The Beautiful Mind, a Beautiful Day, Medical Matters

One of my all-time favorite movies is the 2001 semi-fictional biographical thriller A Beautiful Mind, starring Russell Crowe as John Naah, the Novel laureate (Nash really won that award) for economics who went through a serious protracted trial with his schizophrenia.  His"friend"of many years, a hallucination, was Charles Herman, played on screen by Paul Bettany.  The way the film portrays this character...one moment he's invisible and the next he's right up in your face...made a formidable impression on me.  If something like this happened to me, I would be very upset about what was going on in my mind...especially if there were a pattern of repetition to the phenomenon. How could I bring this experience up in conversation, possibly risking in the process being called crazy? In the Bible, following the resurrection of Jesus, his disciples were walking around, largely despondent and discouraged. Suddenly the risen Lord would appear to them out of thin air,  this being the part of the text that threw me back a bit.  I will need to be careful about what I observe in life and how to process and react to it.  I do know that, as far as I can discern, my home is relatively secure with any intruders unlikely to make an unwelcome appearance. So the only feasible alternative is...

Today I went with Melissa to consult with her physician's assistant dealing with the oncology following her 2024 cancer treatment and what the future plans are regarding appointments and procedures.  Also, we went to UF Health at the Oaks Mall where I had a lab blood draw and provided a urine sample.  We're dealing with this cancer ordeal arm in arm, loving and supporting each other through it all. I'm praying for complete healing, acknowledging the Lord's supremacy in everything.  Right now it's April 20th, 2026...let's see where the calendar takes us...

Great Old TV Episodes...from Perception

The episode NEMESIS, which I'm discussing today, is from a more recent TV series, Perception. It stars Eric McCormack (of Will and Grace fame) as neuroscientist Daniel Pierce, teaching at a university.  His special angle is that he suffers from paranoid schizophrenia, including hallucinations...some of them welcome, like his imaginary girlfriend with whom he works out his problems...and some of them appearing spontaneously, often to assist in his solving of the particular episode's mystery.  To me it's an obvious ripoff of Ron Howard's use of hallucinations in the movie A Beautiful Mind, although that movie's schizophrenic protagonist, the late mathematician John Nash, in real life suffered from delusions, not hallucinations.  Until this episode, it bothered me that both Dr. Pierce and Nash gave the false impression that those with this mental illness were implicitly geniuses, while in truth the intelligence range among them reflects that of the general population.  In this episode I was gratified to see some focus on a character more of the norm in intellectual ability who, while schizophrenic, was not perceiving hallucinations but rather was, like the real Nash, severely deluded.  A newly installed judge has been found stabbed to death and this young schizophrenic man, who has been writing detailed letters to her with his rants about her being an avenging heroine from another world, instantly becomes the chief suspect...but Dr. Pierce and his sidekick FBI agent Kate Moretti (played by Rachel Leigh Cook) think the murderer is someone else. And so the show progresses until the culprit is uncovered.  Pierce also has hired an assistant, Max Lewicki (played by Arjay Smith), whose chief role is to tell him when he's hallucinating something or somebody.  Although the back story and romantic and academic intrigues abound in this series, each episode usually breaks down to Pierce playing the Sherlock Holmes role with Moretti aiding him as the Doctor Watson character. McCormack brings a lot of passion to his portrayal of Pierce, and the episodes tend to hone in on hot, controversial topics as well.  Perception lasted three seasons on TNT from 2012 to 2015 when it was cancelled...when it first came out I watched the first few episodes from the first season but was too taken aback at the derivations from A Beautiful Mind and abandoned it.  Now it's on Amazon Prime and I'm going through it one episode at a time.  One of my favorite features of Perception is that usually with each episode's opening and closing we see Professor Pierce lecturing on an intriguing topic in front of his class: those lecture snippets in themselves are worthy of discussion...   

Just Watched The Social Dilemma Documentary Movie

Melissa, Will and I recently set down and watched on Netflix a very intriguing and disturbing documentary film, released just this year: The Social Dilemma, released for general public viewing just a couple of weeks ago after appearing at the Sundance Film Festival in January.  In it former Google designer Tristan Harris, along with several other former major Internet company employees, present their view that uses of social media like Facebook, Instagram and Twitter...along with simple Internet use of search engines like that of Google, present skewed outcomes because the companies providing these services use complex algorithms deliberately designed to give the user what he or she wants and pander to people's prejudices in order to increase their usage...not necessarily providing truthful or balanced information.  Each user has a separate profile that the company analyzes to increase their addiction to the application by feeding back material that supports their own preconceived notions. This is creating among adults a very politically divided, bubbled-off society with each "camp" armed with its own "facts" and perceived outrages perpetrated by the other "side" as they spend their time shouting past each other on the various issues and politicians.  But with teens...and preteens as well...social media can become very addictive and personally demeaning, possibly even contributing to suicide...

I just finished rereading A Game of Thrones, George R.R. Martin's first volume of his apparently never-ending A Song of Ice and Fire fantasy series.  His fiction may be fantasy in that it involves a mythical world, dragons, monsters up north and the like, but with regard to how unseen forces manipulate the characters into acting against their own interests, it is very, very real and applicable to what is going on now with not only social media and the Internet in general, but also television and radio: the companies obey the bottom line of economic profit, which is provided by advertising, which in turn is driven by viewership...regardless of the truth value of what is being put out there.  As with Martin's book with his "puppet masters" stringing the characters along with their strategically-placed provocations eventually pitting the House of Lannister in open conflict against that of Stark, Harris and others reveal that these corporate AI algorithms have come to the conclusion that inciting people's passions about different subjects and themselves is the most cost-effective way to increase onsite activity and get those crucial profits for the company...and this is causing our children to become more withdrawn and insecure while our society as a whole is much more deeply divided and uncivil...

