Great Old TV Episodes...from My Favorite Martian

Sunday nights as a kid in my household was almost always with the television tuned in to Channel 4, the Miami CBS affiliate...after all, Ed Sullivan's celebrated weekly variety show came on at 8.  But beginning in early fall 1963...and extending for three full seasons...there was a funny, sweet-spirited comedy sitcom preceding it from 7:30 to 8: MY FAVORITE MARTIAN, starring Bill Bixby in his debut lead television role as ambitious young newspaper reporter Tim O'Hara and Ray Walston as the Martian, a long-time (and long-lived) anthropologist professor from the Red Planet whose craft crashes just down the road from where Tim happened to be driving one day.  This all happened in the pilot episode, titled after the series.  They cover up the Martian's true identity by passing him off as Tim's Uncle Martin while he stays with him as he tries to repair his ship and return to Mars...Tim's sweet landlady next door Mrs. Brown, along with her stuffy, suspicious suitor, Police Inspector Brennan, round out the series' main cast.  Uncle Martin sprouts antennae to make himself disappear and can practice levitation with his finger and read people's minds...mighty handy abilities, I'd say.  Each episode has O'Hara and Martin in some special quagmire that brings out the laughs and preserves both characters' innately humane and kindly natures.  As a kid I thought that this is the way adults were supposed to act: with grace, generosity, mercy, and good humor...so to an extent this was a fantasy series on more than one level, sad to say.  Let's see...I was just turning seven and at the beginning of the second grade in school when My Favorite Martian first aired with its pilot episode and faithfully followed it thereafter.  There were other 1960s comedy series with similar formats: My Living Doll (about a beautiful robot), Bewitched (about a wife who's a real witch with magical powers), and I Dream of Jeannie (about an impulsive, pretty genie).  In each of the four series the "special" character's identity must be hidden from the real world...with much of the comic relief coming from close calls in this regard.  Oh, for the good old days of hilarious, silly comedy television.  If you have Roku then download Tubi, from which you can watch all of My Favorite Martian's episodes...  

Just Finished Reading Gregor and the Curse of the Warmbloods by Suzanne Collins

Gregor and the Curse of the Warmbloods, from 2005, is the third of five books in Suzanne Collins Underland Chronicles children's fantasy series, predating her more famous Hunger Games undertaking. In it young Gregor, living in poverty conditions in his New York City apartment with his working mother, incapacitated father and two sisters, once again is drawn back down deep underground into a strange world of large, intelligent and talking animals...including bats, rats, cockroaches, and mice...as the humans dwelling there have presented the next of their centuries-old prophecies: they have an uncanny way of including Gregor, known down below as The Warrior.  In this story, the warmblooded creatures, including the humans, have suffered a serious outbreak of plague and a prophecy enlists Gregor's help in rescuing them from it.  This time he goes down, not only with his baby sister Boots (who's always with him on these adventures) but also with his mother, who insisted on accompanying them this time.  Once down there she gets infected and Gregor's mission suddenly gets very personal.  The plan is to go deep into a dangerous jungle full of predatory plants, quicksand and other hazards to find a special plant thought to cure the disease.  As in the first two books of this series, the ending turns everything on its head, this time with rather dark and foreboding consequences...and foreshadowing the kind of heartless manipulation of people by leaders that Collins would later portray in The Hunger Games.  I liked the book, which like its predecessors is relatively short...but naturally you'd want to go through the first two before tackling this one for yourself.  I'm looking forward to seeing how this all plays out in the final two series volumes, expecting more sobering revelations about base human nature to surface as well... 

Quote of the Week...from Frank Sinatra's Character in the The Manchurian Candidate

Raymond Shaw is the kindest, bravest, warmest, most wonderful human being I've ever known in my life.

                     --Major Bennett "Ben" Marco, played by Frank Sinatra in The Manchurian Candidate (1962)

