James Joyner is a Professor of Security Studies. He's a former Army officer and Desert Storm veteran. Views expressed here are his own. Follow James on Twitter @DrJJoyner.
Three sets of diamonds, emeralds and rubies were among the jewels stolen from Sophia Loren as she filmed The Millionairess in 1960; she played the richest woman in the world. The theft layered drama on drama. Loren was 25 at the time, and starring with Peter Sellers, who left his wife and two children citing his love for her, despite their affair being no more than a “delusional fantasy”, or what today would be called “stalking”. His five-year-old daughter asked Sellers if he still loved them. He replied: “Of course I do, darling, just not as much as Sophia Loren.”
I sympathize, when I was a younger man I had several delusional fantasies about the ever so lovely Miss Loren myself.
I believe that Dems need to put together a “Green New Deal”-style manifesto for election reform. (I can’t think of a catchy name at the moment.) Dems have been addressing many of these issues individually but they need to broaden the scope and make it clear that it should be as big a priority as any policy issue, as it affects the functioning of democracy itself and is part of the reason why the liberal policies have not taken effect. Because it would address issues that have systematically hurt Democrats, most Dems could get behind it, but it would also stand a chance of attracting some principled Republicans (assuming there are any left). It would include:
* Abolishing the electoral college.
* Ending partisan gerrymandering.
* Ending voter-suppression efforts, enfranchising more of the population, and increasing the availability and ease of voting.
* Proposing a safe, reliable, and easy method of voting, with a paper trail.
* Coming up with fair procedures for dealing with election disputes, minimizing the potential for abuse.
* Making ranked-choice the standard in the country.
* Enacting campaign finance reform, perhaps all the way down to reversing or overturning (via amendment) Citizens United. It’s a long shot, but far too important to give up on.
* Last but not least, reforming election law to make it harder for a foreign entity to interfere with US elections.
A fascinating article about Malaysia Airlines Flight 370. Turns out we have a pretty good idea of what the aircraft was doing and a good suspect as well. Probably won’t shut up the conspiracy theorists, however.
It does bring out another type of risk which any space settlement/colony will have to figure a way to protect itself against–suicidal plans of inhabitants who have access to critical systems.
I’m currently watching “The Good Place” on Netflix. I’m around one third into the second season.
The show’s set in the afterlife, where the protagonist, Eleanor, finds herself in the “good place,” as opposed to the “bad place.” Except it’s clear to her someone forked up and she shouldn’t be there.
What’s really interesting is that many episodes deal with ethical problems, with actual references to ethics and moral philosophy. Overall the stories are pretty good, the acting talent is fantastic, especially Ted Danson, Kristen Bell and Jameela Jamil.
In one episode they did the trolley problem, with an actual trolley (labelled “Ethical Express”) and simulations of actual people who can’t die, because they are simulations, but can feel pain.
The other interesting part, and I’m trying to avoid specific spoilers but consider this a spoiler alert, is that you don’t get to the actual premise of the show until the end of season one.
As one of the commentators pointed out–the DUP (through its incompetence) has managed to advance the march towards reunification much more rapidly than the IRA ever did in 40 years.
@Kathy:
Mike Schur (the showrunner) is a huge talent. This is a show I watched an episode of, thought, ‘no way he can pull this off,’ stopped watching for that reason, then started again impelled by my wife and daughter. Well, spoiler: he pulls it off.
One of the extra pleasures is watching Ted Danson who is clearly having the time of his life.
I also thought it would get boring and repetitive soon, with Eleanor learning, re-learning, and re-re-learning the same things all over and over again(*), each time barely escaping detection. But I’ve an interest in afterlife stories so I was willing to give it a shot. Plus Ted Danson is brilliant(**).
I think there were enough inconsistencies and oddities in the first few eps to keep me interested. Something evidently was off, which in the hands of a competent writer tends to lead to a good enough payoff. The pacing is good enough to let the viewer figure things out before the characters do (something that gets mostly lost if you binge the first season quickly).
(*) Of course that’s exactly what happens, but we don’t get to see all 800+ times when it does.
(**) As good as Danson is playing Michael, I like to think John Laroquette would have turned in a similar dead-center performance
In 2001: A Space Odyssey (spoiler: it’s not), Clarke mentions at one point that any system can be protected against accidents, but not against malicious intent.