This past Sunday evening I was watching the end of an exciting, close football game between the (boo) New England Patriots and the (hooray) Seattle Seahawks.  My 'Hawks managed to squeak out a close victory on the last play of the game, but what if the broadcasters behaved the way of social media or search engines?  While not denying the final score in favor of Seattle, NBC, knowing my preferences, would have exalted everything Seattle did while casting New England in the role of dastardly, evil villains...and the officials were of course biased against the Seahawks.  But for my neighbor who likes the Patriots, the presentation by the same NBC on his TV would portray his chosen team as the heroes robbed of a victory by Seattle's cheating and poor officiating: New England really did win, even if the score says otherwise...must be some kind of hoax.  That sounds crazy, but if The Social Dilemma is right then in a way that's a lot of what we're getting on our smartphones and computers.  Users beware: they're taking us for a bunch of damned fools, and maybe they're right...I highly recommend this documentary and let the wise among us wake up to the danger...

Weekly Short Stories: 1948 Science Fiction, Part 1

I continued on with my look back at excellent short science fiction from the past as I moved to the year 1948, using the anthology Isaac Asimov Presents The Great SF Stories 10 (1948).  Here are my reactions to the first six tales from that book...

DON'T LOOK NOW by Henry Kuttner
"Don't look now" is the frequent comment made by what appears to be a very paranoid and delusional man to a reporter in a bar.  He is convinced that Martians have invaded and infiltrated Earth and are all around us...third eye and all, just like that old Twilight Zone episode made a few years later.  He uses the kind of fervent, detailed language paranoids use that often gets listeners hooked on their narrative, which can be pretty farfetched.  How it all ends...this story is pretty brief...I leave it for you to possibly read...

HE WALKED AROUND THE HORSES by H. Beam Piper
This is a story about an alternative history.  In 1809 Prussia a British diplomat traveling to Vienna in the midst of conflict with France's Napoleon walks around the horses at a stable...and disappears.  That causes enough consternation for the people around him, but from the perspective of the new, parallel world he has entered that has no Emperor Napoleon in it, the people there are just as confounded by his sudden unexplained appearance and historically absurd rantings.  It's a good history lesson if you're unfamiliar with this era and even delves back into our own Revolutionary War...

THE STRANGE CASE OF JOHN KINGMAN by Murray Leinster
One of those psychiatrists of the time who was into the trend of applying electroshock therapy to their patients has his eyes set on John Kingman, diagnosed as a delusional paranoid who has been a patient at a mental institution as far as anyone can remember.  The doctor goes back into the records and discovers he was first admitted in the late 1700s! And what about those six fingers on each hand and his tendency to sketch highly technical drawings that illustrate science and engineering principles yet undiscovered?  The story draws a line between true science and "pop" science and suggests that not knowing the difference can bring some regretful consequences...

THAT ONLY A MOTHER by Judith Merril
This is a somber apocalyptic tale about a young woman carrying and giving birth to her baby daughter in an post-nuclear war environment where a large percentage of the newborn have serious birth defects and infanticide runs rampant as a result.  The most disturbing story by far in this group...

THE MONSTER by A.E. Van Vogt
Earth has been decimated by war, wiping out all life.  Aliens bent on conquering the planet for their own can resurrect life from the ashes.  Looking for the causes of the catastrophe they keep trying to bring back people from the past, but none of them can provide any answer.  Finally they resurrect one of the most recent humans...and he instantly vanishes!  And then the fun starts...this is the only story I know of that paints an optimistic picture of humanity after its complete self-annihilation...

DREAMS ARE SACRED by Peter Phillips
The third story of the six about an paranoiac, an institutionalized famed fantasy writer has slipped into his own fantasy dream...unwakeable...and the attending doctor enlists the aid of his pragmatic friend to enter that dream and bring the writer back to reality.  Uh...does this possibly remind you of the movie Inception, which is based on people entering and messing with others' dreams?  Seemed like a great original idea when I first saw it, but Peter Phillips had already laid it all out back in 1948...

That's it for this week.  More sci-fi short stories from 1948 next week...

Texas Church Massacre Just Five Weeks After Las Vegas Massacre

A young Texas man, dishonorably discharged from the U.S. Air Force and with a history of domestic battery, opened fire Sunday morning at a small town church that was holding its weekly services, killing 26 and injuring 20 more...before apparently taking his own life after a high-speed chase by two brave heroes.  The immediate verdict I'm hearing about the perpetrator of this massacre of the congregation at the First Baptist Church of Sutherland Springs is that he was mentally ill, deranged as President Trump put it.  Oh, I didn't know Donald Trump was qualified in diagnosing mental illness...

When you consider somebody like the Las Vegas shooter or the Sutherland Springs creep, it's easy to take the mental illness route of explanation...after all, how could anyone in their right mind commit such terrible atrocities?  I'm afraid that this argument, however, has two counterproductive consequences.  One, it paints a picture of those suffering from mental illness as being more violent and a danger to society, when in fact they are much more likely to be the victims of others.  Two, it ignores the concept of evil as it infests the souls of people throughout their lives.  These two men, whose names are beneath mentioning, made a deal with that evil and deliberately killed and injured scores of innocent people.  They were not only evil, but also cowards...this last one dressed up in military costume and gunned down a baby, children, women, and old people.  I get where the mental illness arguments are coming from, but in the end when do you stop going down that road and start to hold people responsible for their own actions?