Roger Williams

As a native Rhode Islander, the name Roger Williams conjures up many images for me, most of them involving the park in Providence. Roger Williams Park is home to the zoo where my family went to visit at least once a summer when I was a kid. It is also a great place to bike or to have a barbecue or see an occasional concert. I have fond memories of it. He also lends his name to Roger Williams University with its beautiful 160 acre campus on Narragansett Bay in Bristol. Other than that, his name didn't mean much to me. I knew he founded Rhode Island under the auspice of religious tolerance after being thrown out of Massachusetts, but that is about it.   

Roger Williams was raised in London and educated at Oxford University. He arrived in the new world in February, 1631 on a ship named the Lyon. He was 27 years old and married to Mary Barnard. He was working as a private chaplain to a cousin of Oliver Cromwell. He was hired by the Puritan church in Boston, MA, as a religious teacher. The teacher they intended to hire, John Wilson, was returning to London on the Lyon's return trip to get his wife. Williams was a separatist and his beliefs quickly clashed with their allegiance to the Church of England so he didn't take the position. They didn't like what he had to say all over the colony. When he started telling them how much they were sinning by being loyal to the Church, they didn't take kindly to it. The Puritans were a pretty tough crowd. The colony was only about a year old at this time. They were the survivors and they didn't take kindly to his admonishments. The Pilgrims down in Plymouth, the Boston folks, the Salem folks ... not really known for their tolerance.

His big concern were the first four commandments, the ones dealing with God. They were a matter for the church and not for the state. These were sins not crimes. The church dealt with sin, the state dealt with crime. This is a radical idea, one that we would refer to these days as the separation of church and state. He pissed off so many people so they sent him packing. He went to Plymouth but apparently, they weren't as separatist as he thought they should be. He preached against corporeal punishment for non-believers and thought that their punishment would come after death in hell. He thought we should punish them by preaching and trying to convert them. I think this idea persists today. I can tell by observing the crazies that come to my door with a big black book in their hands and keep returning no matter how rude I am to them. Eh! I guess it beats corporal punishment. Thomas Jefferson became famous for this idea, but it probably came to him from the same source material as it did to Williams. One of Williams' mentors, Edward Coke, was one the most important English lawyer of his day and defender of the Magna Carta. Coke's legal textbook, Institute of the Lawes of England, was used for at least 100 years and read by a young Thomas Jefferson. While Jefferson believed that government needed to be protected from religion, Williams believed the opposite, religion needed to be protected from government.

Williams also believed that Plymouth colony was illegitimate because they didn't get the land deed from the Indians but from the King. He believed that England stole the land from the natives. This is widely believed today. I believe this. When he settled in Rhode Island, he befriended the natives and was one of the first Europeans to publish a translation of their language.

The state of Rhode Island was the first colony to declare its independence from England but the last of the original 13 to ratify the US Constitution, not because they were slow, but because they demanded a Bill of Rights. Even though this happened over 100 years after Williams was dead, his influence is all over this. They rejected the Constitution in 1788, only to ratify it in 1790, basically because they were threatened with being treated as a foreign government. It was ratified with a margin of two votes, the smallest margin of all the colonies.

I don't know how religious tolerant Rhode Island is today, but I know the United States is still one of the most (if not the most) religiously tolerant places on the planet. I know we are not perfect. Some times we look to Europe as examples of progressive thinking. But not on this issue. While France has a ban on burqas in public places and Switzerland has a ban on minarets on Mosques, we have nothing of the sort ... at least on the Federal level. It is difficult to know what Roger Williams would think of us if he magically appeared. Perhaps he'd be proud. Personally, I think he'd freaked out by car and planes but that is another story.

The Almost Boycott of 1968 Olympics

As a student of history, I have to admit that I have been enjoying watching the television show Madmen not just for the drama but for the history. The attention to detail is impeccable. When they turn on their black and white television sets, with the rabbit ear antennae, that white dot slowly comes on the screen and takes a few seconds for the picture to appear. I love it. As I watch season six, with the storyline based in 1968 (one of the US's most turbulent years), I observe some the best television characters ever created reflect on their current events: assassinations, violence at the Democratic convention, the Vietnam war and pot smoking in the office. I was three years old when this unfolded, but I feel like I am sharing the experience now. If the novel is the great art form of the 20th Century, then surely television will be the 21st Century's. Don Draper is our Gatsby, as complex and as relevant our era as any Fitzgerald, Hemingway or Salinger character.