@Kathy: I hardly ever watch 30 minute comedy series but I like Kristen Bell and Ted Danson so thought I would give it a try. I can honestly say I’ve never seen a show as tightly written and acted. Virtually every line pays off in some way, if not then, later on. One of my favorite “blink and you miss it” examples is a scene set in hell:
MICHAEL: “Hey, boss. I’m back.”
SHAWN: (tossing a small canister towards Michael) “Welcome home. Axe up!”
MICHAEL: (catching it) “Oh! New scent! ‘Transformers.’”
SHAWN: “Yes. It makes you smell the way ‘Transformers’ movies make you feel.”
So of course hell’s deodorant would be an especially ridiculous Axe scent. End of joke. Except several scenes later Michael comes back to Eleanor amidst much hectic panic but she still manages to scrunch up her face, wave her hand in front of her nose and say,
ELEANOR (Kristen Bell): “Ohhh! How do you smell loud and confusing?!”
It’s just a beat, or maybe only half a beat and there is no lead in or follow up, so I didn’t even catch it until the second or third time I watched it. The show is just chock full of stuff like that.
@Kathy:
I have an afterlife story I want to write, but it wants to be on the screen more than book. But it’d be hideously expensive to produce.
The CEO of Hell. Satan was always an artist – when he took over hell from the Greeks it was nothing but grayscale and shuffling spirits. The Lake of Fire? Sure, it’s cliché now, but back in the day? But he was never a numbers guy and now the population is out of control. New arrivals barely get a dip in the Lake ‘O Fire, the Demons Union won’t let new demons be created or work rules changed, they’re having boundary issues with Muslim hell, Richelieu is running a shadow government…
So the Board, consisting of various out-of-work gods (Odin, Apollo, Huitzilopoctli) and run by GTF (God the Father) and The Kid (an insufferable expert on all things human – Hey, I lived with those people 2000 years before the invention of the shower!) decides it’s time to replace Satan. They hire a recently departed Disney executive on the theory that he has experience managing large crowds. Satan is given a genteel retirement on earth, there to exercise his artistic skills.
150 million as a feature, 9 million an episode, for a satire that’ll piss off every religion? Yeah.
The big problem with afterlife stories is the sheer numbers involved. About 50 million die each year, give or take. Average that to 136,893 people every day, and the gods must be omniscient and omnipotent just to deal humanely with such large numbers of people.
BTW, there’s a scene in Niven and Pournelle’s “Inferno” where Benito, referring to Dante, complains to Carpenter “He met too many people he knew or had heard of, and too many Italian speakers.” In the course of the novel, Carpenter goes and meets too many people he knew or had heard of, and they all spoke English 🙂
@Kathy: I watched “The Good Place” from the beginning on my Hulu feed from NBC. Alas, you can probably stop watching about 2/3ds of the way through the Season you’re on now. By the end of the second season, the show starts to get stale, but the plots involving “the Trolley Dilemma” and such are still clever.
By the third season, I’m only watching in hopes of seeing the plot resolve–and because I think Kristen Bell is cute. Maybe Hulu’s reboot of “Veronica Mars” will scratch that itch, though.
On another thread, Doug commented on Maine becoming the 8th state to legalize assisted suicide, and that brought to mind something that has bothered me for several years now. Even short of assisted suicide, we have very little to help people and their families cope with dying. I realized this when my father, then in the middle stages of dementia, contracted pneumonia. My mother, also quite elderly, woke up in the middle of the night to find him in terrible distress, choking and gasping for air. It was confusing and panicky situation for all involved and given his distress everyone felt that something needed to be done. Long story short, he ended up in the hospital. But that is a place we bring people to get better, when what we needed was somewhere or someone who could alleviate the pain and distress and allow his illness to follow its natural course to death. Instead, he was hospitalized for a couple of weeks and then moved into a rehabilitation center where every day he woke to compete disorientation. By the time he returned home he was horrified to find this old lady hovering around him (his wife of 55 years) and couldn’t understand the difference between what was happening on the TV and what was going on outside the window in his boring suburban neighborhood. He lasted for more than a year after that and it was to no one’s benefit.
I’m not blaming the hospital for this. Complaining that they did what they were built for makes as much sense as bringing your car into the garage and then complaining they attempted to fix it. But it would be good for everyone involved if instead of calling an ambulance we could have called someone else that would have given him pain medication and whatever else would have relieved his discomfort without needlessly prolonging his life.
On the audiobook front, I got “A Canticle for Leibowitz” by Walter M. Miller Jr.
