5 Years and Yet it Moves! | On the End of Battlestar Galactica

The fascination with religion and theology is perhaps one of the most enduring themes of our civilization. The rise of scientific inquiry, in all its power to explain the Universe, has never claimed, nor has ever felt any requirement to justify itself or to explain away the foibles of faith.

And yet it is in Science Fiction, with its traditional focus of allegory, allusion, and dystopia, that perhaps both science and theology coexist not simply in armistice, but in a harmony only a Taoist might truly appreciate.

From its inception the NBC Sci-Fi Channel's reproduction of Battlestar Galactica, a space opera that was born in the shadow of Star Wars, has been awarded many accolades, and has entered television history. BSG, as fans know it, has never tried to be more than what it was.

Your military and space battle sequences, your sex scenes, your relationship drama, your political intrigue, all staples of a science fiction story. Science Fiction, which in all its genius is perhaps the most realistic representation of humanity that our arts have conjured, is uniquely able to tell the human story from the outside looking in.

Aliens, Cylons, robots. These appear in Science Fiction because they allow us, for the briefest of moments, to imagine we are not humans telling our own story, that we are rather narrators truly omniscient, that our anthropocentric chains are broken, and that our 2kg of cerebral cells can soar amidst the stars. Aliens - what are they? Are they the people who illegally cross imaginary boundaries of imagined nations?

Are they the green, or gray, or purple beings that might well share a biological commonality in what we currently know as a lifeless universe?

Battlestar Galactica calls them Cylons, robots created by humanity to serve them. But they serve us not in some fashion of physical servitude. They are rather, like aliens, like any other human construct, merely reflections of their creators.

We create things because it the best we have ever been able to accomplish. We build great monuments, we write great speeches, we erect undying promises to those who would follow us, and we hope evermore, that we might glimpse some measure of perfection, of solace.

BSG, stripped of its cinematic accoutrement, is so deceptively simple, it confuses with alarming regularity.

It is profoundly a story that every human that ever was, and that ever will be, basally understands. Yes the story concerns an arrogant race which chose to create new life as a demonstration of its conquest over nature, but only proved yet again, that the seeds of its destruction lie within its unconsidered ambitions.

Yes the story concerns the flaws of human behavior, the inequities of probability, and the relentless disregard for the lives of our fellow beings, human or otherwise.

But in the end, as the entire Saga closes, it reveals all too simply a single notion, one that so timelessly has consumed us, and yet has confused and conquered the greatest of human minds, the deepest of human hearts.

A profound restlessness tears at the heartstrings of our civilization. Fear of the unknown, that towering and simply inconceivable notion that we are mortal and that we all die has imprisoned humanity with its own toxic self-awareness.

We have always looked to religion, to theology, to what we call "Faith" or "Hope" to calm these tempests of emotions that we can never adequately contain. Call him God, Call him Absolute, Call him King of Kings, Call him Tao, our race is one that has enduringly struck our mark in our indelible, obstinate, and unwavering Faith. It is not that religion defines us, but that we have chosen to define religion at all, which ultimately serves as such a fundamental comment on the human condition.

That we NEED something, something nature has not provided us, something or increase in knowledge and science only inflames and exacerbates. That humanity is a story incomplete, that we have so many unanswered questions, frustratingly irrelevant to each other, eluding some grand theory of unification.

Frustrated with Battlestar Galactica's seeming Deus Ex Machina treatment of its convoluted theological storyline, friends and fans have expressed displeasure that their NEED for completion be so carelessly tossed aside by the Television Show's creators.

Battlestar Galactica, after viewing it in its entirety, is without any doubt, a story filled with holes.

Indeed, I realize only now, that this was the entire point. That its subject matter, the Human Civilization, so fundamentally WANTS an answer, we want to know EVERYTHING.

The secrets of the Universe, the inner workings of our minds, the true thoughts of our lovers, the clandestine workings of our governments, the ephemeral face of God, and the Truth of our Mortality.

We are but questions, and we rage and anger when told there are no answers, we defy with the brutality of an Ahab, and the will of a Custer that we will never surrender, that the answers will be found, Lux et Veritas, In the light of knowledge, we should see the light of Truth.

And in all those questions we weave the fabric of faith. This is not some dialectic (foolish if you understand what has already been said) on the existence of some Creator, or the musings that perhaps science cannot answer our inquiries into nature.

These are entirely irrelevant because we cannot fathom the questions which would lead us to some final peace with ourselves. We are, like the machines we build, governed by rules. Yes we can live, we can love, we can hate, destroy kill and build. But we are Emerson's 'God in ruins,' we Seek answers, and long for them, hollow in our conceptions, without the true ability to ask the questions.

We call it Faith, or God, or something. But we don't know, and we never will. More than the futility of death is perhaps this so endearingly frustrating and angering notion that Nature somewhere denies us. That we fear the gates of the Heavenly Jerusalem are somehow closed. Not based on our beliefs, but on our human inequity.