With the Winter Olympic in Sochi starting tomorrow, I have to wonder, will the events of 1968 Summer Olympics in Mexico City be mentioned on Madmen. Don't tell me, I plan to watch it as soon as my wife gets home. The Olympic Project for Human Rights was founded by UC Berkley sociology professor Harry Edwards. Its intention were to organize the American black athletes to boycott the Olympics. The most famous of them was Kareem Abdul-Jabbar (named Lew Alcindor at the time), but they were supported by Jesses Owens, Jackie Robinson and Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.  The five demands were: 1) the removal of racist IOC president Avery Brondage, 2) a retraction of Rhodesia and South Africa invitation to the games, 3) reinstating of Muhammed Ali's boxing title, 4) hiring more African-American coaches and 5) ending the "whites only" policy at the New York Athletic Club. South Africa and Rhodesia were disinvited but that had happened before the demands were made.  None of the others were met and the athletes went anyway. They were urged to find some individual gestures of protest. In this video King mentions six demands but I could only find five.

The US received 45 gold medals in that Olympics, ten of them were by black athletes setting seven world records (including the famous Bob Beamon long jump). The only protesters were Tommie Smith and John Carlos who placed first and third in the 200 meter run. Smith wore a black glove on his right hand, Carlos on his left. They raised their hands with the Black Power symbol. They also wore no shoes to symbolize poverty, they wore beads to protest lynchings and an Olympics Projects for Human Rights button. Instead of looking at the flag while the national anthem played, they bowed their heads. They were suspended from the team, thrown out of Olympic Village and had to go home but could keep their medals because the US wanted to count them in the medal count.

The reaction from home is what you'd expect, America hasn't changed much. The worst thing that was said in the media was by sport broadcaster, Brent Musburger, called them a pair "dark skinned storm troopers." This was before Star Wars, so storm trooper was still associated with German soldiers. They received tons of hate mail and death threats. Tons of problems followed including social isolation and loss of employment bottoming out with Carlos' wife's suicide in 1977.  

I don't know if this is a big enough event to appear in Madmen, but it is just a reminder that I am glad I am not old enough to remember 1968.

Ownership versus Stewardship

The oldest known tree in the world is in California and it is over 5,000 years old. Are trees immortal or do they have a lifespan? Do any of them die of natural causes or of old age ... or do they just die from humans or other mammals cutting them down, from insect infestations, erosion or wind? This is something that I asked my wife recently (who seems to know everything) and she didn't know either. What I discovered, from an afternoon of doing one of my favorite exercises (Googling), they are not immortal. They have lifespans but vary tremendously by species. Like mammals, they really don't die of old age, but when they get older they become weaker and more susceptible to disease and infection. Unlike mammals, trees don't have a central nervous system nor are they controlled by a central agent like our brain. When our brain dies, we die. Tree's systems are decentralized so large parts of them can die and they can still live. They are brainless. The University of Virginia has a chart that shows the average and maximum lifespans of some North American trees. None of my trees on my land in Vermont have been around since before Christ but maybe some of them were here when the Pilgrims or Columbus landed. None of them seem big enough for that. Since they are so old, are they really my trees? How much hubris do we have to think that we can own something that predates our grandparents' grandparents? And the land, that the trees are planted in, is a millions of years older than the trees? I can own the home, but I can never really own the land. I can be a steward of the land. I hate to sound like a bumper sticker, but here we go: "we don't inherit the Earth from our ancestors, but borrow it from our children". Since I don't have any children and don't believe in God, who the hell did I borrow it from?

Recently, I received a letter from my home insurance company about the moss (aka "organic growth") on my roof that needed to be removed before my policy could be renewed. This was just a stark reminder to me that I really don't own my home. A bank owns my home. I'm just the douche that makes the mortgage payments for the next decade or so. Obviously, I have difficulty with the concept of ownership. It seems more like an illusion the more I think of it. I understand how I own my stereo, my computer or my car. But what about my dogs. Do I own them? They are more like good friends that I have volunteered to take responsibility for. That relationship is more of a steward than of an owner. If I mistreat them, they will be taken away. But if I took a sledge hammer to my stereo, well, no one would really care other than myself and my wife. 