I found it a bit ridiculous that a new dark age(*) would revert to medieval norms and practices so faithfully. I mean specifically copying books by hand and illuminating the resulting manuscripts (and, yes, that was a complaint of mine of the otherwise fair segment of the season 4 finale of Babylon 5, which I can see was probably inspired by the Leibowitz tale).
Ok. So they lost a lot of knowledge in the nuclear war and subsequent unrest. Sure. I get it. but they know such things as the printing press are possible, and have a notion of how they work. It would be a simple matter for the Catholic church to recreate it.
Otherwise it is going rather well.
Oh, it is funny what happens when a medieval mindset tries to copy a blueprint. So much ink!
(*) While the period has been partly rehabilitated by modern scholars, it’s fair to say Europe as a whole, and the western part in particular, regressed technologically, culturally, and politically after the fall of the Western Roman Empire; and that the Eastern empire (aka the Byzantine Empire) didn’t fare much better, for all that if continued to stand.
It’s also worthwhile to point out the Dark Ages were solely a European phenomenon, not affecting areas like the Middle East, Asia, the Americas, etc.
I never quite got around to it. I’d heard of it plenty of times, and it was referenced a lot here and there. It is a classic, after all. But I’ve no idea what it’s about, past what I’ve read so far (about 3 or four chapters). I knew it was a post-apocalyptic story, nothing else.
I’d love to see a movie of it, but I can’t see how to film it, considering the span of time it covers and the complexity.
Ah, that’s quite a coincidence. I just finished reading “City” by Simak, a collection of stories that span several thousand years, keeping one character, a robot, present in most stories.
It’s amazing to watch the right-wing propaganda machine try to turn the dumbest idea ever — that markets crashed in 2008-09 because of Obama — into a talking point.
Just a staggering combination of ignorance, shamelessness, and contempt for viewers.
My hypothesis is that anti-technological prejudices fall quickly by the wayside when war or conflict is common. Then everyone wants the latest.
BTW, this reminds me of a question I asked myself once: given that striking coins and printing text is essentially the same kind of process, that is, a negative image on a die pressed into a medium to leave a positive image, and that coins have been struck since the iron age at least, why did the printing press take so long to be developed?
But, looking back, there may be a great many obvious reasons, from the ink to the medium used, to the lack of a big market for printed material.
when what we needed was somewhere or someone who could alleviate the pain and distress and allow his illness to follow its natural course to death.
As a 67 year-old chronic asthma patient, I feel your pain and frustration–especially at this moment because I’m having my first seasonal asthma attack (2 weeks long now) in about 15 or 20 years after about 8 years of what passes for “remission” for asthmatics. I had pneumonia nearly every year, many years more than once, for about 20 or so years while I was growing up and my experience is that it just sucks and that alleviating the pain and distress doesn’t happen. It may be that LABAs and LAMAs provide the type of relief that you would like for people, but they didn’t for me the times I had pneumonia while I was in Korea. I am sorry that your dad had to suffer as he did and particularly that the aftermath of his hospitalization was as traumatic as it was. I hope he had a peaceful passing in the end. Some sort of emergency hospice care would have been a good alternative maybe. Does that exist?
@Kathy: I guess that it is important to remember that part of what made the ages “dark” for Europe was the deliberate decision to purge all of the ancient wisdom from society–a variation on Pol Pot’s solution to what to do for Cambodia. Mostly I was struck by the irony of the types of writings from St. Leibowitz that attracted the attention of the “theologians” of the emerging society.
And in an age where so much of our collected knowledge is being stored on electronic media, the possibility of falling into another dark age in the wake of a major nuclear conflict is not as far-fetched as it might seem.
@Teve: During the final years of her life, my mom, a loyal Fox News viewer, also believed that the Iraq war began at the start of Obama’s administration. Sigh…
I saw an interesting comment today. “Give a man a fish and he will eat for a day. Teach a man to fish and he will eat for a life time… unless, of course he doesn’t have access to a pond or a river.”
@Just nutha ignint cracker: Unfortunately, hospice in the US doesn’t work that way. It takes a fair amount of time and paperwork to get everything set up – weeks rather than days or hours. He did eventually die in hospice care and that was a good thing. No tubes, no electrodes and all the ice cream he wanted to eat, while he could still eat it.
I suspect that in the error of house calls the attending physician, finding someone in his condition that day, might well have simply dosed him with enough morphine to end his pain and, incidentally, his life, and only mention to the family that “his time has come”. And I don’t think that’s a bad thing.
And in an age where so much of our collected knowledge is being stored on electronic media, the possibility of falling into another dark age in the wake of a major nuclear conflict is not as far-fetched as it might seem.
