Over the last few weeks the news has seemed pretty bleak. There have been shootings, ax attacks and people being driven down in their cars. Isis seems to be as strong as ever and it's hard to forget about global warming during the hottest summer in recent history. And all of that is before you get started on politics which may not be the worst of it, but it certainly doesn't seem to be likely to solve it.

But that's all in your perspective. None of those things are good of course. No one wants to see anyone be hurt or scared. But the problem is that as a society it seems like we are focused on the negatives. It's easy to see why we dwell on the one hate filled person who decides to go into a bar and start shooting. It's dramatic, it's traumatic and everyone agrees that it's terrible.

But that last part might be worth focusing on too. Virtually everyone agrees that minorities, whether they are homosexual, black, French, German, Christian, Muslim deserve to be safe. That is the reason that it hurts so much to see that they aren't. That's why we fight over how best to fix the problem.

There is something else that a lot of people seem to be missing in the doom and gloom of an election year. Things are getting better in almost every way. It may be hard to believe if you watch the news but violent crime is down and life expectancy is up. There are people that really believe that we can end extreme poverty by 2030 and as much as everyone may dislike the current choices in political candidates the country isn't going to end by making a bad choice because our founding fathers had to the good sense to build in checks and balances into the system.

It's time for all of us try to remember that we live in a time when we can cure diseases, where the blind can see and the deaf can hear. I can pick up a phone and hunt virtual monsters and make new friends doing it or go online and play board games with people on the other side of the world. I can buy a car that will literally drive itself down the freeway or go into a virtual reality. We have private companies that can not only send rockets into space but land them safely. We have people who are actually afraid of what we will do when robots take all of our jobs. We live in an age of wonders where we have become so accustom to miracles that we forget that in many ways that is exactly what they are.

Sure the world sucks some days, and when someone evil decides to hurt people we should be angry. It is right to want bigotry to go away and for better choices in our political leaders. But even on the worst day it's important to remind ourselves that we live in the safest, most peaceful, most enlightened and most advanced time in human history. We need to remember that the reason it's so traumatic when someone drives into a crowd of people is because it doesn't happen all the time. So cry with the people who are in pain, and donate blood and money if you can. But try to remember that on the same day that one person does something hateful that, just in the USA there were also 6200 weddings and someone is born every 7 seconds and in every one of those terrible events there are far more people who risk their lives to help than are trying to hurt people.

I know they look cool and are fun to imagine but the truth is that the Lightsaber is a terrible weapon. It has a number of problems any one of which would make it far less useful than an average weapon. To examine it fairly I am willing to accept the advantages that using it in combination with the force gives, such as the ability to throw and return the weapon and of course reflecting weapons fire. On the other hand advantages of the force are advantages whether you have a Lightsaber or not so are irrelevant to the conversation.

Let's start with the most obvious problem of the lightsaber. There is a reason that people don't use swords as their primary weapon in modern combat. You can kill someone with a sword but you have to get near them to do that. Even assuming that you can get there safely you have still given the enemy the time it took you to travel that distance to do whatever they wanted, including shooting the clone troopers that weren't within swords length of you. It also has little or no value when fighting anything that you can't get within swords distance of such as planes or any reasonably mobile land vehicle.

The argument against this is that you could deflect the enemy weapons and use that to augment your range. This helps some but it doesn't solve the problem. First, you can only deflect weapons which are aimed at you. If the enemy simply doesn't shoot at you it's of no value. Secondly it is only useful against weapons which you can deflect in this manner. That is to say blaster shots. If you were to fight an enemy that used something as advanced as rocks it would be unable to give you any range advantage. On the other end if they were to use torpedoes or other anything that simply exploded when struck it would be useless.

Of course the primary advantage of the lightsaber isn't offensive. It is defensive. The Jedi aren't really supposed to kill people. And in that case it makes some sense. And to be fair there is little evidence that any other defense in the star wars universe is particularly effective at doing this though since the empire puts its troops in armor it stands to reason that armor should have value. In addition we have seen shields that are small enough to fit on a droid so it should be possible to outfit people with at least reasonably good armor or shields in the numbers that the Jedi need.

But the real problem is that the Lightsaber isn't all that good at defense in any universe where people are putting effort into actually defeating it. The problem is very basic. The Lightsaber can only be in one place at a time. No matter how good your Jedi reflexes are you're at best limited to blocking blaster shots in a single line. So in order to kill a Jedi you simply need a weapon that should be very easy to build. You simply make a shotgun. As previously discussed the range of the lightsaber means they have to get into your range in order to attack at which point the shotgun completely negates any defensive ability of the lightsaber.

