Star Wars characters were all over the field and the music was piped in through the stadium and it was genuinely inspiring to see the two entertainment franchises coming together like that.
Leading up to that baseball game many of the die-hard Reds fans on talk radio and elsewhere were perplexed as to why the baseball team even attempted to cater to a new “geeky” demographic group. I wanted to tell them, but they lacked the language to understand. Just like they would never understand why I kept checking my UPS tracking number on my Rebel Transport during the game hoping it would arrive for a vicious game of X-Wing the following Saturday. I’m 46 years old and to their minds should be interested in a lot of other things—but I am part of that demographic that the Reds were reaching out to—and among young people there are a lot more like me coming to age.
Two weeks from now Hollywood Studios, Florida has their Star Wars Weekends which are always fun. The first weekend is the popular dance off which I always love displayed in the center stage of that fabulous park. Those weekends are typically so busy that the parking lot spills over into the Epcot Center. The parade is one of the most spectacular displays of Star Wars fandom anywhere in the world. The question from the un-initiated is…………..why?
During the Reds game I had to explain to my daughter how when I was younger I had to make a difficult cultural decision. I was spectacular in sports and every teacher who coached a sport wanted me to be on their team. I was the fastest kid in my school especially during my grade school years. Athletically, I could have done anything I wanted to. But, culturally back then, it was taboo to enjoy Star Wars because that made a person categorically a geek. And I loved Star Wars. I was friends with one of the most popular girls in my school and her younger brother was one of my best friends. Through her I could have had access to the upper echelons of public school popularity. But I hated it and wanted nothing to do with any of that politicking. Instead her brother would come to my house on a Friday night and bring all his Star Wars toys and he, my brother, my brother’s friends and I would play with all those toys until late into the night. I never got sick of it even when I was older and my girl friend was interested in boys and all the kids my age were going to dances and hanging out at football games. She thought I was weird because I had no interest in the life she lived. I had picked Star Wars over sports because the culture dictated that you had to choose.
I thought it astonishing that the Reds actually had a Star Wars weekend because finally after 30 years of human evolution the marketing department for the Cincinnati Reds understood that if they want to survive into the future, that they better find a way to appeal to the “Star Wars Geeks.” The game of baseball with all its traditions is struggling to appeal to younger audiences, so they are getting creative even though in an interview with Brandon Philips on 700 WLW, he clearly didn’t understand.
In a lot of ways the new X-Wing Miniatures game is closely associated with those late night sessions playing Star Wars as a kid, and even as a grown adult I’d still rather do that than hang out in some other venue doing something I’d consider utterly useless. Many people confuse Star Wars and Star Trek as being of the same thing, but they are radically different. Star Wars is not about just exploring new frontiers in space and the interactions of characters with different backgrounds and species types. Star Wars is a deep, and rich mythology that works in ways that religion struggles with and is a creation of our times exploring all the primary concerns of our day. Star Wars for me is a western in that it is primarily concerned with the same type of honorable values. It is also about technological innovation and has its roots in drag racing where a young George Lucas loved cars and carried that love over into the space ships of Star Wars. Many of the beat up ships of the new Star Wars games are like galactic hot rods and have a similar appeal as Hot Wheel cars, only these can be used strategically to beat an opponent in a game of thought. I have never seen anything like the new Rebel Transport created for a simple game. By itself, it is an amazing work of art.
Ultimately the wars of Star Wars are about value and the popularity of those films in all the venues extending beyond the silver screen are essentially about preserving or destroying values. For me, the stories of those values carried far more weight than just athletic prowess in sports, or the ability to kiss a girl at a dance. Watching the Cincinnati Reds embrace those values gave me tremendous hope for the future transcending a human leap of evolution many were not aware of. But I saw it during the Reds post game fireworks display and the many tens of thousands who were at Great American Ballpark to enjoy the relatively private show. With all the news that came out about Star Wars during the May 4th Weekend I understood with renewed vigor why the first film was titled A New Hope. The movie was not just about a galaxy far, far away a long time ago but about our human race in the here and now. For many, myself included, Star Wars is about a new hope. My infant grandson knows it, the people at the Reds game knew it, and the thousands who like me were watching the Rebels preview at 12:01 AM knew it. And I wasn’t the only one waiting for my Rebel Transport to arrive over the weekend. Most fans of Star Wars find in it a hope that is otherwise vacant. Hope is why I picked Star Wars over sports as a kid, and space ships over girls. I’m still that way, only my wife actually plays that stuff with me, which is why we’ve been married so long.
The new Rebel Transport is one of the most dramatic things I have ever looked at for a whole lot of reason—most of them centered on hope. In the films the Rebel Transport was the rebels last hope of punching through imperial blockades and fleeing for freedom to live another day in a fight between tyranny and goodness. The X-Wing Miniatures model is really just a lot of plastic and paint, but it is in the organization of those things into a coherent interactive story about hope that makes it something I was checking its arrival time every hour on the hour over the entire weekend. And now that I have it, all is right with the world. The reason is that it represents to me hope, and that is the core of what the term, “May the 4th be with you” really means.
Rich Hoffman