That like Aesop's turtle, the despair that we will never fly in the clouds, that like an old man's regret, of things he did not accomplish, we will somehow miss the great answers of our world.

Battlestar Galactica, despite all the flaws that accompany television, film, art, what have you, is like Science Fiction simply a comment on the Human Condition, and its enduring universality.

Cylons, machines, suffer the foibles of their human creators. Some religions teach that the creator(s) of humans are flawless, divine, while others teach they walk amongst us as mortals, that they bleed, that they too die and feel pain like us.

The Greeks said they came to tempt and to test us, the Christians say Christ came to redeem us... And yet in all this we remember the word "FAITH". It is not a manipulation to trick you into believing Gods walk in the crowds of mortals, it is not rhetoric to force you to believe that a man died, and was resurrected. The word MEANS that you must simply believe.

Cynics, skeptics, FAITH acknowledges you. Humans have like in all things they touch made this a WAR to be won, made this a BATTLE to be fought. But the saddest part of that is it cannot advance the notion. You must choose to believe. Forced belief carries no weight, it is meaningless.

That it exists at all? It religion the opiate of the masses? The last refuge of the uneducated or the zealot? I am not an apologist for the evils, or an advocate for the good that religion has brought to civilization. But it is not any of these things.

It is a symbol, a symptom, a BIRTHMARK of our species. That we KNOW in the deepest recesses of the mind, that we are a story with holes. We long for something, knowledge, eternal life, answers, we don't know exactly, but we know something is missing.

So some choose to believe. Their beliefs differ here and there, but they are all of them a comment the same. They choose to speak to the darkness we see all around us, they choose to call into it, thinking perhaps someone might reply, "Come child, I shall show you the unknown." Some call them insane, and say that the Universe is simplistic in its rules, is governed by physics and laws, and that any human construct is the effect of a biochemical reaction in the human brain.

But both suffer from the same flaw. For those who cry into the wilderness, they do not know its expanse, and so do not know how loud to call, and perhaps are limited by how far their voice might carry. To those who think them unreasonable or irrational, they cannot know all the questions which would gain them the answers, we do not know the limits of human knowledge.

And so we lie, sometimes calm, sometimes elated, sometimes frustrated, but always in inexplicable awe, staring upwards at stars we will never visit, like humans on some faraway colony, drawing a map to the Promised Land, only to find that the Promised Land is unobtainable.

That in millennia of traversing the stars, a "Caravan of the Heavens." we might never rest, for our answers do not have questions, and they are merely our FEAR, unconquered, always dominant. That in our dreams we see a Promised Land, a Utopia, a Heaven, where we might dwell in Peace. Not the lack of WAR or strife, but the peace of our own existence, the glory of knowing our destiny in the universe.

Battlestar Galactica does not answer most of the questions it brought forth. It warns against the hubris of humanity, it cautions against grasping for answers without questions first, and it suggests that God is the answer to all things, while simultaneously leaving so much unknown.

Humanity too, does not answer its questions, how to explain that eternal longing for answers; how to qualify a faith that masks the simple reality that we do not know.

And so frustrated do the BSG fans depart, demanding answers and receiving faith as their answer. Just Believe, they're told, a conceit which so perfectly models our human civilization that this space opera depicts.

For a million years hence, someone will look up from a human colony around a far flung world ages and ages away and point to our sun. I've been there, he'll say, I've seen the mountains of Earth, I've tasted the cold water of its icy canyons, and I've met my ancestors that made their stand on that rocky precipice on the edge of Sanity, their frustration at their inability to grasp the world around them always apparent in the stoic face they turned to the Heavens.

And they too, I here predict, will know what I meant. The mind pains us to know, to understand, to see. But so often is the case that the things we are looking for are just too big too see for eyes as small as ours. That perhaps we lack the ability to ask the questions that might grant us the eternal answers sought by our civilization.

I hope he looks up and smiles. For perhaps the beauty of mortal life life lies not just in knowing how it begins, how it ends, or what follows it, but in reflecting on the awesome stage upon which we got to perform.

Like a television show consumed by its own realism, perhaps the edge of the screen is the container of our consciousness, and that there let us understand that a story with holes is not broken. That a story with holes is, like Cathedrals of old, a work never done, a work that cannot be completed because it is built in the image of a race that has always longed for something more, but could never quite say just what.

I'd like to ask that time and space distant descendant what he thought of this. I think I might weep in frustration and smile in vindication, that peering into the void, he understood exactly what I meant when I told him of a daring civilization which sought a home, and found one, But could never find the comfort that they thought that home would afford. Instead, they cast their eyes skywards, to new heights, to new realms, always believing answers were yet to come. Their story was unresolved, and faith was their answer to questions they could not ask, even of their own identities. Like machines, we find ourselves constrained by the questions which provide us rules and governance.

I'd like to ask that wayward observer eons and eons hence... What does he think is Missing? Does He Believe?

'So say we all' indeed...