Want something with a bit more range, or that uses more typical star wars technology you could simply make a weapon that shot three blaster shots in a triangle a bit wider than a lightsaber. A Jedi could block two of them but the third one would get through. And while you might argue that a Jedi could simply avoid that weapon that attack with use of the force that has nothing to do with the Lightsaber.

The final weakness of the Lightsaber is far less important but it is worth pointing out. That is that Lightsabers are very difficult to make. You need crystals that are very rare and the force in order to use them. If it was an effective weapon this might be worth the effort but for a weapon that has significant disadvantages the amount of effort to make it simply doesn't make much sense as a weapon.

Of course there is a final point that the point of the lightsaber isn't to be an effective weapon it never has been. The Lightsaber is a symbol and as a symbol of a group that is supposed to enforce peace and not war having a weapon that isn't good at offense, is only defensive against small groups of reasonably unprepared enemies and that requires a lot of skill and effort to makes far more sense than a weapon that is actually a good weapon.  

I haven't written much about Star Wars: The Force Awakens because the truth is that I haven't had all that much to add. I like Star Wars but I'm not the type of super-fan that has much new to add, but there was one part in The Force Awakens that bothers me and I came up with an explanation that not only largely fixes the problem but makes one of the side characters far more interesting.

Everyone knows by now knows that Daniel Craig had a cameo in The Force Awakens as JB-007 a Stormtrooper that gets the Jedi Mind trick used on him by Rey. There has been a lot of talk about Rey being too strong in the movies. I tend to discount this in most cases because most of what she did in the movie could be explained away by her being a fairly good fighter and pilot which are both skills anyone could learn.

But the Jedi Mind trick is a bit more problematic for me. They have established in other sources (primarily the Clone Wars cartoon) that it isn't easy to do and takes practice for people who are training under Jedi and while I know there are other theories, but the movie doesn't show that Rey has any Jedi training and that makes the Mind Trick a step to far.

So how do you fix that? Simple enough. She didn't actually use the Jedi Mind trick on him. She didn't have to because JB-007 is a spy for the republic. (Not the rebel alliance which is why the rebels didn't know he was there.) He simply pretended to let the Jedi Mind trick work because it gave him cover for helping Rey to escape. He likely even helped more by dealing with some of the other guards that would have certainly be left to guard the incredibly important prisoner but we didn't see in the movie.

This would also be a great way to set up a spin off spy thriller in the Star Wars universe that could create an interesting way to explain and explore the politics in the new Star Wars universe. Basically Daniel Craig would be a spy infiltrating the organization of the evil mastermind Supreme Leader Snoke and stop him from using his master weapon.

The movie would happen largely in parallel to the events of The Force Awakens. It would explain what the Republic is doing and explore The First Order. You could also have some entertaining and funny moments like him turning off the shields to Starkiller Base at the same time that Captain Phasma meant to lock them out of the system.

I understand that there are likely to be people who question the need to have a movie length back story for small side characters that were never meant to be the center of a story. I would tend to agree, but it seems clear that isn't going to stop Disney for long and taking advantage of an actor who is clearly fond of the source material and is able to play the part that would be required.  

Virtual reality is coming. There are a number of excellent looking devices and while they are expensive now the price will come down just like every other consumer device. But they will become truly important when people begin to understand that they are far more than just a way to play games or watch TV.

To me the way to understand this is to think about what it is called. The reason it's called virtual reality and not surround gaming or something else is because at it's best it mimics reality. And while many of us play and enjoy games in reality that isn't all we do and it certainly isn't all we want to do.

For most of us work takes up a large amount of our time and while it hasn't been discussed yet virtual reality has an important place in business. First, the telecommuting has been growing in popularity over the last decade and with virtual reality it's going to become even easier for people to work at home because you could easily create a virtual office and have most of the advantages of an office without the costs.

For me that isn't really what excites me. As someone who spends a lot of time at a computer I like the idea of a virtual office space because it gives me a lot of options. As the quality of the screens improves I could work at a virtual screen while sitting on a virtual beach or being almost anywhere. Or I could have four different virtual monitors so I don't have to change tabs when doing research. And that's just be beginning.

But beyond work there are so many things. The most obvious to me is travel. In the next couple of years I imagine that something similar to Google Streetview will be made for virtual reality. You'll be able to explore the streets of almost any city in the world, explore museums and visit monuments. For someone who isn't wealthy enough to visit all the places he wants to go that is more interesting than playing a video game.

