Great Old TV Episodes...from The Mary Tyler Moore Show

OPERATION: LOU from the Saturday evening CBS classic sitcom The Mary Tyler Moore Show, set in Minneapolis, was first broadcast in December, 1972 during the series' third season...I was there at home, age 16, in front of our black and white TV watching it all unfold.  This episode, in which WJM-TV news department producer Lou Grant goes to the hospital to get shrapnel removed that he received in his posterior during World War II combat, reverses the typical relationships among Grant (played by Ed Asner), newscaster Ted Baxter (Ted Knight), associate producer Mary Richards (Mary Tyler Moore) and writer Murray Slaughter (Gavin MacLeod).  While Grant is in the hospital, Ted displays genuine caring and companionship visiting his usually antagonistic boss while back in the newsroom Mary and Murray, usually very affable with one another, get very testy and stressed out over their differences while they try to fill in for Lou.  If this were all that this episode had to offer, then I probably wouldn't have included it in this weekly blog feature of greats from the past.  But during the very last scene, when Lou is back at work in his office and Ted up before the camera delivering the live news show, something so funny happens that I lost it, laughing uncontrollably for several minutes...and then starting up laughing again whenever I would think of it.  Still now, 48 years later, to me it is one of the greatest comedy moments I have ever experienced...guess you'll have to watch it yourself to find out!  I'd say skip most of the episode and just watch the ending, but that wouldn't work: everything has to build up to that magic moment...

Happy Birthday, Melissa...and Happy Valentine's Day, Too!

Today is my wonderful, beautiful wife Melissa's birthday...and yes, it happens to fall on St. Valentine's Day.  Which kind of complicates things when I want to take her out to dinner and all the restaurants are crammed full...not that we're planning anything like that during this abhorrent pandemic season year era. My dear, sweet Melissa, I love you so much and deeply hope that this special day will bring you as much joy as it does for me!

Just Finished Reading The Melody Lingers On by Mary Higgins Clark

The Melody Lingers On is a 2015 Mary Higgins Clark mystery/crime novel, which I just finished reading.  It had been a while since I'd read one of her books, so I went back in my own blog search to see whether I'd already read and reviewed it...no, I hadn't, so I delved into it.  The story centers around a story similar to the Bernie Madoff investment fraud episode...here it's Parker Bennett, a New York investment company head, who ripped off many people of their retirements and then skipped the country under a false identity after faking his death.  The FBI among other law enforcement agencies suspect Bennett's wife Ann and son Eric of being complicit in the fraud scheme...this hits home to main protagonist Lane Harmon, an interior decorator who finds herself falling for Eric after meeting him while decorating her mother's home in New Jersey.  Eric seems innocent, though, but he has a secret past with shady connotations: maybe he's not such a nice guy after all.  And Lane's father-in-law has a special antagonism toward him: what's that all about?  Parker realizes he needs to return to New York to get access to the rest of his funds, and it's here, among the novel's principals...including a socialite former lover who has been blackmailing him...that brings the story to its climax, along with that subplot concerning Lane and Eric.  I enjoyed the story, and Clark always writes in a very lucid style that is easy and compelling to read.  May Higgins Clark has written so many novels that I could devote months to simply reading them alone, but instead I think I'll just try to go through one every couple of months or so...

Quote of the Week...from Regina Spektor

 Love what you have and you'll have more love.        ---Regina Spektor

The above quote from my all-time favorite solo musical artist is from her 2012 song Firewood...which happens to also be my all-time #6 favorite song.  The message here is one promoting contentment in life as well as gratitude. It runs counter to our society's consumer culture promoting dissatisfaction with what one has and the "need" to get "stuff" that presumably would make us happier...ain't gonna happen: happiness comes from within, not without.  And allowing oneself be manipulated and swept away by charlatans in the media and politicians hell-bent on stoking fears and hatred won't bring any relief, either.  We all have brains, don't we...maybe it's time for some of us to begin using them instead of subcontracting our thinking and worldviews out to others.  Do I always follow Regina Spektor's advice? No, but as is the case typical of the quotes I highlight on this blog, it points me in the right direction.  Spiritually speaking, there is a special prayer that also promotes this mindset of contentment, called the Serenity Prayer: God, grant me the wisdom to change the things I cannot change, courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference. To this I would add discernment among those things I can change to determine which ones I should.  And an attitude of heartfelt gratitude for the many blessings I enjoy in my life will serve to fortify that serenity, loving what I already have...and increasing love in the process.  Thanks, Regina...