I have met a few land rights activists. They always seem so nutty and extreme. Somehow they think that no one should be able to tell them what they can do with their land. Since all land is connected, as is water, there are some restrictions to their usage. Collective ownership does exist on some level. If I were to pour something into the ground polluting my neighbor's well water, I would expect he'd have something to say about it. If I had a child, I assume I'd feel the same way about the child. I'd expect everyone in my life to help me raise the child in some way or another. Yet most people don't refer to children as being owned. Hillary Clinton popularized the term, "it takes a village to raise a child," in the 1990's when she was the First Lady. Not a new idea. Collective stewardship of children has been around for a long time. I remember when the school shooting happened in Columbine High School, I offensively quipped that "it takes a child to raze a village." I remember it didn't go over very well. "TOO SOON!" The point of this comment was that the village didn't take care of their children and they payed for it. It is not just the parent's job to raise their children but their extended family, neighbors, teachers and church members ... society in general. We look out for each other. We do it for children, our pets and our land.

Collective stewardship of land isn't a new idea either. Not a communistic idea. One of the US founding fathers, Thomas Paine, believed in collective ownership. This is from Agrarian Justice:

"Personal property is the effect of society; and it is as impossible for an individual to acquire personal property without the aid of society, as it is for him to make land originally.

Separate an individual from society, and give him an island or a continent to possess, and he cannot acquire personal property. He cannot be rich. So inseparably are the means connected with the end, in all cases, that where the former do not exist the latter cannot be obtained. All accumulation, therefore, of personal property, beyond what a man's own hands produce, is derived to him by living in society; and he owes on every principle of justice, of gratitude, and of civilization, a part of that accumulation back again to society from whence the whole came."

That's right.  "You didn't build that."  This is, of course, is our most liberal founding father. You don't hear him quoted on Fox News much. He supported a huge tax on land to fund such things as care for the elderly and the disabled. He also supported a stipend to be paid to every citizen when they turned 21 to help them get a start. To him land was "the common property of the human race." My feeling almost seems opposite to his. I don't think the land belongs to everyone, but no one. The deer who poop in my yard own my land. I'm just the douche that steps on it in the Spring.  Other owners: the owl I see in the old sugar maple, the blue jays and chickadees that come to my feeder, and critters the burrow in my lawn. Their families have been here longer than mine or any other human. They own this land, not me.

Here is a short video I made of one of my trees over a years (thanks to the iMovie and Everyday apps to used to make this):

The Coming World War I Anniversaries

The year 1914, a hundred years ago, started optimistically. A new nation, Nigeria, was formed by the merging of two British colonies, one Muslim and one Christian (the Northern and Southern Protectorates respectively). The first passenger flight ever took place on New Years Day. Also, early that year Ford Motor company announced the eight hour workday and minimum wage while women suffragettes were marching toward the vote. This would be the year that Charlie Chaplin and Babe Ruth made their debuts. The first blood transfusion took place. If not for the assassin's bullet that struck Austrian prince, Franz Ferdinand, on June 28th, the 20th century might have been quite peaceful. Sure, there was bickering, a ten year revolution was brewing in Mexico, but the world had not seen a war that they'd refer at as a World War yet. It would change everything.

With the 100 year anniversary of the assassination coming up this year, I feel woefully unprepared for it. I know so little about this war. I don't want to feel like one of those people that Jay Leno interviews on the streets of LA that don't know shit about anything. I have to double check who was at war with whom in this war. I know so much more about the sequel. Perhaps it is because WW II is more recent and even bloodier or because I know people who were in WW II, like my dad, or that there are a lot more Hollywood movies about it ... probably a combination of them all.  Regardless, I need to learn more.

June 28th marks the date that the assassination happen which was followed by a bunch of bad decisions based on bad information fueled by bravado and a bunch of poorly designed treaties. Austria-Hungary declares war on Serbia, then Germany declares war on France, Germany on France, Germany on Belgium, the UK on Germany ... yada yada yada. With the UK getting involved, at the time being the largest empire ever in the history of the world, this makes it huge almost immediately. By the time the US gets involved in 1917, the war had spread to every continent (sans Antarctica).

The question for the Americans is what side to join if join they must. England was a long time enemy while Germany had little military contact with us. Both countries owed the US so much money that it was a loss either way. The current tension between the US and England were due to English persistence over the border of Venezuela and Guyana. We may have joined the Central powers along with Germany if Germany hadn't made two mistakes: (1) they declared they would sink any neutral ships anywhere on the globe and then proceeded to do so, (2) and they sent an infamous telegram to Mexico, the Zimmerman telegram, urging them to join the Central Powers against the US to get back the land that the we stole (aka Texas). When the RMS Lusitania, an ocean liner carrying English munitions in its secret compartment, was sunk by a Germany U-boat on May 7 1915 killing over 100 American citizens, public opinion started turning against Germany and toward the UK. In my faulty memory, I always think of the sinking of Lusitania as the Pearl Harbor of the first World War, but of course, this is not correct because it took the US another year and a half to declare war against Germany. Public opinion certainly swayed against Germany but the US citizenry was still very much isolationist.

