I’ve been on a musical journey lately in rediscovering some of my country’s greatest musicians. Music has always been my first love in life. I found myself in front of the disarray of compact discs at my local Wal-Mart, and I found Leonard Cohen’s greatest hits. I was amazed at the beauty of his take on this style of folk music which was popularized by Bob Dylan. Except Cohen’s music is, to my ear, much better than Dylan’s. Less self indulgent, speaking more from his soul.

Patrick Stewart’s memoir, Make it So, was the second book I finished reading in 2024. I started reading this book after finishing all three seasons of Picard, and was watching seasons one and two of The Next Generation on Blu-Ray while reading this book. This book was not just about his career as Captain Picard; while just over the last quarter of it was, this is very much a book about his life and the hardships he overcame while maintaining a positive outlook throughout and being guided by the light of his cultivated passion in acting and of Shakespeare.

There are moments in my life when I do something I haven’t done in a while, which causes me to take pause to reflect. Living in a culture where the social norms and ways of doing things seem to change from day to day, things that have permanence in our culture really stand out. Turntables. The AM and FM radio. The traditional wristwatch. Safety razors. And books. Yes, the good old fashioned paper book.

I use the Internet based on a set of principles. These principles are based on concepts of ownership, autonomous sovereignty of my property, and democracy. When I purchase a product in this democracy, I own that product, and am free to do with it what I like within the laws that protect the rights of others from harm. This means the intended purpose or use of a product I buy is entirely up to me (governed by well-principled laws) once I have paid for it, not to the person who sold it to me. This means that every byte of memory, every block of storage, every single clock cycle that my computer generates belongs to me. I paid for the hardware, and I paid for the electricity that feeds it. The seller of the computer forfeits all rights to those things once they receive my money, because that is how the exchange of goods for money works. This is why I won’t ever own a computer made by Apple, because they don’t share this philosophy. An Apple product is always owned by Apple; they only give you the right to use it as they see fit. It’s also why I refuse to run Microsoft Windows, as Microsoft appropriates some of my clock cycles, memory, and drive storage for their own purposes, attempting to do so without my knowledge or explicit consent, and only gives me the right to use their software under their terms and conditions. It is also why I don’t use proprietary closed source software that only give me the right to use that software under certain terms and conditions. I only run Linux and open source software, and generally consent to the use of clock cycles, drive storage, and memory to that which benefits the community because ultimately that also benefits me and contributes to improvements in the open source software that I like to use. I have nothing against Microsoft per se, just that their terms of agreement are not congruent with my own principles.

A common theme among fans of Star Trek is the idea of living in a Star Trek utopia, and discussing ways of how we are to achieve this. Some go on to describe a harmonious society, perhaps with communist undertones, and with the expectation that we should all should just have respect for all life, apply science wisely, and pursue principles of justice, fairness, and reason. Whenever I see something like this, I must immediately assume either this person doesn’t really understand the fundamental lesson of Star Trek, or, if they do, they are purposely twisting its meaning towards a political agenda. I prefer to give everyone the benefit of the doubt and go with the former, because there’s not many who have watched as much Star Trek as I have.