Frank Thomas Rotante (1961 - 2008)

New York
20 October 2008


Vade in Pace

I am known for being very verbose; I rarely answer or speak in few words, when many are available. And yet on the death of my uncle, at the age of 47, I cannot help but to express the simplest thoughts that have occurred to me. Of all the people there are to know, I know very few. But of those, Frank’s story, shortened though it yet was, was simple in its profundity. He was a loving father, he was a husband and partner in both darkness and light, sadness and happiness, trial and tribulation.

He was a great friend, he was a proud son, a brother, an uncle, a cousin, yes he was all those things that are by their own definition distinguishing. Yet as his nephew, on this day of great mourning, I feel compelled to offer a simple comment. He was simply a good person. That appellation doesn’t lend itself to everyone. He did not live the easiest life, to him was not given the kindest of paths, or the driest of roads. He endured much and lived the best of lives many would envy. But what I find the most important, what I find the most profound, is that despite all that, he did have the easiest smile, he did traverse the most slippery of roads, and he walked the rockiest paths.

He was the one I always expected to laugh, the one I always expected to find humor and light and happiness in but the dreariest of days, and he always did. To me, that is the most beautiful of qualities to name as human. A good person is not some random happenstance of the cosmos. Good people work hard to make others around them happy, to point to others those little things they miss, that they might smile even in the midst of adversity. In the end, they are my heroes, they are the ones who make peace on the earth, they are the ones who cast light where we could not see, they are the ones who remind us, life here is but brief, and briefer still to those who cannot see the good in every day.

In that sense, he lived a longer life than centuries of mortal existence might otherwise provide. As I know him, he never asked for anything, he never protested some injustice, he never judged. His was a disposition that simply did not include evils we normally express as simple truths. I wish it were only so easy to be such a good person, but they are yet rare, they are yet fleeting, they are our kind’s greatest treasures, and as we read in Matthew, where we place our treasure, so also do we place our hearts.

I have a special admiration for those who use their lives to brighten those of others. It requires a certain self-sacrifice which is both uncommon and exceedingly difficult. And yet it always seemed to come so easy to him. He was one of the most optimistic and happy people I knew, and when you consider it but carefully, that makes sense. For if you believe, as I do, that his greatest consolation came from knowing others around him were happy, that he brought joy and light to a world we have darkened with hatred and human corruption, then you can see why he was, and certainly remains, the happiest of people.

You can say many things of the dead – eulogies have a long, beautiful history. I think some are the greatest examples of human prose in existence, for they attempt to encapsulate what humans are, what they will for ever, and ever, be. Memories, that’s all we are.

We go forward, we live, and we take faith on a diet of hope, but we can only leave memories behind, the string of Theseus unfurled so that others might find us in the encompassing dark.

And between his many friends, his many family members, his wife, and his daughter, Frank left many strings, some we might actually never even be able to see. But assuredly we realize, that in some grand conceit of the cosmos, those strings were not left that we might find him, and rescue him from some darkened labyrinth. We come to see, albeit slowly, perhaps only in those moments we count as our last, that true light can only be seen in the darkness, that it is we, who are lost and blind in a maze.

We miss the simplest things, we cannot see or comprehend the most aggregate and obvious mechanics of the universe we live in. We are reduced to petty things, and upon those things we live and draw breath. These things suck in all our attention and produce all our machinations, we allow the evils of the human mind to consume us, and we live in a perpetual dark, no matter how many hours we might stare at the sun.

There are individuals who, in the unlikeliest of manners, show us that there are entire worlds we cannot see, they float before us like so many dark clouds behind which we think is only rain. But these people can teach us what might well be the final lesson that we learn as human beings. Happiness is not abstract; it is not based in some configured formula, or described by a particular equation. You cannot trade for it, you cannot wish it into existence, and you cannot steal it from another. Happiness is something that you must make for yourself in the very depths of the human spirit, it always lives.

Frank found his happiness so much the easier that he spent a lifetime trying to show others that joy which ultimately lies within us all, if only we could gaze deeply enough to see it. This is no great revelation to his daughter, or his wife, or his parents or siblings. But to me, I find it to be so incredibly and uniquely instructive.

We all live very different existences, we all make different choices, we all make all different mistakes. And though there are many who knew him better than I, he taught me that we can all be good people, and we can all be happy. It was a mantra that I believe he lived, and lived so exceedingly well, that I think he was successful beyond what he ever might have imagined. Just as he brought light wherever he chose to go, so to do I believe that he would not want his memory sullied by sadness, for it was not a concept he chose to understand.
The ancient philosophers argued, and they argue still, what the definition of the “good life” was. How could we live lives that were fundamentally happy? Kennedy wrote once of a ‘peace that makes life on earth worth living.’ It’s a quote I always tape on the walls of where I work and live. It suggests there’s some great mystery to what peace, to what happiness really is. And to many it is a mystery, we use our entire life looking for what truly makes us happy. It’s different for everyone, and so we are forced to find it on our own.

