Jacob Bender's Blog, page 3

On Baseball, Football, Leisure, the Labor Movement, and U.S. Manufacturing

Last week I participated in that most perennial of American traditions: going to a baseball game with my Dad.  We saw the Mariners play in Seattle, as we had so often when I was growing up.  The inherent traditionalism of the sport, paired with the intrinsic leisureliness of the spectacle, couldn't help but put me in a reflective frame of mind.

Specifically, the leisureliness itself of baseball.  The sport has its roots in the U.S. Labor movement, as a matter of fact; "8 hours t...

Fixing Star Trek

[Cause boy does it need it, if that fugly new ship is any indication!]
This last weekend I visited my Nautilus! co-author in Connecticut; among other things, we watched Star Trek Beyond , which inevitably meant further late-night conversations on where the heck did our favorite child-hood shows go wrong??

Nautilus! in fact began one night as we discussed the utter disappointment of Star Trek: Voyager, what an utter waste of a fascinating premise that was. Stranding a Federation starship on the...

Part II of The Epic and Audacious Adventures of the NAUTILUS! and Her Gallant Crew in the 19th Century: On the Cryptozoological Origins of Scottish Seccession, MI6, and East Asian Warfare!

Oh hey guys!  David W. Harris and I have finally published Part II, the inevitable sequel to Part I (which is still free on Smashwords, btw)!  Election year got you down? The Rio Olympics a hot mess?  Let a pulpy little fan-fiction for history take the edge off your existential angst!

From Amazon: "The brave crew of the Nautilus, still on the hunt for Atlantis before the Martians arrive, must descend into the depths of the Lost World and join forces with intelligent Velociraptor...

On Beach Slang, On The Other Hand

On the one hand, as many folks have pointed out, Beach Slang's signature song, 2015's "Bad Art & Weirdo Ideas" sounds kinda like Joy Division's 1981 "Ceremony"--which just proves there's nothing new in Rock 'n Roll.  The genre long ago played out the last of its interesting ideas. 

On the other hand, no, as a matter of fact, "Bad Art" doesn't sound like "Ceremony" at all--a repeating 1st and 3rd step is by definition not the same as a repeating 1st, 3rd, and 5th step--and moreov...

On Alexandre Dumas' 20 Years After

I recently finished Alexandre Dumas' 20 Years After, the 1845 sequel to The Three Musketeers. It takes place during the Fronde in France and the English Civil War--that is, during a time when the world is violently polarized, like now.  In fact, the 4 musketeers end up on opposite sides of the same conflicts: D'artagnan and Porthos with the Cardinal, Aramis and Athos with the Frondists--only to ironically switch around in England, with D'artagnan and Porthos on the side of the Republican...

Star Trek Beyond: An Initial, Rudimentary Analysis

This will be really spoiler-heavy, so, you know, you've been forewarned.


In the original Star Trek series, there's an episode where the entire planet is run by a 20th century Roman Empire; another where they all act like 1920s Chicago gangsters; there's also a Nazi planet; one where Kirk gets into hand-to-hand combat with a dude in a giant green lizard suit; one where the Greek God Apollos himself captures the Enterprise with a giant floating hand (which is even referenced at one point in this...

On Mendenhall Glacier, Juneau, AK

On of the fringe benefits of marrying a flight attendant is that, once in awhile, if she works a flight somewhere new, you can just join her for nothing.  A couple weeks ago I got a chance to do just that, when she worked a flight to Juneau, Alaska--to that quarter of the land where I had never before been. 

The terrain reminded me of Washington, of home--yet the sight of those sea-planes lining the bay by the runway told me immediately that I was not anywhere close to home here.

June...

General Washington In His Labyrinth

<!--[if gte mso 9]>

On Re-Reading Nibley

I just recently finished a massive re-read of my collection of Hugh Nibley books.  Over the course of my 20s, I had amassed 12 out of the 19 volumes of the legendary LDS scholar's Collected Works.  This last Winter Break my Dad reminded me that, even if spread across a decade's worth of Christmases and Birthdays, that collection still indicated an investment of hundreds of dollars; my conscience piqued, I decided this last New Years that--especially now that I was now finally post-C...

Some Notes on LDS Singlehood, Now That It's Over, With Some Lingering Survivor's Guilt, and a Growing Conviction that Older Singles Are the Rocks of Our Faith

I've been married less than a month now, and while we are undoubtedly still in the Honeymoon stage, well, it's been great.  In fact, I have some survivor's guilt about it--I got married much later than many of my peers, but I know even more wonderful people who still haven't married yet.  Why did I "get out" (for lack of a better term) while so many others still haven't?  The whole process feels capricious and unfair.

Of course, I am here falling into the easy fallacy of assumin...