aesmael

[editor's note: this was written in February 2019]

Surprised how long this took me to reread, although I did keep getting distracted – 20 minutes here and there a few times a week isn’t really that much. Despite this, and in keeping with my first read, it all felt very fast and over quite soon.

I liked that, especially early on, Leia was recognised as being a capable Jedi in her own right and that she continued to learn and develop her powers throughout the story. Particularly that she played a key role in helping to shake Luke out of the dark side and the twins’ cooperation being shown as necessary to break free of evil and defeat the emperor. This made a much stronger presentation of the idea that working together is the key to overcoming evil, and that trying to take on that burden alone is opening yourself to needless suffering that you may not be able to overcome without help.

I liked a lot less that aside from this Leia is treated largely as being important just as the vehicle by which more Jedi will be birthed and that the primary objective of the emperor through this story is to possess the body of her initially unborn son as a replacement for own failing line of clones, which had been damaged by drawing on the dark side of the force. So, while I appreciate that unlike most of the stories which follow on from Return of the Jedi, Leia gets to embrace the force and develop her capabilities with it, I also resent that despite this she is mainly recognised by both allies and enemies as the mother of powerful jedi to come.

Perhaps I’m being too harsh. Parenting is certainly important, and I would like to see more stories which include characters who are parents, or families, but I do get the feeling that Leia is treated as either a person or a mother and not both at once. Excusable on the part of a villain who sees people as only either enemies or instruments of his will. Less so for allies who supposedly oppose evil.

[Wrote this on Wednesday; some additions before posting Friday due to the passage of time]

I think I must have mentioned the acquisition of fragmentary older archives of SETI Radio (now Are We Alone?) previously because memory says I have written of starting the podcast listening over again and going through an initial set of Planetary Radio alone.

It continues to irk me that I do not have access to the full, original run of Are We Alone? from 2002 because I do remember seeing those listed in iTunes back in 2005-06 or thenabouts but of course at the time did not have the bandwidth - or possibly even the storage space - to download them then. The same is true for some other shows like Planetary Radio, but at least they still have their entire run available on the website.

But since then, as I have been distracted from writing by school and workplace commitments, we have moved on successively to first a truncated second playlist where The Naked Scientists originally came in, and then a third beginning at the point where the earliest available episodes of Are We Alone? from https://archive.org/ begin.

Probably I mentioned that early Planetary Radio featured heavily guests and projects connected with the Planetary Society, such as SETI@Home, before moving on to a strong Mars focus for the historic close approach of Earth and Mars in August 2003 and the launches of several robotic missions to Mars; that focus has continued to where I am currently at in listening, late January 2004 when the second of two rovers (Opportunity) has only just landed on that planet.

I feel like my insistence on pinning these podcasts as near as I am able into a chronological order is vindicated by occasions such as the landing of the Spirit rover (and now Opportunity) when I have each of these three science shows reporting on the same events from their own particular perspectives and sources. It gives me an enjoyable feeling of synergy, a sense of time and place that these programs really do relate to each other in some meaningful way.

The current list, Playlist 3, is I am sure by far the longest that will be in at least terms of span covered. It starts at the beginning of November 2003 and extends to January 2005, when Playlist 4 will begin with the addition of The Philosopher's Zone from ABC Radio. To that point, every single podcast in my list which extends so far back in time is one also broadcast by radio, which seems odd to me. The first which exists purely as a podcast (and I suppose in that sense as an entirely amateur production[1]) is the one following, Slacker Astronomy, which is also the earliest podcast on my list to no longer be active.

It continues to be strange to me that The Naked Scientists hosts a call-in contest “Science Fact or Science Fiction” wherein callers are presented with a claim and asked to judge whether it is true or made up, because there is a similar game in the podcast The Skeptic's Guide to the Universe [2], Science or Fiction, in which the hosts are challenged to pick the fake science news stories from the genuine ones.

Nearly finished the book I'm reading[3] at the moment and have nearly a week to wait until I can get hold of the sequel at earliest. In the meanwhile as well as working on that placement report I can hopefully make sure to get some more writing done on what I think of the various books I've been reading over the past year. Most of them do have partial or complete notes written up already, it's just a few gaps that need filling so I can finish off and actually put them up in the order they were read. Am quite looking forward to getting that done because I do tend to enjoy talking about what I am reading and what I think of it, even if this is mostly awful.

So, objective for the next few days: work on placement report, work on not-reviews, also hopefully put together a nice meal for people which will likely involve fish.

Getting up to date on not-reviews and on my reading database are the two main personal projects I feel backlogged on currently. Maybe after those are up to date I will feel free to write more and to play games, both of which I feel I am missing out on. Therefore, the perpetual cry of diligence and energy!

[1] Although of the four which precede it, two are on public, non-profit broadcasters and the other two, as I understand it, rather rough or humble beginnings before acquiring their polish.

[2] Which doesn't start until 2005 but due to more extensive RSS availability I listened to a lot of in my first attempt at podcast catch-up – it was nearly the oldest one available by that approach.

[3] Now actually finished, during a lovely lunch in a café yesterday after my endocrinologist appointment.