It is a hard journey with no guarantees, and there are some who enjoy life greatly yet never truly discover the happiness that all the philosophers were looking for. I think that Frank discovered that happiness. I’m sure his wife, my aunt Donna, and his daughter Caroline, were large parts of it, as was his entire family. And yet I think there was more to it. I think he found happiness in all things, for it allowed him a certitude and a humor that only the happiest amongst us can muster. They wonder how to define a “good life,” I wonder, how to define, peace.
I think Frank knew what that peace was, that peace that through every evil and sadness we could find happiness, that through the darkness, in the ‘light we should see true light’ itself. So I say that for me, he taught me a great secret, one we have sought for millennia. What is peace? What is the good life? What is a good person?

Look for happiness in everything, and smile and laugh and love, and if and when you might find it for yourself, make it your life’s work to help others find it as well, for we are all mortal, our time always brief, and in the end all but ‘dust and ashes.’ Happiness, like good people, like hope, never, ever dies.

I speak for him here, though he never said these exact words. Still, I think my Uncle would agree.

Go in peace.

Momento Mori

While some Reach upwards to graze the surface of the heavens' mysteries with the minds of men, there are many who rightly peer downwards at their own reality.

Perhaps it is through living vicariously through the eyes of others that lies the greatest salvation of mortality. We are naught in all our searching to find that we might live anew, and our religions have indelibly etched constructs of eternal life that we cannot confirm or deny.

Biology might one day find that elixir of life, or something close to it, and perhaps nothing would ever change. While we might be able to greater explore ourselves, the world, our universe, we would too still wreak all of our infernal evils upon all these entities just the same.

Death is ultimately an individual experience, even in the face of some larger biological extinction. It seems to me that it represents our final lens through which we are forced to view but every ticking second of carnal life. And so we contain our reality within this sphere, our 2kg of gray matter perhaps imprisoned not so much by the hard limits of electrical conductivity and synaptic density, but rather by the very software limitations of the human imagination.

Might we find a way to expand upon etenity with an increasing realization that individual life might well be an illusory perception? Perhaps it's possible that like many hive entities we are meant to live more properly through each other?

Certainly to live the lives of 100 people is to live 100 times longer than you yourself might, in simultaneity? Perhaps living vicariously through others is a form of life extension all its own? It has of course been argued that we live fuller, 'richer' lives when we live in the integrated environment of other humans.

It might well be true that we "live that we might die," but my wonderment concerns how we might live to alter the final stages of our lives. Perhaps the entire biological imperative of reproduction is nature's gift of eternal life. Perhaps we have children, and maintain friendships, that we might live forever through our bonds with others.

I suppose that would be a perfect irony. How much is it possible to live through another? Can the human conciousness, if it even exists, entangle like so many qubits inextricably with others? If even a shard of this is true, I would argue that we die, that we might live a greater sum of existence.

Pointless musings of course. There are two world views in existence in my mind. I find them overly generalized, but accurate as well. There are those who look up, and see their world as a vista no reign of time could allow full experience. There are those who look down, and see their world as an encapsulated wonder that they might share in its wondrous fruits and tangible beauty.

As with everything, I think there are spectrums and we are naturally a dichotomous presence. Either way, maybe it's through other people that we find a sense of unity of these two great realms. Of a life with no bounds, and one with tangible constructs. Maybe it's through others that we see the other half to which we are deprived.

If that were the case... what a harmony of perfection might we claim on the mantle of nature?

Still I look up, the high road, if you will. The low road is sweeter in taste, and is a faster, perhaps more fulfilling path to take. Yet the world to me makes more sense when I look out of it, and not in on it.

Lest we all be ants, maybe if we could better communicate to each other, the both views that is, what we each saw when we peered into our own worlds... we might built a great tower that reached forever into the skies. We tried once and failed... maybe one day we'll try again...


Old Scots Song:

"By yon bonnie banks,
And by yon bonnie braes,
Where the sun shines bright on Loch Lomond,
Where me and my true love
Were ever want to gae,
On the bonnie, bonnie banks of Loch Lomond.

Oh! Ye'll take the high road and
I'll take the low road,
And I'll be in Scotland afore ye;
But me and my true love
Will never meet again
On the bonnie, bonnie banks of Loch Lomond.

'Twas then that we parted
In yon shady glen,
On the steep, steep side of Ben Lomond,
Where in purple hue
The Highland hills we view,
And the moon coming out in the gloaming.

Oh! ye'll take the high road and
I'll take the low road,
And I'll be in Scotland afore ye;
But me and my true love
Will never meet again
On the bonnie, bonnie banks of Loch Lomond.

The wee birdie sang
And the wild flowers spring,
And in sunshine the waters are sleeping,
But the broken heart it kens
Nae second Spring again,
Tho' the waeful may cease frae their greeting.

Oh! ye'll take the high road and
I'll take the low road,
And I'll be in Scotland afore ye;
But me and my true love
Will never meet again
On the bonnie, bonnie banks of Loch Lomond."

Do Paintballs Hurt?

A typical question that many people ask is whether playing paintball of any kind (military simulation, speedball, etc.) is a painful experience. You've heard that people get welts from paintball strikes... but people get cuts and bruises from bowling too...

