Colin Powell’s Support For Barack Obama – An Inside Look at the Republican Party’s Real Plans

I must admit that I find it a bit odd how much people are making a big deal of Colin Powell’s recent official endorsement for Barack Obama. True, they come from opposite sides of the political spectrum, but I think some thought needs to put into what Powell’s endorsement really indicates, not only about him but what I suspect includes many in the inner circles of the Republican party itself.

First of all, I find it pathetic that anyone is so ingrained in their political thinking that they can be so mindless as to just assume at the next election they will vote for a specific party. Granted, there are some issues which both sides have been known to historically support or fight against – abortion is a good example – and on those issues, it can be easy to see why some voters will automatically decide to vote for one party over another. However, there are times when our society faces more pressing issues that should obligate us to disregard such emotionally-charged issues in favour of assessing which party has the best platform or candidate to help our society overcome its current predicaments. But that takes a fair amount of rationalism and yes, intelligence on the part of the voter to understand what really is going to impact their lives and their family directly instead of focusing on issues that might bristle their own personal code of ethics or values.

From this perspective, Powell’s recent endorsement on the surface makes a lot of sense since Click to continue reading the rest of this entry

JJ Abrams’ Trek XI Flick – It’s Not Your Daddy’s “Wagon Train to The Stars”

The sci-fi community was a-buzzing this week after Paramount finally lifted the veil of secrecy on what JJ Abrams’ take on “Star Trek” will look like with the release of several stills from the upcoming movie. And while there were some real surprises in the mix, what I ended up finding more interesting was what this sudden reveal tells us about Abrams’ film and Paramount’s apparent new viewpoint on their prized Trek franchise.

For those of you who have already seen the pictures, I’m sure you’ve had your share of other peoples’ descriptions of what minutiae can be dissected from these images, so don’t worry this won’t be more of that. Besides, in all honesty, I don’t spend my time over-analyzing stills looking for some hidden secret just as how I don’t look for images of Jesus or the Virgin Mary in oil stains. In other words, I do have a life, thank you very much. All I will say is that looking at this shot featured above of the new Enterprise bridge, I can’t help but wonder if the production designer got some sort of discount deal with a light bulb manufacturer as there are a LOT of lights in that layout, some of which make no sense at all – those halogen-spotlight circle lights running along the top of the stations are a good example. Oh, I’m sure this design has got the geek “SO Cool!!!!” vote sewn up, but from my viewpoint, it just seems a tad too cluttered. Put it to you this way, would you buy an iPhone or other electronic device if it had that many bells and whistles decorating its housing? It’s clear as technology gets more advanced, we’re moving toward not only smaller devices, but also simpler interfaces, something this image doesn’t quite bring to mind. In any case, now that I got that out of the way, let me get to the point that is surprisingly being overlooked surrounding the release of these various images. Click to continue reading the rest of this entry

I’ll Be Right Back . . . After This Musical Interlude

As some of you may have noticed, I haven’t been writing much in my blog here lately and I fault that on the fact that I’ve been busy writing in another medium – music. As I mentioned in a previous entry, I’m directing/producing my second episode for the amateur-based science-fiction series “Star Trek: Unity”. Production on the latest episode, “Disunity, Part 2” wrapped up at the end of August and much of my off-hours time has been spent knee deep in post-production work. While I learned the ropes of post-production working on “Disunity”, this time round I’ve added another new challenge to the mix – instead of utilizing cinematic scores written for other works, I plan on using music written specifically for this episode. Of course, the twist to this new approach is that I’m taking on the role of the composer who’ll create these original music compositions. Click to continue reading the rest of this entry