And in many places you'll be able to do more than just wander the streets. It places like New York, London that have been photographed a lot for quite a while you should be able to not only explore the cities but virtually time travel. This could of course be used in games but it doesn't need to be.

There are a thousand other ways to use virtual reality as well. Clearly since Facebook is involved there will be virtual chat rooms, but there is no reason they have to be as simple as that. Instead you'll have virtual movie theaters, concerts plays that you can visit with friends or explore real life places together. You could even sit around a table and play board games.

Finally there is education. The simple imagination is to have a virtual classroom. You could have huge numbers of students sit in on a virtual lecture with experts on the subject. But that is barely the beginning. Imagine a history class where you could watch the moon lander or visit a virtual battle site. You could watch the last supper being painted or sit in on great moments in history. An entire class could be at the million man march and that same day visit the events that led up to it. You could see Shakespeare’s plays in the globe theater, have a virtual conversation with Socrates. The chances to learn are endless.

If gaming is what takes to get virtual reality the jump start it needs then I am all for it, and I'm looking forward to the games. But I'm far more excited about the hundreds of other ways that I haven't even thought of yet that I can do all the things I've wanted to do but couldn't and I certainly don't wan to be limited by them having to be games.  

I have been watching Supergirl since it came out. It's certainly not the perfect show but it has been worth watching. This isn't a review though it's a single point of one thing that need to happen on the show soon.

At the beginning of every episode you have a voice over explaining who Supergirl is. It's not as good as the voice over on The Flash but it's worth having so people can jump in. One of the primary points in that voice over is that she was sent to earth to protect her cousin, but she went off course and by the time she arrived he was Superman and the implication is fairly obvious that he doesn't need her protection but everyone else does so she takes up his cause of protecting everyone else. A good cause, and one that makes for an interesting show, but she still had a mission.

That is where my point comes in. At some point, preferably sooner than later she needs to fulfill the job she was sent to earth to do. That is to protect Superman.

The first step of course is that they need to cast Superman. But they don't need to have Superman on the show. They need to have Clark Kent on the show. There is no good reason that they couldn't or shouldn't have Lois and Clark come visit the city and Jimmy Olson. It would be fun to see without having to have him do anything super. Ideally you'd have Cat Grant invite Jimmy, Clark, Lois and of course Kara to some sort of event or meal. This way they could interact but not have the obvious conversations because there is someone who isn't in on the secret there.

But primarily this episode is setup. A few episodes later you have Superman be weakened in some way. It doesn't really matter how, but I'd have someone steal his powers. So now they have the powers of Superman and Clark doesn't. Kara learns about this, either from the news of from Jimmy. Metropolis needs help and perhaps more important Superman needs protected because if he dies the person who stole his powers will keep them forever.

The problem of course is that Superman is as strong as Kara and the man who took his powers knows all their weaknesses and is willing to use them and more than happy to kill Kara. Everyone, including Clark, tells her that she shouldn't fight him because he's too strong, but she explains that she wasn't sent to Earth to protect it or to live a normal life. She was sent to the Earth to protect her cousin and that's what she is going to do. Besides, the world needs Superman.

Once the fight starts it's clear that she can't win. He's stronger than she is and a better fighter, but she doesn't stop. They exchange blows that would kill anyone else and in the end Kara finds some way to stop him, but is badly wounded in the process. She is going to die but because she defeated the villain Superman gets his powers back. He flies in and carries her to the Fortress of Solitude (or close enough to the sun to heal her). She of course lives and she and for the first time in the show you see Superman and Supergirl really together.

There are a few reasons that this is important. The first is that DC or whoever is making the decision needs to get over the idea that you can't have a Superman/Batman, ect both in the movies and on TV. It's silly. The argument that it might confuse audiences is stupid because if anything it's far more confusing to have Superman not appear on the show. Does that mean that it's supposed to bet he same Superman as in the movies? Is it the Superman from Smallville? Or is it simply a different superman. One we haven't seen before. Whatever the case you can't clear that up until he's on the show.

Of course the real reason isn't confusion. The problem is that they are afraid, and possibly rightly so, that the Superman that is on Supergirl will be better than the one in their movies. I'd suggest making better movies, but I'm sure their doing their best so I'll just say get over it. Does anyone really think that having a good flash on TV is going to make people want to see The Flash in the movies less, or is it more likely that having a character they already know and care about will make it easier to convince them to see other things that he is in. The same is true of any other characters.