There exists the belief that getting hit by paintballs is considerably more painful than any other type of basic sporting roughness. This is understandable given the use of guns to propel projectiles at high speed - the observer's perspective is easy to understand without more research.

I have read hundreds of online answers to this question... and found none of them satisfactory, so I herein make my description. I will attach no bias, but I strongly believe that there is a generalized belief that paintball is a very painful sport, which then nucleates into a reason many do not partake. I hope that my description will be the most scientific to date, and will more accurately answer this question better than the current information available.


The most dominant response to the question "Does getting hit by a paintball hurt?" is that it "depends," (a typical lawyer's response). This is true, but rather useless information overall.

You are being struck by a semi-solid object at what appears, even without any experience in the matter, to be high-speed... Of course there will be a nervous response of some kind... some pain of some sort should potentially be involved...

So let's start with the basics. A paintball is a universally defined projectile by every manufacturer. There are two basic variants. The most popular, and by far the most common, is the .68 caliber spherical gel-skin paintball. There are many, many formulas for the gelatin-capsule covering of the paintball, and the "fill" consists of a vegetable oil-based dye with other water soluble materials. The second, much rarer type is the .43 caliber Paintball manufactured chiefly by the Real Action Paintball Company.

These two are, for the purposes of this article, going to be treated the same.


Paintballs average 3.2g/each according to manufacturing specifications. Assuming the maximum regulation speed of 300ft/s, (91m/s) neglecting all other factors, the paintball leaves the barrel of a paintball gun with approximately 13.2J of energy. With air drag, it experiences a deceleration of approximately 200m/s^-2.

This all means the following. If you are hit by a paintball at close range (within 20ft) the amount of energy transferred to your bare skin is about an order of magnitude greater than if struck at the gun's roughly maximum "lethal" distance of about 170ft, depending on many environmental and equipment conditions.

At this range, the blow against bare skin is considerably painful, and will cause edema and skin damage (a "welt") which will persist as a painful bruise for several weeks. Broken skin is possible, but mainly as a shearing force, and hence, not representative of actual transfer of momentum.

At this close, unprotected range, paintball is a painful sport. While not being clinically dangerous, there has simply been too little a reduction in the ball's energy before striking. Multiple hits, common with today's very highspeed markers, will lead to multiple welts aforementioned, and has been known in some cases to break small bones (almost exclusively wrists and hands) at extremely close range.

Scary? Not quite. There are many mitigating factors to this worst case scenario (Close range, unprotected skin, maximum speed paintball, near-automatic fire). The most obvious should be that the paintball breaks upon impact. Instead of 2v, which is the energy required by your skin to repel the intact paintball at the same velocity it hit you with, a vastly reduced fraction of v (impact velocity) is experienced. Paintballs are engineered to break on impact, marking the target, and falling to the ground with minimal back-traverse, (deflection).

This is not always the case, but we'll discuss that soon.

The effects of unprotected skin, maximum speed paintball and near auto-fire are reduced by the simple rule that no very-close range firing take place. Over a longer distance, the force drops as a square root power law, and hence, the effects become much less traumatic.

And yet close-range firing occurs all the time in paintball, despite being illegal by most field rules, but people are RARELY injured, so why doesn't this happen more often? (in 5 years of play I have never once seen any injury which caused someone to stop playing... that said, I've seen people play a with broken leg...). Let's now modify some other factors.

First of all, only an idiot or a masochist plays with much bare skin exposed. While there are various paintball armor contraptions in existence, and many carry equipment and other paraphrenalia which serve the same purpose, simply wearing a heavy shirt with sleeves and jeans reduces the effects very noticibly.

Second, the maximum speed of a paintball is RARELY experienced. Despite the extreme drop in velocity and trajectory over distance, prevailing winds, paintball shape, and uneven distribution of propellant gas makes the maximum velocity very unlikely. Most strikes occur (presuming about 30 ft of distance) in the bottom half of the ball's velocity distribution, which is presumed Gaussian.

Most people wear some kind of protection (other than the requisite mask), and so even under rapid CQC fire rarely report more than the standard welt, even from multiple strikes. Wearing a baggy sweatshirt, for instance, actually "catches" the paintball by prolonging its impact time. (Same principle used in crush-front automobiles and airbags... it's called the impulse reduction distance - if you're a boxer... you might take the opposite approach to solving this problem to your advantage...).

Once the paintball's impact parameters (distance) have been distended... the energy transfer is miniscule (tenths of a Joule). This is the reason many players don't realize they've been hit - they simply don't feel the strike. (though of course they're usually accused of cheating by the uninformed physics community, or the angry teenager who scored the hit.)

The temperature that paintball is played at has 2 effects. The first is skin temperature, and the second is air temperature. In colder weather, the skin contracts and is more sensitive to topical blows. Compounding this, paintballs also tend to contract in the cold, making their gellitin shell slightly harder. Again, this effect is mitigated by proper clothing and a decent respect for CQC firing. That said, the effect is highly variable (remember "it depends?") due to the interesting effect that cold air is denser, and hence produces a higher drag on the paintball... POSSIBLY reducing its velocity at a faster rate.