The above quote is repeated verbatim during the thriller movie The Manchurian Candidate, and from other characters besides Sinatra's Ben Marco, about Raymond Shaw, a staff sergeant during the Korean War whose outfit...in which everyone roundly hated Shaw (and he them)...disappeared for three days.  Upon their reappearance, Marco tells a story of heroic valor on the part of Shaw and the latter is awarded the Medal of Honor.  Various of the soldiers who experienced the disappearance...which in reality was a kidnapping of them by the communists and intensive brainwashing sessions...repeat the same story, along with that above quote.  But deep down inside, Marco knows it's all false, and it's his refusal to accept his own brainwashing that leads him into solving the mystery over the course of the movie.  I bring this up because I sense a different kind of brainwashing...or maybe mass hypnosis...going on in my country whereby people are adamantly claiming that Donald Trump was the greatest president ever...and of course the false narrative that an incredibly elaborate conspiracy on the part of Democrats, election officials and workers, media figures...and even Republicans who have for years been loyal to Trump...robbed him unfairly of the 2020 presidential election and that he really won it "in a landslide".  Looking from the outside in, this at first seems preposterous to me...but I'm sensing something much more ominous and dangerous going on here.  It's as if whole swaths of our population were functioning in a kind of hypnotic trance...how do you reason with people whose sense of reality is so twisted?  You don't, I suppose, and I don't know how this is all going to play out since the focus of their unquestioning adulation, Raymond Shaw Donald Trump, is no longer in office.  It's not a forced brainwashing, but rather a voluntary one as people surround themselves with only the media sources that confirm their own beliefs and suspicions and depend on other like-minded folks in their lives for reinforcement, creating a false sense of consensus among themselves about what is true and what isn't: in other words, an informational feedback loop...  

Constellation of the Month: Gemini (the Twins)

Gemini, the zodiac constellation that crosses the meridian during February around 9 pm, also extends further north than any of the other eleven in that group through which pass our sun, the moon, and the planets from our vantage point on Earth.  Its celestial latitude (declination) is such that at my Earth latitude of 30 degrees north it passes directly overhead.  Gemini was one of the first ever constellations I viewed, back in the early spring of 1964 when I was seven years old.  It's also the birth sign of my dear, late mother...although I never did go for that astrological stuff.  If you look at the above map I drew, imagine the left stars representing the Greek mythical twin Pollux and the right his brother Castor, their respective heads represented by the stars bearing their names.  Both are relatively near us, Castor a six-star system, nearly at first magnitude brilliance at 52 light-years while Pollux, an orange giant only 34 light-years away is a first magnitude star.  The constellation is the epicenter for the annual December Geminids meteor shower, and the M35 star cluster on Gemini's west side and the strange looking Eskimo Nebula on its east are standout objects to pursue with the telescope.  Gemini is directly to the northeast from last month's featured constellation of Orion...wonder what I'll pick for March as my constellation of the month: I'm going to have to choose among some smaller and fainter ones...

Weekly Short Stories: 1968 Science Fiction, Part 2

Here are my reactions to four more stories from the year 1968 as they appeared in the anthology World's Best Science Fiction 1969, edited by Donald Wollheim and Terry Carr and focusing on their selections as the greatest short sci-fi tales published the previous year.  Just a passing comment: for the sixties, as opposed to previous decades, I have been finding the stories often written in a difficult to read style, as if part of the "suspense" at reading them is to ultimately figure out what the heck the story is actually about, not so much what happens in them.  Since I'm not into deliberately obscure and cryptic fiction, that kind of puts me off...and some of the following stories sadly fit that bill...

MASKS by Damon Knight

Off in the future as is usually the case with this genre, medical techniques have progressed to the point where the intact brain and nervous system of a man can to fitted into a newly constructed mechanical body, outwardly resembling a "normal" human being.  But after the first ever such procedure, the results run into a snag: the recovering patient's revulsion at the messiness of living things.  He has come up with his own solution to the problem, though...but the implications of his transformation portend future trouble. The masks within this tale refer to the patient's insistence of his own mask as well as those of others around him...

TIME CONSIDERED AS A HELIX OF SEMI-PRECIOUS STONES by Samuel R. Delany

Reminding me a little of J.D. Salinger's obnoxious, self-absorbed character Holden Caulfield from his classic novel Catcher in the Rye, the setting is once again off in the future as young Harold Clancy Everet sets out on his confirmed life of crime, along the way developing the talents of disguising and identity-switching as he rises in the underworld.  One side story is the role of the Singer, a special person highly regarded everywhere who has replaced the movie/recording star in fame and respect as they go from one extravagant party to another.  This is more a mood piece and examines the way the criminal, amoral mind works as the protagonist hops from persona to persona while plying his illegal trade and evading the Special Forces bent on taking him down...it also conjectures about how the duly constituted authorities classify criminal suspects and prioritize the pursuit of some over others...

HEMEAC by E.G. Von Wald

In a special boarding school completely run by robots and set apart from the supposed barbarian humans on the outside in a dystopian future, the students are taught to be robotic themselves, forced to dampen their emotional expression, living highly regimented lives and responding in the affirmative by saying "click".  One student gets in trouble through no actions of his own, and he discovers that his robot world and its ideology are sorely lacking and crumbling...he sees what's going down but has been so well-trained that he is unable to interpret it properly and effectively respond.  A story for all you out there who are allowing yourselves to be intellectually insulated and brainwashed by your preferred, slanted news outlets and social media feedback loops...