The reason the show needs to do it though is that they need to show that she is Superman's equal. In the scenario I suggest she not only beats someone who has Superman's powers, but someone who has beat him. And beyond that she stands up to Superman to do it defying what he tells her to do because she thinks it's the right thing to do. I might even add a line from Lois pointing out that risking her life to protect him is the exact sort of thing he would do.

Finally, since all of this is seen by the whole world you no longer have to have Supergirl proving herself. She can afford to have Superman or anyone else help when she needs it, but also make her powerful enough that she isn't likely to need it ofter. In this way you can have Superman show up once or twice a season to help with something, or even better to ask for help.

I understand that there are likely people being told they can't do this and I don't know their plans for the show in the future, but I really believe that having her actually do what she was sent to Earth to do, protect her cousin, is a great way to make the character and the show a bit more interesting without having to make major changes to it.  

I had a strange moment yesterday watching the Xfiles finalie. (There may be some minor spoilers.) To begin I'll say that the xfiles episode was OK, and that I really hope that they had an actual ending written and decided to go with this when they were told that they would have more episodes. But back to the important thing, me. 

I've been working on a number of short stories lately and was working on one yesterday morning while waiting for an appointment. Here are the notes I wrote about six hours before I watched the Xfiles or had any idea what it was about.

Crispr what is its limit. Could it be used to make viruses to make people sick.

Used as a weapon

Not the Virus Doctor the Gene Doctor (this is for a story with a serial killer.) 

First assumption that he's taking people with gene defects.

Using Crispr to give people genetic defects

How long would it take?

There are a couple other minor questions but if you saw the Xfiles you see my point. I finished my errands, went home, had dinner and then sat down and watched the Xfiles, in which most of the ideas in my notes were in the TV show and since it was the Xfiles I felt some obligation to come up with the most paranormal possibilites of what happened. Perhaps I am psycicly connected to Chris Carter, or perhaps it was the collective unconcious sending both of us the same message. Perhaps time traveling aliens saw my story and brought it back in time to the writers of the xfiles so they could make a mediocor episode of the TV show out of it. 

Of course, also in the style of the x-files I feel the need to have a skeptic. Those ideas are all stupid. As is the idea that either of us stole the idea from the other. (Even if I had written it months and not hours before the show went on the TV). The real answer of course is that lots of people have ideas. Just because you had the idea for a school that teached wizards doesn't mean that J.K. Rowlings stole your idea, or that if you thought of a serial killer who kills serial killers that Dexter was your idea. At best it means that you are good at comming up with basic story ideas. But what most people who aren't writers don't understand is that ideas don't, by themselves, make good stories. There are far more good ideas than good stories and a lot of great stories with mediocor or even bad ideas. 

All that said, it is a wierd mixture of frustrating and strange to watch your idea on the screen even though you had no connection to it and even now I am trying to decide if I have to completely rewrite the basics of the story because even though it will be different it's going to be hard to not think about the xfiles if I write the story as I planned. But either way I think it makes for an interesting story about writing stories. 

First, the music is great. There is a variety of tunes and it is catchy. But just like all the best musicals it’s more than just that. The songs reveal what is going on in the characters minds and at times mean different things to different characters. And in the case of this episode it forces them to confront all of their problems. And that leads into the second reason it’s such a great episode.

This episode has more character development and discusses more important issues than most seasons on other shows. Among the things that the characters in this episode are going through is fear of commitment, guilt, difficulty in moving on, drugs and depression. And that’s just off the top of my head. 

I won’t touch on all of those, but I will say that Buffy does the best job of discussing depression of anything I have ever seen. And whether you have clinical depression or just are feeling down it’s great to see a character that is a hero that is doing the same. (some spoilers ahead). In this case Buffy is depressed because she was in heaven and brought back to life. She is going through the motions of life, but isn’t feeling any of them. And this episode is the most important part of this arc of the character because it is the episode where Buffy finally tells her friends the truth. 

Finally it deals with one of the most annoying things on TV. No one telling anyone anything. This is perhaps the most common way that plots are dragged out in modern TV as each of the characters hides things from the others. This episode removes that crutch and makes the rest of the season better because they actually have to deal with what happened.

I understand why so many other episodes of TV are often higher on lists than this one. Series finales often feel more important because they are final and it’s easy to assume that the musical episode of a TV show just can’t be all that important. But in the hands of a master this episode moves from laughter to tears, deals with important personal issues for every major character and still fits in several excellent songs.