At higher temperature, both the skin and the paintball gellitin are more pliable and softer, hence being struck in warm conditions is noticeably less of an effect, even on bare skin (I should mention I have documented experience with all these effects, not just on myself, but other players).

Other Factors:

Certainly the region of the body the player is struck at is relevant. Being hit in the shoulders (one of the most common striking regions) is generally known, c.p., to be relatively painless. Likewise with the arms and upper back. The legs, abdomen, and groin tend to be the most painful, correlating with the vast numbers of nerve endings present in these regions. Direct strikes to the groin are extremely uncommon for several reasons involving the motion of play and the position of the players referential to each other in cover, etc. That said, this is for both genders typically very painful, and is prevented by the use of heavy clothing such as work jeans, or the use of some kind of athletic protection.

Strikes to the chest and skull tend to be less painful, though range has a significant effect on these particular regions... given that bone is being struck. In general hits to the back of the head are not so much painful as surprising. Some small edemas would be expected, but otherwise no clinically significant pains or injuries can result. A helmet removes this issue from play.

Finally, the most significant physical location (I assume masks are worn of course...) is the neck and throat region. This is probably the only real concern that should be mentioned seriously. Having been struck in the throat several times from an automatic at about 50 feet, I will report that it is extremely painful. It is also significantly dangerous, perhaps the only real danger in paintball at all. Strikes to the larynx (well known in ancient martial arts practices) are dangerous in their ability to crush or damage the windpipe, or cause respiratory distress through muscle spasm, or damage the delicate and crucial blood vessels (jugulars and carotids amongst others) in the neck.

This can, and should, be an eliminated threat by merely wearing an $8 neck protector sold for this purpose. The simple hardened cloth/leather/plastic/rubber variants completely mitigate strikes to the neck and throat, rendering them harmless and painless. In addition, more and more mask manufacturers are now extending the chin portion of the mask further down, additionally shielding this region.

Now let's be a bit qualitative.

Some people play paintball because it can in some instances be painful. There are numerous psychological abstractions to explain this behavior, but suffice to say, that is their prerogitive. If this is not your desire, I can say with great confidence, and repeated experience, that paintball is a painless experience, and more importantly, a tremendously entertaining and thrilling endeavor.

Wearing proper protection (Mask, neckguard, heavy clothing) will mitigate any possibilities of injury from paintballs at all but the closest of distances. That said, being struck hurts enough to sting, but almost never hurts enough to make you want to leave.

Sports popular in the United States, from football and hockey, where protection is extremely well documented, to the the notoriously lax baseball, produce hundreds of thousands of severe injuries every year to all ages. (41,000 concussions/year from football, amongst other assorted deaths, and severe limb, spine and orthopaedic injuries). Despite this, paintball is still often viewed as a dangerous exchange of competition.

My simple recommendation is the play and find out. Wear some protective clothing, and go play. Worst case... you get hit once and decide it's fairly painful... not for you. (Never seen that happen out of seeing many 5-600 new players). Best case... you might find that it's just the thing you were looking for.

Nothing more popular in the human species than shooting each other. Might as well try it without that whole messy dying part.

CITIZEN or CIVILIAN? Make Your Choice.

There has been much said, even in the national press, concerning the presence of Iran's President at the CU World Leaders Forum. The controversy aside, when you see that it's called the "World Leaders Forum," I find it hard to understand what it is people expect... we invite world leaders, whoever they are... to speak.

I think the most significant element of what President Bollinger did sort of gets lost in the controversy surrounding Iran's silly leader. What is so much more impressive to me, and quite so much revolutionary, is that there have been many dictators, fools, and uneducated leaders of the world, from all its corners, in the past 4000 years, many of whom might have done well to have been called out and, yes, simply insulted by those in the academic community, directly challenged and directly accused. Indeed the power of our global leaders is rarely checked, even by each other, and their ability to dominate the conversation, by media or otherwise, is something I believe the world's citizenry has the right to challenge and disparage.

To my knowledge few world leaders in human history have been called a "dictator" in person, particularly by a civilian with no particular qualification, though the overwhelming number of leaders have certainly been despots, even in countries bandied about as "democracies," I'd say ours included.

The idea of a professor chastizing a national leader was at the same time refreshing and inspiring. People forget the tremendous hegemonic power posessed by those, elected or not, who run the machinery of the world. It is only by outrageous and often vehement attack from individual citizens that we might get the attention of those who command the fate of the world, our world.

We must never forget that despite any individual's power, no one commands any title of authority that should outrank the power of a citizen. What a world it would be, no, if the powerful stood trial by fire in the "courtroom of world opinion" that Adlai Stevenson so famously invoked in pursuit of peace with the USSR in 1962. And yet the realists have their say - Bollinger said in closing, that he was merely a Professor, without power or policy control, and so his speech, though free, would be powerless.