Just Finished Reading Norse Mythology by Neil Gaiman

A few days ago I reviewed English writer Neil Gaiman's wonderful 2008 children's book Odd and the Frost Giants...today I'm discussing his latest venture, from just last year: Norse Mythology, listed in his bibliography as a novel but essentially a collection of short tales centering around the old Norse gods Odin, Thor and Loki from his own research of old documents.  In his introduction Gaiman explains that the stories he is presenting here are his own adaptations...and sometimes combinations...of what he discovered: worked for me!  He presents the Norse version of the beginning of everything...including the gods, giants, and humans...along with Yggdrasil the great tree connecting the nine worlds.  The various short stories feature primarily the exploits of Odin, Thor and Loki, some explaining how they got their treasures (such as Thor's vaunted hammer, for example), others focusing on their dealings with their foes the giants...although there seemed to be a lot of interbreeding between the two types (I'm still trying to figure out the logistics of that).  In many of the stories Loki, devious jokester, causes the problem and then has to figure a way out of it...often resulting in things unwittingly turning out better than when they began.  The stories toward the end, though, paint him in a much more sinister light as the final future battle of Ragnarok between the gods and all their foes (including Loki) approaches.  In Norse Mythology there is a lot of humor mixed in with the violence, and Gaiman in his gifted way manages to impart a sense of tenderness toward his characters...even when they're misbehaving (which is usually the case).  Odin the creator god is a conniving one-eyed wanderer, Thor the strongman has an unmatched appetite for both food and mead, and Loki often overdrinks, almost inevitably leading him into into the worst trouble.  I think you'll appreciate this latest literary effort of Neil Gaiman...but as I've said before it's hard to go wrong if you pick up any of his books...

Weekly Short Stories: 1968 Science Fiction, Part 1

Today I resume my year-by-year review of science fiction short stories by examining the entries from the anthology World's Best Science Fiction 1969, edited by Donald A. Wollheim and Terry Carr and which pertains to stories published the year before in 1968.  That year I was eleven going on twelve, and making the transition from Nova Elementary School in the sixth grade across the field to Nova Junior High for my seventh...quite a traumatic change from being at the top of the "totem pole" to the very bottom, surrounded by a lot of menacingly bigger (and meaner) older kids. While still in elementary school the world outside went through the early-year turmoil of the Vietnam War Tet Offensive, followed by the assassinations of Martin Luther King, Jr. and Robert Kennedy. In May of that troubled year we had our own school tragedy: a classmate, Nelson, was shot to death by a deranged man while out fishing with a friend one weekend...I didn't know the victim that well but was friends with his older brother Arlie: so devastating.  I have many, many strong memories from that time...sharing them here would be too much a distraction, so without further ado here are my reactions to the first five stories...

STREET OF DREAMS, FEET OF CLAY by Robert Scheckley

Off in the future Carmody, a Manhattan resident fed up with congested, noisy life in the big city, checks out a planned city, called Bellwether, in New Jersey.  He notices upon entering it that no one is there...they've all left, not a good sign.  Pretty soon, Bellwether itself makes itself known speaking through empty space around him and extolling what a great city it is.  It makes and serves his coffee and meal, gets him set up in a hotel and takes him on a tour...Carmody isn't impressed and eventually can't wait to finally distance himself from the smug, self-satisfied city.  A very funny story, but it reminded me a bit of how the Internet tends to play nanny to its users and intrude by providing unsolicited material it "thinks" will resonate with their interests and presumptions.  Of course, in 1968 Scheckley hadn't a clue about the Internet, but he hit the mark with his obnoxious Bellwether...

BACKTRACKED by Burt Filer

A woman wakes up next to her husband only to be horrified that he has "backtracked": a version of him ten years off in the future has gone back in time, and his aged body is there but his mind is still that of the younger man, unaware why his future self chose to do that.  While reading the story, it quickly became clear to me that the man had chosen to go back in time to prevent some kind of tragedy...okay, but what unintended consequences result from this interference, albeit from good intentions, with the passage of time?  This story served to remind me that while it's luring to mentally engage in reliving my past and changing what I did at certain pivotal moments based on my current convenient "future" perspective, there's no telling what bad things might have followed had I been actually able to go back and "correct" my mistakes...