In March 1916, Germany did it again. They sunk the SS Sussex, an unarmed French passenger ferry in the English Channel. President Wilson threatened to cut off all diplomatic contact if this continued so Germany agreed to stop sinking non-military crafts. The agreement came to be known as the "Sussex Pledge" forged in May. By January of the next year Germany had decided to break the pledge believing that by continuing unrestricted submarine activity it would end the war in five months. They believed by time the US got into the war, Germany would be victorious. News travelled slowly. By February this brought Wilson to Congress just to inform them that he severed diplomatic ties with Germany. Throughout February and March, German continued to sink American ships. It wasn't until the Zimmerman telegram that the US declared war. If you are looking for a Pearl Harbor type of event, the telegram was it, not the Lusitania. But there really isn't one. America's greatest contribution to the war was man power. By the summer of 1918, an average of 10,000 US service men were landing in France everyday. This was enough to tip the war toward England.

Science fiction fans often talk about going back in time and changing history at key moments in time. One favorite is preventing the assassination of Kennedy, another is killing Hitler while he was a boy or preventing his birth. For the most impact, the logical choice would be preventing the assassination of Franz Ferdinand and hopefully preventing the war. Most of the 20th century problems seem to have started from this war. The biggest and most obvious problem it caused is the next World War. England and France were incredibly unfair to  Germany in the Treaty of Versailles, making recovery from the war difficult and creating an environment where radical movements like Nazi could thrive. It was stripped of its military, its monarchy, its flag, its international rights and its dignity. Its economy was also in shambles. Luckily, we learned from this mistake when WW II ended, the Marshal Plan was less punitive and Germany is the amazing nation it is today because of it.

There are less obvious problems caused by WW I. Some were inevitable, like the mechanization of war. This was the first war that planes, submarines and tanks were used. All wars from here on end would be mechanical. The cavalry was done. Some of the other problems are less obvious. The devastation of the war caused the fall of the house of Romanov in Russia giving the Bolsheviks power over the czars.  They eventually became the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. If not for the WW I, the cold war might never have happened. Also, the war was financially costly even for the victors. European countries could no longer afford to maintain their empires. Colonialism around the world began to collapse with independent nations sprouting up for the next 50 years. The sun was setting on the British Empire. This was good for many reasons but this meant a lot of change and instability happening all over the world. New nations formed like India, Vietnam, Indonesia and Philippines among many others. Perhaps the biggest collapse was the Ottoman Empire in 1922. It may have been able to maintain its cohesion if it wasn't so busy with the Middle Eastern front of WW I. It had been shrinking for the past four hundred years, WW I was its death toll with Turkey, Syria, Saudi Arabia and Iraq forming from its ashes.

This is what I have learned from just poking around on the net. Now I feel more prepared when those 100th anniversaries start popping up.

Door Mats, Boot Lickers, Cage Rattlers and the Squeaky Wheel

The story of John O'Neill is one of the saddest and frustrating I have ever heard.  I don't know many stories that show the problems with modern American culture more than his story. He was the one FBI agent who knew about the threat of al Qaeda. When he followed protocol, he was ignored. He complained and stepped on some toes, he was made a pariah. He "retired" in frustration and started his job as head of security at the World Trade Center just a couple of weeks before it was brought down by al Qaeda, a horrible tragic irony. His body was found in the wreckage a few days later.

O'Neill's story is another example of the wrongness of the old idiom "the squeaky wheel gets the grease." When the squeaky wheel is a person, it usually doesn't get the grease. They usually don't get listened to or placated in anyway. They usually get ignored and as the squeaking gets louder, they eventually get labeled a "complainer" and get marginalized. I like the term Cage Rattler better than the Squeaky Wheel. It has better imagery. One of four things can happen to the Cage Rattler in any modern American organization.

(1) The Cage Rattler can become so frustrated that they stop complaining, they internalize their frustration and then they become apathetic. Like a doormat, they learn to be quiet, accept that they will be stepped on, learn to say "thank you" and are just glad to get a pay check. Most people are Doormats. They have lost all passion for their jobs. They learn not to question authority, not to speak up; it isn't worth the effort. They know they can't change anything. Their work with lack creativity and are, possibly, not very productive because of this.