And yet the primary case for democratic speech does not ensure it is backed by power or by force. It can only be said, and the power of words to move nations and history is left to the will of the many. Still it seems that words are not powerless in the end. Perhaps it is our perception that a Professor's word carries less weight than a dictator, a prime minister, a religious leader, perhaps it is this refusal to attach an equal importance to the voice of the CITIZEN, and not the LEADER, that inevitably devalues the power of criticism and challenge from below.

Nevertheless, I love it when the powerful feel the least bit insulted or accused. Contrary to William Kristol's usually hot-headed criticism, I think President Bollinger did send a historically powerful message. At the world's centers of learning anyway, we abosolutely insist on challenging the empowered and criticizing their aims and their objectives, for they lead a world that we have not choice but to live in.

As a globe we demand that those with power be called to account, and that though often these trials return no enforceable verdict, the judgement of history rests upon them. Maybe that's not good enough for some, I personally think it's not, but it is something. And barring a major shift in the leadership of the world, the CITIZEN remains ever repressed, with little power or ability to challenge those who possess it.

The machinery of the state, as many political theorists have claimed, simply grinds on, regardless of the flowers it might tread, irresponsible of the individuals that might stand in the way of history, requesting a new direction. Power ultimately, does emanate from the violence of a gun, but at the same time, power and force are what we make of it. Power does end where we do not fear the consequence of force, where we care enough that no barrel of any weapon deters what we believe to be the rightful path.

And so the powerful stand trial before the citizenry. Ultimately powerless to stop them, but nevertheless eager to challenge them, we make our stand. For some, it might well be their last, but it is ultimately a requirement of participation in the human condition, a central element to Human Honor. And excolo mei, fas mei vita, if you believe that this human honor, is worth your life, that the stand you take against the powerful and the strong is worth everything for which you exist, then it is a duty, not an option, to stand against the weight of the world, even with no possibility of success.

The last stand is a feature of romantic ideology whereby an individual confronts their ultimate fears in the face of certain defeat. Overmatched and overpowered, they nonetheless refuse to surrender. I look upon the world's citizens as such a people. Ruled from above, and never from below, they choose to go quietly into the night of history.

It is for those who, however blithely, make a stand against the machinery of power that constitutes our human institutions of governance, that I reserve the most lofty praise. It is history, I believe, that judges them the most favorably. In that regard, our University President chose to become a CITIZEN, NOT a CIVILIAN, and to ensure that the powerless had their say.


If nothing else, at least an alien visitor to our humble world eons and eons hence, might one day in the post-human future have cause to believe that the citizens of this tiny spot found the honor and the courage as a race, to challenge the conditions of their existence, and though without power, they went down in history with the honor as having fought a war they could never win.

At least I'd like to have my name in that lexicon, that I might have the honor to become a CITIZEN and to be remembered as a champion of the oppressed, and as a proponent of a human progress that the powerful often restrained.

For now though, President Bollinger laid claim to the title of Citizen, and I was happy to watch history being made.

Libertas Ad Vox Populi, Usque Ad Mortem!

"The worth of a State, in the long run, is the worth of the individuals composing it; and a state which postpones the interests of their mental expansion and elevation, to a little more of administrative skill, or of that semblance of it which practice gives, in the details of business; a State which dwarfs its men, in order that they may be more docile instruments in its hands even for beneficial purposes – will find that with small men no great thing can really be accomplished; and that the perfection of machinery to which it has sacrificed everything, will in the end avail it nothing, for want of the vital power which, in order that the Machine might work more smoothly, it has preferred to banish.”~ John Stuart Mill


The pictures below are images I love - images of Law Enforcement carrying out what is inarguably a necessary function - protestors cannot jump the police barricade, if you do it's very obvious you want to get arrested, a common goal of many protestors (something less inspired individuals really never understand I suppose).

These images don't try to make the US look like a police state, or something fanciful and stupid like that. It's quite clear that's not what's going on. In fact in my personal opinion a police state is far less insidious, is far less manipulative than the Republic in which we currently live.

These images remind you that in the simple geometry of governance, there is but one variable which is constant - power. These images show you where the real power is, and where the illusory power is. JS Mill called the state "a machine."

Indeed, Rarely do we see its gears and cogs, its size is so vast it goes unnoticed by the myopic majority. Remember that not only does political power grow from the barrel of a gun, or the restraint of plastic zip-tie handcuffs. It grows as a fungi in darkness, hidden from view except when we choose to shine ever so discordent a beam of light upon it.

Remember the machinery of the state, and remember it is not controlled by any individual or group.

Everyone is fascinated by magical illusions, but knowing the gimmick, as magicians refer to their secret, tends to ruin the effect.

The state indeed "dwarfs its men." But is this a magic trick whose secret is unknown?

I think not.

Libertas Ad Vox Populi, Usque Ad Mortem.

30 Years of Star Wars - Why is it still a Saga with Force?

It has been 30 years since "Star Wars: A New Hope" first entered into the world lexicon as a profound comment on our popular culture. (25 May 1977 to be exact).