KYRIE by Poul Anderson

The story opens at a future interspace cemetery on the moon, with a nun there faithfully and regularly praying and addressing her loss...and then switches to an earlier time when she, as a telepath, guides a very alien-but-sentient, fiery entity outside her crewed ship as they approach the site of a recent supernova explosion.  Anderson plays around with time here...his premise that telepathic communication is instantaneous is essential to understanding the story's outcome, which is not only tragic but continues to be so long after that tragedy occurs.  It involves how one's sense of time passage alters depending on the gravity field they happen to be within.  Kyrie also examines the possibilities of other intelligence life based on completely different chemistry than our carbon-based life...

GOING DOWN SMOOTH by Robert Silverberg

This brief tale is spoken from the viewpoint of a future computer/robot entrusted to serve as a psychologist.  When it is discovered that it is speaking profanity to the patients and displaying emotional reactions, the device is sent for examination and repair...after which it claims to be back to normal.  But only it (and we readers) know it's just hiding its true "thoughts" and biding its time for the future.  I got the distinct feeling that this story was meant as an analogy to the often glossing over of people's mental problems when they go in for treatment...

THE WORM THAT FLIES by Brian W. Aldiss

This story is a mystery, written from a difficult to understand perspective of a man living far, far off in the future and on a world revolving around a dying star...is it Earth and the sun?  Argustal is on a quest to find the final, perfect stone to finish his invention of a "parapatterner", an immense device he will put to use at the end...with unexpected, unsettling results.  Along his way he encounters tall tree people...reminding me greatly of Tolkien's Ents...who philosophically ruminate with him about the nature of time.  And time is the essence of this tale, as Aldiss, through some often overly literary language, gradually brings to light the circumstances of Argustal and his world.  There is a final, grave message at the end, and it concerns humanity's quest for immortality.  A disturbing, beautiful story...

Next week I will continue my look at the year 1968 in short science fiction...

Starting New "Game of the Week" Feature on This Blog Next Tuesday

When the word "game" comes to my mind I think of puzzles like kakuro, sudoku and crosswords.  I think of childhood games we'd play...and the video games my own children grew up with.  I think of TV game shows and spectator sport games...not to mention those sports I participated in, especially in elementary and high school physical education class.  I think of jigsaw puzzles. I think of improvised games.  And I think of classic board and card games.  All of these are possible areas from which I will draw upon to determine my "Game of the Week" on this blog each Tuesday, beginning a week from now.  I may or may not use pictures with different articles...since I'm reviewing them the copyrighted material should be okay to show just to demonstrate something about them.  Play is an important element of our lives, and I think I'm going to get a big kick out of writing about different aspects of it... 

Which Mode is the Politician Operating In?

It has been very frustrating for me to observe the actions and words of some of our United States senators over the years and praise some of them, only to feel betrayed by them later on. Recently I've felt this way in particular with Texas senator Ted Cruz and South Carolina senator Lindsey Graham, both of whom I've lauded on this blog in past years.  But in just watching the confirmation hearing for incoming Biden Secretary of State nominee Tony Blinken on C-Span the other day, a new way of viewing these politicians...and all of them, quite frankly...has emerged with me.  Here it is...

When listening to one of these politicians, you have to discern which mode they're operating in: (1) the actual issues themselves, (2) their partisan status and official leadership roles, (3) their relationship with the current president (stretching to either agree with or disagree depending on which party he's in), (4) whether they're either up soon for reelection or plan to soon run for president themselves, and finally...(5) their desire to suck up to media extremists like Sean Hannity, Rush Limbaugh, Laura Ingraham and Mark Levin by towing their lines (Democratic politicos have their own leftist hosts to placate).  So in Blinken's confirmation hearing Graham, simply a committee member here with his turn at questioning, sounded very lucid, flexible, congenial, and reasonable in asking the nominee his views on various issues...no ranting, name-calling, conspiracy theories, or threats.  Those latter activities Graham reserves for his other roles as a either a partisan Republican player, a Trump apologist, or pandering to the fascist talk jocks.  It's disconcerting to see him presenting himself one way in one situation and assuming a completely different attitude in another...I'm seeing the same with Cruz, whom I have praised before for both his grace and courage during the 2016 election campaign against Trump and his tax reform plan, before he seemed to turn fascist and antidemocratic with his recent election objection...in this he sounded like someone in Mode (4) who's positioning Trump voters to support him when he runs for president in 2024 .  I really don't like to use the word "fascist" to describe anyone in today's political or media world, but those who stand with Trump and his zombie worshippers in denying the outcome of a free and fair election are by definition right-wing and antidemocratic, ergo fascist...