(2) The Cage Rattler can get sick of being ignored and just quit, like O'Neill, and move onto a new job hopefully where they are in charge. The best place for a Cage Rattler is to be self-employed or to be in a position where they are beyond reproach. They need to have a lot of freedom and power to implement meaningful change. (3) If the economy is bad and they can't move on to another position, this can become a bad situation. The complainer can escalate their complaints so much that they annoy the wrong people, they rattle the wrong cage, and just get fired. This is the worst scenario. I've seen this happen to a lot of people. It is can get explosive. It is best to quit any job, if you can, before things get this bad. Just remember, one common way of fixing any problem, is replacing the person that keeps bringing it up. The Squeaky Wheel doesn't get more grease, it just gets replaced by a new quiet wheel.

(4) The best scenario of course, is the complainer gets listened to, the problem is resolved and everyone moves on. If O'Neill had been listened to, there would probably be a few more skyscrapers in Manhattan right now, there probably wouldn't have been a very expensive war in Afghanistan, the Patriot Act probably wouldn't exist and hopefully, the NSA wouldn't be tapping all of our phone. It is my experience, working in software support for almost two decades, that complainers are your friends. When one person complains, they are usually representing a bunch of other people who haven't bothered to. If your organization is a software company, complainers help identify bugs to improve your product. If you are a teacher, complainers help educate more students. If you are a security organization, complainers save lives. Embrace your complainers. No, they don't like complaining. No one does. If no one is complaining, there is probably something very wrong.

Cage Rattlers aren't the problem. The worst person you will meet in any organization is the Boot Licker. I'd rather have someone complaining to me than to have someone manipulate me. I once worked in a team of four guys at a software company. We shared a workload. Three of us worked very hard, but one guy did nothing. He spent most of the day socializing, usually on the phone with friends. Whenever a manager walked by he appeared to be talking to a customer. All talk of Whoopie's gown at the Academy Awards or which restaurant was hotter ceased at the right time. He was good at this. How did he get away with it? For one, Doormats were everywhere. He was such a "nice" guy and so well liked that if you complained about him, you were the problem, not him. He was a great talker. Whenever big meetings came up, he always chimed in at the right time. He was very good at getting himself on the right project, at the right time and taking as much credit as he could get away with. There aren't many more frustrating experiences than when you have worked very hard on a project and someone who has done nothing gets all the credit. A team with two Door Mats, a Boot Licker and a Cage Rattler is not a good combination. Boot Lickers are rare, but there is no better way to turn a Door Mat into a Cage Rattler.  Put him/her on a team with a Boot Licker and watch the transformation.

I'm Dreaming of a Green Christmas

You could say that I have struggled with enjoying Christmas as an adult. I have attempted to make it meaningful and have failed. I don't bother anymore. I find Christmas to be a scourge on the planet and boil on the face of humanity. I wish it would go away.

Since it is not going away, I have learned to deal with it. I am not an environmental scientist and don't have any secrets to how keep your Christmas environmentally sound. The only thing you can do to keep your Christmas green, is not celebrate it. But if you are, there are certainly ways to minimize your impact.

Getting a real tree that is grown locally is certainly better than having an artificial tree but the operative word here is locally. Getting a Christmas tree at a Christmas tree farm (aka killing a tree for Jesus) is not as environmentally friendly as many people claim. Yes, they plant trees to grow and be cut down when it is six feet tall or so, this is good for the environment but not as good as planting the tree and letting it grow to maturity. Also, Christmas trees on farms not only don't grow to be large but they don't help to maintain a diverse ecosystems like those that grow in the wild. When birds nest in them, the nests are cleared away. Deer and other herbivores are kept away. When other types of plants sprout around them, they are pulled. This all contribute to these trees being more susceptible to disease and pest infestation which in turn, make the farmer more likely to use pesticides. Yes, these farms are a greener form of real-estate than a strip mall or a parking lot, but green? Not very. If you don't live near one of these farms and live in a big city, when you buy a real tree, you are not being green at all. If you think you are being green, you are kidding yourself. The amount of carbon that was burned to get the tree to the city makes the whole experience a wash. I realize not everyone can buy their tree from a neighbor like I do (not a farm but a guy with a few extra trees in his forested land). If you want to be green, you are better off getting an artificial tree, which is not green either, but it is reusable. You can keep it in a closet and take it out for the next 30 years. 