THE CLOUDBUILDERS by Colin Kapp

In a future Earth where humankind's abuse of its gifts of technology have led it to self-destruction, society is back on a more primitive level....but a secretive group called the Guild has special knowledge of the former years and is gradually seeding the world with its old discoveries and innovations.  At the story's telling, hot air balloons are the mode of fast transit and towns...along with marauding raider parties...employ them.  Jacobi, a  Guild Journeyman, travels by balloon to Catenor where they are manufactured.  He meets up with its leader Timor as he negotiates a newly seeded Guild innovation.  But the raiders are coming and Jacobi must think fast.  This novella's premise sounded eerily like that of Isaac Asimov's Foundation series whereby a regressed culture is meticulously and scientifically resurrected with the aim of avoiding mistakes from the past.  Interesting...

Next week: more reviews of science fiction short stories from 1968...

Game of the Week: Kakuro

 

Thirteen years ago one August evening I found a Kakuro puzzle in my local Gainesville Sun newspaper...and successfully completed it.  Since then this Japanese number logic game has been one of my favorites as I continued to do the Sun's weekly puzzles (until they stopped publishing them a few years ago ), Internet Kakuro, and an excellent series of Kakuro puzzle books with "White/Green/Brown/Black Belt" in their titles, depending on the books' different graded levels of difficulty.  Kakuro has an older name, Cross Sums, which I still come across from time to time in some of those variety puzzle magazines on display in grocery stores and pharmacies.  They look on the surface like crossword puzzles, only the "words", crisscrossing both horizontally and vertically, are instead single-digit numerals that range from 1 to 9.  The number appearing either to the left of a horizontal row or above a vertical one tell what the sum of the row or column's string of numerals is, with the crucial stipulation that no numeral appears twice for each summed number.  Some combinations are unique...only their arrangement has to be determined.  So if you see the number "17" for two spaces, you already know the combo of 8 and 9 are in the answer, but you still have to figure the order. At the start of a game I always go around the grid looking for easy solutions until I get to the more challenging sections...when I get to this point I'll usually start writing the options for each square in small handwriting (much the way many tackle solutions to Sudoku, Kakuro's "sister" puzzle).  As with just about any game/puzzle, there are guides you can study to give you hints to make your playing more successful from the start, but for me part of the fun in getting involved in a new game with its rules and special strategies is in discovering different "tricks of the trade" for myself as I go along.  I almost always carry in my pocket a ripped-out page from a Kakuro book or a puzzle printed off the Internet.  If you're a Sudoku buff why not try Kakuro...but start out with the easy levels...

Just Finished Reading The Good Guy by Dean Koontz

As is the case with writer Mary Higgins Clark, I've read a few of Dean Koontz's books in the past, but only a small fraction of his prodigious output over the years.  The other day I picked up his 2007 novel The Good Guy...one thing I like about both Koontz and Clark is that their writing is clear and plain while their novels are relatively short and well structured: this one is a good example.  Tim Carrier is a mason with a mysterious past...one day at his local bar where the owner/tender is a good friend of his, a man walks in with an envelope full of money.  Mistaking Tim for the hitman he was planning to meet there, the new customer approaches him and passes the money along with a photo and name of the intended victim: a young woman named Linda Paquette.  The man leaves and soon thereafter the real hitman comes in, quickly seeing the money envelope in Tim's possession and in his own turn mistaking him for the solicitor who just left.  Tim hands him the money while keeping the info about Linda, saying he's canceling the hit but not penalizing the killer.  But the killer continues his quest to murder her anyway, and the story turns into an elaborate cat-and-mouse chase as Tim finds Linda and the two struggle to escape the hitman's clutches.  The adversary is another one those sadistic psychopaths, complete with his own viewpoint laid out about his twisted philosophy and enjoyment of torture and murder, that seem to find their way into Koontz's stories.  One aspect of the hit contract becomes plain: the killer, who takes on one alias after another, has connections that are aiding him...who are they and what are they up to?  And why is Linda the target and what kind of past is Tim running from? Without giving away the story, I felt that the ending was satisfactory and tied up all the loose pieces.  Sometimes, though, I wonder whether this type of fiction doesn't give ideas to potentially unbalanced readers out there and consequently doubt that I would write this kind of story even if I had the talent of somebody like Dean Koontz.  It's pretty severe in places, but I still enjoyed the reading experience... 

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...