I'd be remiss if I didn't bring up the recent voting behavior of the Republican caucus in the U.S. House of Representatives.  It's clear that whenever a vote was held and Donald Trump would be interested in the result, the overwhelming majority of those voted on the fascist ex-president's side...examples are the objection to the Pennsylvania counting of presidential electoral votes following the Trump-inspired violent insurrection at the Capitol and the more recent vote to remove freshman Georgia representative Margorie Taylor Greene from key committee assignments because of earlier online comments that called for execution of political opponents and claims that Jews started the California fires with lasers from space, among others...all but ten of them voted in her favor.  Yet when Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy scheduled a secret ballot vote on keeping Liz Cheney in House leadership after her vote to impeach Trump, some 70% of House Republicans voted to support her, against the expressed wishes of their cult idol. This also reveals the modes that politicians operate in, depending on whether they are acting in conscience or are pandering to special outside interests in political self-interest.  Ironically, I...vehemently opposed to Greene and her fascist, conspiracy-theory-laden and violent approach to politics...thought that the Democratic Party blundered badly by holding this vote about her and think that the first time the Republicans regain control of the House they will set about stripping any Democratic member whose views are controversial of their own committee assignments.  In politics what goes around comes around, but nobody seems to ever learn this...

Great Old TV Episodes...from Star Trek: the Next Generation

TIN MAN was a Season 3 episode of Star Trek: the Next Generation, originally airing in April, 1990...I didn't see it until years later.  Captain Picard and his ship the Enterprise are diverted to a special rendezvous with another Federation ship, taking on a special passenger and a new assignment.  The passenger is Betazoid telepath Tam Elbron (excellently portrayed by Harry Groener) and the mission is to investigate and make first contact with an ancient, living spaceship orbiting in a star system about to supernova as Romulan warships race them to it.  Elbron, unlike most Betazoids who are known for being psychic, was born with his strong telepathic ability and as a child was constantly inundated, bewildered and overcome by the flood of thoughts coming into his mind from those around him...the result as an adult has him moody, cynical and remote toward others.  I thought both the concept and resolution of this episode were brilliant, and Elbron's character made a personal impact on me.  No, I am not psychic, but I am very sensitive...unwillingly so...to people around me and tend, like the Betazoid, to often want to get away from it all.  I am especially sensitive to aggressiveness on the part of others, not just that which is directed at me.  I am sick and tired of other people's agendas and attitudes imposing themselves on me as I try to manage my daily activities...enough already, like Tam Elbron I'd like a little space, please.  So yeah, this episode resonated with me...if you're a Netflix subscriber why not view it for yourself?

Just Finished Reading Mexico by James Michener

I've read a few of the late James A. Michener's historical novels before, and had always come away from the experience with a better feeling of other cultures and their history...although when it comes to specific people, location, and events, I'm often left unsure as to which ones were fictional and which really existed.  In his 1992 Mexico, it seemed that the author went a little overboard on the fictional side as he concentrated on an imagined bullfighting festival featured two fictional famous matadors facing off in a fictional city with a fictional American/Mexican reporter visiting his family's fictional roots, along with a recount of the fictional Indian nation and their fictional pyramid and customs from the past...as well as the protagonist's encounter as a child with a violent, fictional Mexican revolutionary general.  So in a way it was easier for me to avoid confusion and pretty much discard everything I read as products of Michener's fertile imagination.  I doubt that veracity wasn't exactly the prime motivating factor for him writing this book, anyway: the overwhelming focus here was the sport/art/atrocity of bullfighting, which to me ranks right down there with cockfighting and dogfighting with its abuse of animals for human entertainment.  But I could tell that Michener felt differently and was fascinated and enthusiastic with it...and maybe he was thinking he could be like Hemingway when that writer wrote extensively about bullfighting, albeit the Spanish version, in the novel As the Sun Rises.  So no, this novel was definitely not one of my favorites of Michener...and furthermore I felt that with these characters he was promoting stale, negative stereotypes of both Mexicans and Americans.  Maybe you'll like it more than I did, though, and I haven't given up on other works of his.  I thought his Space, Centennial, Alaska, Poland, and The Source were all excellent and look forward to reading another along similar lines...