Unless your house is powered by wind, geo-thermal or solar, your lights on your tree are not green either. Non-electric ornaments are greener. If you have lights on your tree, you can often offset by turning off the lights in that room because the tree lights may give off enough light that you may not need the usual source. If you are one of those people who covers their house in lights and/or buys the huge idiotic plastic lawn ornaments, then you are obviously not green and you are probably not reading this blog posts because you clearly don't give a shit about the environment. 

Obviously, there are those that really do enjoy the Christmas season. You may know that the entire experience will never be green, but you feel that it is worth it considering the joy that you get out of it. Perhaps, but I would hope that you may find a way to offset this somehow with some other event during the year, like maybe planting a tree on Arbor Day ... buy locally, non-plastic and try not to travel just the sake of the holiday. 

Don't buy into the commercialism of it, obviously, but you should probably not buy into the religiousness of it either. If Jesus did exist, he was probably born in June. The December date was chosen by the Catholic church not so arbitrarily. They co-opted the date to coincide it with the winter solstice which was already being celebrated by the pagans. Then the capitalists stole it from the religious folks to sell plastic toys, greeting cards and adrenaline. The irony of this is that as a business model, Christmas is not good for the economy. Businesses lose a lot of money by hiring, training and laying off employees every year for the holiday rush. If the gift giving were staggered, like it is birthday gift shopping, they could maintain a steady employee base, who is well trained and compensated. If you want to help the economy, stop buying at Christmas and double your birthday present shopping. 

Overall, it would be it would be better for everyone if the pagans took the holiday back and made it their own again. It would green and quite a bit more sane. 

Star Trek and the Irish

I have mentioned a few times how much I enjoy listening to Podcasts. In my household, it is perhaps the top form of entertainment, news and general information. Recently, I discovered the Mission Log, a Podcast that is going through every Star Trek episode, all the series, one at a time, to discuss the plot, the social relevance and trivia. After enjoying the first two Podcast episodes, I decided to make it a daily ritual. I watch an episode in the evening and listen to the Podcast about that episode in the morning over coffee. If you are a fan of the show, check it out. At the pace of one show a week, it should take them about 14 years to cover all the episodes of all the series, so you have time.

In watching the original series (via Netflix streaming), again in order, and then listening to two fairly intelligent guys talk about it, I have discovered one fairly disturbing trend that I never noticed before. Of course, I remember going into this that Star Trek was a progressive show for its time, so there are many non-white actors portraying non-white characters without negative stereo-types. I also remember that even though they seem to be racially progressive, when it comes to gender they are not so progressive. I was expecting the sexism, I even see more of it the older I get. The disturbing trend that surprises me is the anti-Irish vein there seems to be.

I am twenty two episodes into the original series and I have noticed three fairly obvious portrayals of negative Irish stereotypes.

"The Naked Time": In episode four, we have a drunken Irishman, Riley, taking over engineering. Almost everyone is drunk on some alien virus, but only one character is singing Irish ditties over the loud speaker and acting like a fool. The rest of the crew are either horny or like Mr. Sulu, swashbuckling. The drunken Irishman almost kills everyone.

"Shore Leave": In episode 15, we are introduced to Finnegan, a bully from Kirk's academy days that just wants to beat the crap out of him. This is somewhat forgivable because the character is a fabrication from Kirk's memory so perhaps, Kirk remembers Finnegan in this comically brutish form.

"Court Martial": In episode 20, Kirk is framed and put on trial by the crazed and maniacal records officer Finney. Finney is just a ball of Fighting Irish rage.

I should point out that Irish characters are plentiful in Star Trek. Doctor McCoy is somewhat stereotypical but in addition to him, many of the extra characters are Irish as well.  O"Neil in the "The Return of the Archons" and Lt. McGivers in "Space Seed" are two that are not so stereotypical.  The negative stereotyping is a mystery to me. I am curious to see if it continues. Gene Roddenberry, the series creator, has what I assume is an Irish name so this explains why there are so many Irish characters but why the negative stereotypes? Was he over-compensating for something?  In his attempt to be progressive towards the black man or Asian man, did he just forget his own? The show was produced in the late 1960's so Irish discrimination shouldn't have been too foreign to him, possibly one generation removed. Perhaps it was okay in 60's to think badly of the Irish like today where bashing the French is widely acceptable, even in some very liberal settings.  National Public Radio's "Car Talk" seems to bash the French every week.  I can't imagine them doing this to blacks or Jews.  Perhaps every generation has some small groups that it is acceptable for even liberals to bash.