Galley Friend B.D. sends along this colloquy on the economic and socio-political costs/benefits of the “Death Star.” (Remember, “Death Star” is just the pejorative used by the Rebel MSM. It’s really a “Defense Star.”) I have a vested interest in this, of course.

So here is Gregory Koger’s thesis:

[T]he Death Star is a bit misunderstood. It is primarily a tool of domestic politics rather than warfare, and should be compared to alternative means of suppressing the population of a galaxy. Second, as a weapon of war, it should be compared to alternative uses of scarce defense resources. Understood properly, the Death Star is not worth it.

And ultimately, the case he makes is awfully persuasive. Read the whole thing, but just as a teaser, here’s his short-list of defense improvements the Empire could make using the money earmarked for the Death Star:

The Emperor should not expect, therefore, that a single super-weapon will vanquish all foes. As Seth Masket notes, the same money could be used to make some much-needed, lower-risk investments in the Imperial military. Some examples:

1) Information Security. Wouldn’t it be nice if some too-dumb-to-talk 30-year-old bucket of bolts couldn’t hack into the DS’s computer system in a few seconds? I would think so.

2) Troop Transportation. How does the U.S. military get around in the desert? Humvees and Bradley fighting vehicles. How do elite scouts of the future get around? On overgrown lizards. It’s just embarrassing.

3) More robots, please. I get it: The “Clone Wars” featured Republic clones vs. the robot armies of the separatists, and the clones won. Still, though, some of those robots would be really useful in tactical situations, perhaps guided by clones on the ground.

4) More probe droids, please. After the Yavin debacle, the Empire sent out probe droids to scan remote systems. Why not keep a few loitering on every planet on a permanent basis? Then it would be lot harder for any rebellion to hide.

5) Practice, Practice, Practice. An entire legion of the Emperor’s best troops was defeated by a village of teddy bears fighting with sticks and stones. It’s just embarrassing. Clearly they needed better training in tactics, marksmanship and hand-to-paw combat.

That’s the Ernst Riser sequence and it is epic.

Start with this essay by Rod Hilton, passed along by Galley Friend A.K. It’s about the best order to watch the Star Wars series for someone who’s never seen any of the movies. And the case for IV, V, I, II, III, VI is quite compelling:

George Lucas be­lieves that Star Wars is the story of Anakin Sky­walker, but it is not. The pre­quels, which es­tab­lish his char­ac­ter, are so poor at being char­ac­ter-dri­ven that, if the series is about Anakin, the entire series is a failure. Anakin is not a re­lat­able char­ac­ter, Luke is.

This al­ter­na­tive order (which a com­menter has pointed out is called Ernst Risterorder) inserts the prequel trilogy into the middle, al­low­ing the series to end on the sen­si­ble ending point (the de­struc­tion of the Empire) while still be­gin­ning with Luke’s journey.

Ef­fec­tively, this order keeps the story Luke’s tale. Just when Luke is left with the burning ques­tion “how did my father become Darth Vader?” we take an ex­tended flash­back to explain exactly how. Once we un­der­stand how his father turned to the dark side, we go back to the main sto­ry­line and see how Luke is able to rescue him from it and salvage the good in him.

The prequel back­story comes at the perfect time, because Empire Strikes Back ends on a huge cliffhanger. Han is in car­bonite, Vader is Luke’s father, and the Empire has hit the re­bel­lion hard. De­lay­ing the res­o­lu­tion of this cliffhanger makes it all the more sat­is­fy­ing when Return of the Jedi is watched.

But wait–there’s more! Hilton proposes an alternate sequence: IV, V, II, III, VI.

Look closely. You’ll see what he’s done there. I’m not going to spoil his reasoning. You should read the whole thing yourself.

Hilton’s most mind-blowing reveal, however is way at the top. And it’s this:

For people that couldn’t care less about the prequel trilogy, I suggest Harmy’s De­spe­cial­ized Edi­tions. They are 720p blu-ray discs (AVCHD discs ac­tu­ally) that are the result of “Harmy” from The Orig­i­nal Trilogy forums painstak­ingly re­con­struct­ing the the­atri­cal re­leases of all three films uti­liz­ing a wide variety of video sources as well as custom mattes.

And . . . I’m spent.

If someone is already sitting on a Harmy edition blu-ray . . .

Fucking awesome.

Yes, it’s twelve minutes long. Hunker down. It’s really, really smart script-doctoring.

Also, it will make you cry.

Galley Reader M.F. sends along this pretty great essay on leadership problems within the Galactic Empire. Worth your valuable time.

Sample awesome:

Perhaps the biggest mistake of the Galactic Empire made is its singular focus on the preservation of power for the Emperor and a few of his chosen lackeys. There is a constant through line we see starting with A New Hope and running through to the end of the Return of the Jedi of the Emperor consolidating more and more power into his own hands and that of his right-hand man, Darth Vader. In A New Hope, the Galactic Senate is disbanded in favor of regional governors hand-selected by the Emperor. By the time Return of the Jedi rolls around, the Emperor’s only advisor is Darth Vader, and his distrust in his organization is so complete that his only plan for succession is a desperate attempt to poach Luke Skywalker from the Rebel Alliance and get him to join his organization. Anytime your future plans depend on getting a rising star from a rival organization to join your team, you know that you have some serious institutional issues.

Allahpundit is on the scene:

I’m starting to think Lucas’s endless mind games with “Star Wars” fans is some sort of“Magic Christian” prank in which he’s gotten bored with his mountain of money and is now having fun by messing with people’s heads. Maybe he’ll put Jar Jar in one of the TIE fighters at the end of “Star Wars” when he does the next re-edit, just to kick his most devoted acolytes in the groin.

Via Galley Friend A.K., a series of birthday cakes made for a little girl who loves princesses, ponies, and Darth Vader.

Their website is finally active at Death Star PR.

Everything about this post on “The Death of Obi-Wan Kenobi” is letter-perfect–the tone, the length, the funny. It’s so dead on that it works as both Start Wars parody and NYT parody. And check out all of the related-story tags–they don’t lead anywhere, but again, they’re just awesome: “News Analysis: Lord Vader’s Vow Fulfilled,” “Their Only Hope: The War on the Rebellion After Obi-Wan Kenobi.”

But the cherry on top is the commenters, who rise to meet the standard that’s been set. Sample greatness:

now that obi-wan is dead we need to get rid of this anti-rebellion legislation, it’s infringing on the rights of every imperial citizen out there, not only that but vader has left the economy in a sorry state with the construction of this so called ‘death star’.

And:

I love how the liberal rag GET keeps referring our Defense Star as the “Death Star”. Take that propaganda back to Courescant, Nerfherder!!!

And:

Alderaan was an inside job!

And:

Let’s be CLEAR this is not a VADER victory but a victory of our boys in white, not to mention the leadership of Lord Tyrannus the Count Dooku who started the manhunt in the first place.

There’s even a spam comment that’s so good I’m not going to spoil it. Go and soak in the whole page. You thank yourself.

Courtesy of Galley Friend B.D.–you’ve seen some of these before, but probably not all of them in one place. Fabulous stuff. I’d kill for the Cliff Chiang “He Can’t Do It Alone.”

Does the Death Star actually make sense for the Empire from economic and strategic perspectives?

Yes!