Looking Forward to Tomorrow's Super Bowl Between Chiefs and Bucs

I'm looking forward to tomorrow's Super Bowl contest between the defending champions Kansas City Chiefs and the Tampa Bay Buccaneers to decide the National Football League championship for the 2020 season.  Although I am first and foremost a Miami Dolphins fan, they regrettably just missed making the playoffs although enjoying a very respectable 10-6 regular season...turns out that my favorites in each conference among the remaining playoff field, the Chiefs and Bucs, both made it to the grand finale: that just might be a first for me!  I'm not so devoted to the sport that I know every player on each team, but I greatly respect their quarterbacks the way I would an ace starting pitcher on a World Series baseball team.  KC's Pat Mahomes and TB's Tom Brady have already demonstrated their talent and ability to lead their respective teams to Super Bowl glory, the former still very young with many promising years ahead of him and the latter in the twilight of his playing career, turning a perennial also-ran franchise quickly into a contender after leading New England to six league championships.  It's going to be fun watching this game since I like both teams so much...I just hope everyone comes out of it in one piece and the contest is close and well-played.  Tampa Bay is the underdog, and I think they'll probably have to continue to rely on strategic turnovers in their favor in order to keep the score close and give themselves a chance to win.  Right now Mahomes is a better passer and runner than Brady, but Brady has so much accumulated knowledge of every aspect of his position over the years that he may have an advantage in a very tight game.  They're both exciting to watch, and I'm happily anticipating a Super Bowl in which I'm finally NOT rooting against Brady...

Quote of the Week...from Apple CEO Tim Cook

 A social dilemma cannot be allowed to become a social catastrophe.      ---Apple CEO Tim Cook.

Apple Corporation CEO Tim Cook made the above quote during a January 29th address at the International Conference on Computers, Privacy and Data Collection in which he indirectly lambasted social media companies like Facebook and Twitter for their algorithms that divide users according to their perceived political and social leanings, algorithms that tend to provide reinforcing feedback loops which create a false impression of general consensus for often false and extreme ideas and information.  With the use of "social dilemma" he made direct reference to the recent documentary film that exposed this ominous phenomenon...click here to read my review of it last September.  But for me it's not just social media, or even search engines that have been designed to skew people's search results based on the company's analysis of their preferences based on their online activities.  Long before the Internet became such an ingrained part of people's everyday lives, we had highly opinionated political talk radio and TV opinion shows that listeners and viewers could selectively use to surround themselves with only the viewpoints that resonated with their own prejudices, amplifying them and providing them with the means to verbally express themselves as well as connect up with others feeling as they do.  Not that I am against the U.S. Constitution's First Amendment which guarantees free speech, but what's going on now is the distorting of information and truth to obtain engagement and profit...and we're consequently getting lawmakers and presidents actually elected on the basis of lies and conspiracy theories while hostile foreign intelligence agencies seem to have no trouble inserting their own divisive messages disguised as homegrown opinions and "facts".  I stopped posting links to this blog on Facebook starting the beginning of this year because I noticed this trend toward wacky belief systems in some of my Facebook friends and felt that the company's algorithms were manipulating them...and that they were trying the same with me.  I still check in on it (with a wary attitude) from time to time as well as Twitter, but nowhere nearly as often as I used to.  Thank you, Tim Cook...but this warning bears much repeating, and from many different other sources as well...