Having seen the film first at the age of 8, it forever changed the way I look at the world, and everyone from scientists to critics to comedians have attempted to explain its phenomenal legend. But nothing specific to the film has ever become synonymous with Star Wars' grand success, and I believe this constitutes the exact reason it became such a widespread cultural icon. It means many things to many different people, and ultimately, I believe, gains its popularity because of the realistic assertion that there can often be little to base our lives upon that is concrete and unchanging. You find a similar paradigm in those of faith. And indeed, my argument for the brilliance of Star Wars is that, unlike "The Passion of the Christ," which chronicles perhaps the salient points of the Christian faith, Star Wars is about the human religion, the human faith. But in what you might ask? What is the human faith?

Undoubtedly, I would say the title of the 1977 epic is quite clear on this point. The human religion, is Hope.

Empires rise and fall, dreams begotten become lost, or fade. Love, brilliant as all the stars might seem, and eternal as all the gems might claim, is a personal object. But hope, our perhaps foolish assumption, as a species, that tomorrow will bring better skies, even that tomorrow will come at all, still brighten with twin suns even the darkest hours, even the deepest sorrows of eternal night. That hope is this fundamental to the human condition speaks volumes, I believe, about who "the humans," if we could be tertiary and clinical in our view, really are. Star Wars possesses all of these touchstone human foibles, and becomes a work about human belief, set so symbollically in a world where humans are not the only species.

We have been called "walking shadows," "brief candles," by Shakespeare, "gamblers with others' lives" by H.G. Wells, and Emerson called man "A god in ruins." And yet of all the myriad and infinite words that have been pinned to the ephemeral nature of our impemenant constructs, Hope cannot be removed. Hope that we perhaps are one thing, and not another, hope that we can become what we may never be, hope that we might see truth that doesn't exist, hope that we might rise to the sun one day, and know who it was that we were - hope then, that we might see the grand vista of our own lives and how they wove inextricably with those around us, and with the universe, on whose gracious and profound hospitality we exist at all.

I believe the most iconic scene in all of cinema, and the graphic answer to the question of the Saga's power is seen in the 30-year celebration poster of Star Wars - the famous "binary sunset." Clearly the artist agreed.

Looking out at a horizon has some powerfully human element to it that I don't believe I will ever forget, since that first time I saw a young man look off into the sky, wondering if indeed, something more lay beyond just what he could see - that perhaps out there there was some great destiny which he could only hope to envision. Indeed, the story tells us that he would find his family, he would help save a galaxy, he would save his father from eternal damnation, and along the way, he would learn to believe.

John Williams' classic score "Binary Sunset," during that scene is one of my favorites. It is recognizable the world over as one of the iconic pieces of music from the saga.

I believe this cinematic representation of hope is a faith no lesser than all the canon and all the religious wars and all the prayer could ever foster. Is there a greater faith than believing our destiny lies out somewhere amongst the stars? The human religions I know, and the science I know, both tell us - there, those heavens, that is from whence we came. Master of that realm, Galileo, believed we could not be taught anything about the stars, but that we could be shown what they were within ourselves. Quaint as that might be, perhaps that is the ultimate faith to which our race should ascribe.

I think the picture of an alien sunset on a distant world somewhere in our human imagination, is the epitome of hope. A Hope that neither dies, nor was ever born; simply the physics of our minds, the chemistry of our progression, the biology of our faith, forever forged and rediscovered anew.

Star Wars, for 30 years, has created generation after generation of those who seek a human faith, no matter the actual reason they believed Star Wars was important to them. Yes there are countless motifs and mythical elements strewn throughout the Star Wars Universe. There are heroes, tragic and flawed, there is evil, there is religion, there is love, there is genocide, there are politics and humor, war and peace, science and science-fiction.

But besides relating to the human experience, this wrapper of agreeably entertaining cinema is not Star Wars. A small rebellion could only fight an empire if it believed in something. Outnumbered and outgunned, a new hope was needed, a new belief. The symbolism of that hope - THAT is George Lucas' Star Wars.

That question which is asked by that sunset, that ephemeral wonder which only flights upon the briefest and most unconcious of thoughts: What is out there beyond that sun, those stars... What's out there beyond that endless sea on whose winds we will never sail?

We may always hope, it seems to me, it is one of the few things we can always, always do. Hope then, is our faith, and I think it so fitting that a complete story whose ultimate points revolve around the full spectrum of human hopes, the fate of a galaxy, freedom from slavery, the love of a parent, should enjoy such global and historical acclaim.

We watch "A New Hope" with a different view every single day. The fact that the film and its message is so omnipresent in our conciousness and to some has become a religion unto itself, is not at all inconsistent.

30 years of Hope. Perhaps there are some in the world who would do well to watch Star Wars who have not had the pleasure of experiencing it. World leaders, visionaries, the old, the young, the pessimist, I cannot imagine a person who would not benefit from that profound immersion in the belief, the Hope, that is uniquely the Human Religion.

May The Force Be With You.
25 May 2007