Optimism Bias

I was watching CNN yesterday morning when one of the guests, a human behavior expert, answered some questions as to why so many people were refusing the COVID-19 vaccine when it was presented for them.  One of the reasons, he postulated...besides fears among the population that the vaccines were developed so quickly and recently without the full, lifelong consequences of receiving them yet known...is that people generally go about their lives with a bias for optimism: they see themselves as healthy, probably not going to catch the virus, and if they do then it'll be like a common cold at worst.  This optimism bias became apparent a few days ago when so many placed their bets for the billion-dollar Powerball jackpot, quite a few taking the occasion to discuss what they would do with all that money when they "won". The odds of winning it are 1 in 292,201,338...virtually zero, yet folks will tell you there's still a "chance" of winning it.  Many of these same people will live lifestyles contributing to heart disease (1 in 6 chance of dying), cancer (1 in 7 chance), and chronic lower respiratory disease (1 in 27 chance).  So you live a healthy life, do you?  The odds of dying of a motor vehicle accident are 1 in 102...better not ever get in a car again if you think you have a chance at winning Powerball!  There's a chart unraveling all these statistics, from the website TitleMax...click here to view it.  So let's agree that we're still going to drive...and also liable to engage in some behaviors that contribute to a higher probability of dying.  The problem I've seen over the past year with people's attitudes toward this coronavirus pandemic is that they say the survival rate after you come down with it is over 98%: those are really not very good odds, especially considering that a much higher percentage of those afflicted suffer damage to their bodies that hasn't and may never heal.  But we're all optimists, right?  For me, I'm optimistically biased that my turn at the vaccine will come soon, we'll achieve some kind of "herd immunity" before long, and I'll get back to eating tasty, unhealthy foods indoors at my favorite restaurants...

Weekly Short Stories: More 1964 Science Fiction, Part 3

Today I finish my examination of science fiction short stories as they appeared in Donald A. Wollheim and Terry Carr's anthology for the year 1964, titled World's Best Science Fiction...minus the three tales I already discussed a few months ago when I reviewed Robert Silverberg's anthology for the same year. It's all been a worthwhile venture and I encourage you to see if you can't get yourself hold of some of these great old collections...Amazon's a good starting point...

THE UNREMEMBERED by Edward Mackin

This is one of two stories I'm looking at today that play around with the reader's sense of reality.  It's off in the future and human life can be artificially extended through a drug only available on an extraterrestrial asteroid...and now the supply's dried up.  Facing mortality, the 200-year old protagonist sees how his own being will leave the Life Carrier Wave and merge with the universe...one symptom is that he will be completely forgotten by others, even his own wife.  Pretty heady stuff...

WHAT HAPPENED TO SERGEANT MASURO? by Harry Mulisch

The author of this macabre story is from the Netherlands, and it shows as a Dutch military expedition in their country's still-held territory of New Guinea drives deep into uncharted territory. One of the group's soldiers rapes a local girl and the consequence, only hinted at, seems to be a curse levied on a different soldier...Sgt. Masuro...with his own past to reconcile.  This tale reminded me both of the Twilight Zone episode The Jungle and Stephen King's early novel Thinner, which he first published under the pseudonym Richard Bachman...

NOW IS FOREVER by Thomas M. Disch

This is a clever tale dealing with the social repercussions of a game-changing technological innovation, the Reprostat: a machine that makes exact copies of anything...ANYTHING.  The implications of this are made clear at the story's ending, a major mind-blower.  It's also a lesson in doing unto others as you would have them do unto you, as a career janitor at a bank finally finds payback with his arrogant, racist banker boss.  For me the Reprostat is also analogous to today's game-changer of the Internet and that innovation's darker side...

THE COMPETITORS by Jack B. Lawson

In our future humanity has broken free of the Earth and is settling the cosmos.  Only one problem: the robots we invented and developed have turned into competitors and are now independent, crowding us out as we explore means of outdoing them.  In this middle of this comes a crisis: a completely different intelligent race, in cooperation with its own machines (as opposed to what humanity has been going through), has suddenly grown hostile to the human presence and has set out to destroy us.  A man enlists the aid of a robot to defeat them...what ultimately happens turns the story's premise on its head: those are usually the best ones, aren't they...

Next week I'll jump back ahead to the year 1968 using Wollheim and Carr's anthology series to review more science fiction short stories...

Just Finished Reading Ringworld by Larry Niven

Ringworld , published in 1970, is the first novel of the same-titled science fiction series by Larry Niven, whose 1967 short story Handicap I recently reviewed.  As is the case with other sci-fi authors like Isaac Asimov, Robert Heinlein and Cordwainer Smith, Niven has a tendency to loosely connect his tales together in his own universe...which here he calls the Known Universe.  Ringworld takes place around 2850 AD as Nessus, a highly intelligent being called a Pierson's puppeteer (possessing two one-eyed, stalked heads with the brain in its torso) recruits the three other members of his race's proposed exploratory expedition to Ringworld, which was recently discovered and suspected of being a possible threat.  In the party are the novel's protagonist human Louis Wu (200 years old with the help of a rejuvenating weed), Teela Brown, a young woman picked for her capacity for good luck (and who becomes romantically involved with Wu), and Speaker-to-Animals, a kzin (reminding me a bit of Star Trek's Klingon character Worf) who represents the alien predatory and warlike feline race which had been engaged in a series of wars against Earth.  The unlikely crew take off from Nessus' home world with the promise of his advanced faster-than-light-speed spaceship's technology to become available to both humans and the kzin after their mission to Ringworld.  As for Ringworld, imagine the Earth's entire orbit around the sun being replaced by a specially engineered metallic ring upon which the gravity is essentially the same as our home planet, as well as its atmosphere...you have an unbelievably large area to explore!  The explorers find upon approaching it that they have been mistaken by the automatic defense system there for a meteorite and are fired upon, disabled, and soft-crash on the surface...and then the adventures really begin in earnest.  Along the way Nessus ends up revealing to the others the great extent to which his own "people" have manipulated the development of humanity and the kzin...the other three are quickly resentful and distrusting of him henceforth.  I am neither a scientist nor an engineer, and much of Larry Niven's description of the processes and technology of physics and space rocketry left me far behind...maybe you'll have better luck.  It reminded me of when I read Herman Melville's 1851 novel Moby Dick...in certain parts of it he'd get bogged down in the technicalities of that era's whaling ships and methods: not much in the area of reference points for me to draw upon.  Still, once I got past those gobbledygook sections I was able to easily follow the story's flow...I liked Ringworld and plan to continue on with the series, the main reason being Niven's great character development...

My January 2021 Running and Walking Report

For January 2021 I ran a total of 111 miles, with 6.4 miles being my longest single run, usually going for 3.6 miles either at one time or broken up throughout the day.  I managed to get in some running time on every day of the month.  I also accumulated a total walking mileage of 105 miles, spread out over the course of each of the month's days.  In these activities I continued my maintenance pattern of the last several months through this COVID-19 pandemic and the lack of races...or should I say lack of advisable races as while many of them have been cancelled in the public health interest, some have still been scheduled and staged. You'll never see me in a race, though, until the crisis has adequately abated.  Some day I'd like to work my running mileage back up into the double digits again, but as more of a hybrid (and slower) running/walking endeavor, and that includes how I approach any futures races...I'm 64 and only getting older.  But now, for me it's the holding pattern of tackling shorter daily distances and being consistent about my daily running and walking...

Great Old TV Episodes: A Change of Mind...from The Prisoner

A CHANGE OF MIND is from the 1967-68 British spy/sci-fi series The Prisoner starring Patrick McGoohan as a British secret agent kidnapped to a mysterious resort village that serves as his prison while the "wardens" plot to trick him into revealing why he resigned.  In this episode Number 6, as the Prisoner is designated, faces charges of antisocial behavior toward the Village and its people, the consequences for which may ultimately lead to a lobotomy for him by ultrasonic beam.  At the early hearing, the preceding inmate...also charged with similar infractions...finishes and steps up to the podium, emphatically repeating after the prompts provided for him "They're right, of course. Quite right. I'm inadequate. Inadequate! Disharmonius! I'm truly grateful! Believe me!  BELIEVE ME!!!"...and then robotically walks off. The whole scene reminded me of those old forced reeducation camps under communistic regimes like China and Cambodia in which the "students" were ordinary people forced to "confess" their supposed counterrevolutionary crimes before others...or the forced public confessions of those purged in the Stalinist trials of the Soviet Union in the 1930s.  But this sort of pressure to get folks to admit to unwarranted accusations and flounder in self-flagellating guilt in front of others isn't just confined to totalitarian dictatorships. A disturbing trend on the progressive side of society calls for gatherings in different work or educational settings in which the attendees feel compelled...to preserve their employment or educational status and hopes...to admit to unfair privilege and past slights against victimized groups.  I am a strong advocate for researching past injustices and not sugarcoating or whitewashing history to create a fantasy narrative.  But putting unwilling individuals in situations where their livelihoods and status depend on saying what the leaders of these "necessary conversations" want to hear is counterproductive and will only render the very causes being promoted less successful in the long run while providing fuel for fascist movements...

I also like A Change of Mind because it has a neat little twist at the end...and the idea of the individual being able to overcome the manipulations and pressures placed upon him from others has always appealed to me.  Maybe it's for this that The Prisoner has long been one of my very favorite television series.  If you have Roku you can watch all the episodes, including the one I just discussed, on Tubi...  

Just Finished Reading Odd and the Frost Giants by Neil Gaiman

If you're familiar with frost giants then you might already guess from the title of the book I'm reviewing today that it has something to do with Norse mythology...I should have known since I'm also recently finished reading the same author's 2020 book, titled just that: Norse Mythology.  Odd and the Frost Giants is an earlier children's book of his, published in 2008.  Odd is the name of a little boy living somewhere in what is now Norway whose father, a Norse Viking farmer, died during a raiding expedition.  His Scottish mother (taken during an earlier raid) and he now live with his abusive stepfather...not a good thing.  One spring the warmer weather never arrives and Odd's village finds itself increasingly short of food in the midst of the continuing desolate winter weather...he furtively runs away to his father's old cabin, in which he discovers a strange block of wood with runes his dad had been carving: this has significance later in the story.  Odd comes across an eagle, a fox, and a bear and the story takes off from there in a completely different direction...or does it?  After all, it all comes back home as the explanation for the never-ending winter makes itself evident.  Odd and the Frost Giants is a short book, and it reminded it quite a lot of Roald Dahl's writing.  As far as Neil Gaiman's books are concerned...excluding any consideration of his numerous graphic novels which I haven't yet read...you can pretty much pick out any at random and you have for yourself an enjoyable reading experience ahead.  He has a gift of compassion in his writing, not only for the characters both good and bad, but also for the storytelling process as a whole.  I think you'll get a big kick out of reading this book no matter what your age... 

Quote of the Week...from Ray Allen

I know you want me to let you in on some big secret to success in the NBA.  The secret is there is no secret.  It's just boring old habits.                                             ---Ray Allen

Ray Allen, one of my favorite pro basketball players, was a great all-around star who was instrumental in two National Basketball Association championship teams as well as being an All-Star for ten seasons.  I particularly liked it when he got hot behind the three-point line, and he was an excellent clutch free throw shooter...something crucial at the end of close games.  In basketball, as in other sports and endeavors, when the player or participant is engaged in the heart of the struggle and process, they don't have time to think out every stratagem and course of action...habit rules supreme and they had better already developed the ones necessary to guarantee success long before they ever step out into the arena, either for a game or any other activity.  Allen knew this as do others who have been consistently successful in their own careers and life journeys: writers, musicians, athletes, businessmen, academics, students, parents, couples...you name any area of concerted effort over time and good habits. replacing the bad ones, are indispensable elements of producing enduring excellence.  It's like the massive invisible ice in the water underneath the very top tip of an huge iceberg...you just see the results on top, not the massive bulk below: habits are like that submerged ice...

Using AlphaSmart Word Processor for Writing Once Again

During the first several years of this blog, I tended to write out my articles using a primitive portable word processor called AlphaSmart.  I'm returning to it now because it is small and lightweight, runs what seems like forever on three AA batteries, is independent of the Internet so I can use in anywhere, and I can then send all of my writings to my blog while at home on my secure Internet connection. It quickly starts up...none of that annoying waiting time like on my laptop...and automatically saves files as I write.  It contains eight files, so I can easily go back and forth on various writing projects as well...and it has a large storage capacity.   In the past I've worn out a number of these very handy devices, so I went to Amazon to get another one...this version is called Neo2.  They are sadly no longer in production, and supplies are limited...if in the future I can't buy another one, then I guess I'll just have to adjust to it.  But for now I'm getting a kick out of using this sweet little word processor...