Heinlein thought as much in “Friday,” one of his last works. Also Randall Munroe says in his book “What If” that it would be impossible to print out the contents of Wikipedia.
But a lot of knowledge is stored in books kept in large libraries, most of which are located in cities that would be targeted in a nuclear war… The thing is, I don’t believe a massive exchange of nuclear warheads is likely, much less inevitable (though I’m still not through Ellsberg’s book on nuclear war planning). I also think nukes will be used in war again someday, unless everyone who has any disarms.
I’m an optimist that way. Nukes are poor weapons for modern warfare.
Also Randall Munroe says in his book “What If” that it would be impossible to print out the contents of Wikipedia.
I haven’t read what if although I’d like to, but I think there’s a project to print out a copy of Wikipedia and they estimate it would take a little over a million pages.
you should. He’s the guy who does the xkcd web comic, and the book consists of humorous, but accurate, answers to science questions he gets from readers. It turns out there are many ways to destroy the world, collapse civilization, and cause massive regional catastrophes.
I’m quite sure about the Wikipedia thing, but I might be mistaken. It’s been a while since I read it (the audiobook read by Wil Wheaton). I think it’s due to the constant updating, but, again, I’m not sure.
Oh, illuminating the Moon with laser pointers is not possible 🙂
@Kathy: Randall Munroe and I have very similar educational backgrounds and interests. I’m sure you know about it but for anybody who doesn’t there’s actually a site that explains every single XKCD comic, which is pretty amusing. And there’s a site with the what ifs, but I go to those less frequently. I think one of the recent ones was the question what would happen if you had a mole of moles, and the basic answer is well it would be the size of the Moon 🙂
man I was going to watch a lot of Chernobyl tonight but I just finished the first episode and it was so grim and painful that I just can’t go on right now.
The number of spoiled brats who seem to think that a tearful wail should get you out of all repercussions never fails to surprise me. It’s even more aggravating in this case, because 1) this kid didn’t apologise until someone dragged out the old texts and showed his brattiness in full color, and 2) he certainly hasn’t done anything to indicate an actual change of mind, except flap his mouth a lot. (How about volunteering to tutor minority kids who need help with reading and math, hmm?)
Then when Harvard refused to “accept the apology” he threw a Twitter snit-fit, whining about how Harvard had accepted slave-owners back in the past and how unjust it was that they wouldn’t talk to him. (He seems to think that he’s negotiating the terms of a contract. Dude, you aren’t.)
Can someone tell this entitled little twerp that no, getting admitted to Harvard is not a Constitutional individual right? And no, nearly getting mowed down by some nut with a gun does not provide you with a scott-free waiver of all of your faults?
But a lot of knowledge is stored in books kept in large libraries
This is just me spitballing, but I don’t think it would take a nuclear exchange to see society collapse to the point where oxen pulled plows are state of the art again. With what I’ve seen of supply chains and manufacturing, if you could kill transport on the shipping lanes and airways for six months or maybe even less, supply chains would collapse and there would be mass starvation. And if you could kill the railroads it would happen in the US too, probably in a matter of weeks. Aside from direct food shipments, there are very, very few production processes that don’t rely on inputs of all kinds of raw and processed material, electronics, exotic metals, rare earths, etc, etc, and manufacturing processes are closely held secrets – certainly not in any library book. Sure, if one or two of them were unobtainable we would figure out a way, but if suddenly everything from outside the US was off limits we might never recover. And we and China are probably in the best shape to weather such a storm. The rest of the world would be in even grimmer shape.
@MarkedMan: we think about nukes and global pandemics but I’d really like to see some deep-geek Neal Stephenson-type nonfiction examining the most likely civilization-level catastrophes.
@MarkedMan: ….based on my experience, spellcheck is a likely candidate. When I was writing one of my sentences above spellcheck tried to shove in “coloratura” for “color”. (It just tried to do it again!) I suspect it’s because my computer is toggled to British English spelling….but it still allows me to write “connection” rather than “connexion” so it’s not pure historical British English spelling.
@grumpy realist: I wish I could blame spellcheck, my god, I truly do. But I hand write letters to my kids when they are away at college and I’ve made that their/there mistake there, in their letters. (Heh) It’s not like I don’t know the difference. And I don’t think I used to make that mistake. The slow decay of a mind? Or one too distracted to process correctly?
With what I’ve seen of supply chains and manufacturing, if you could kill transport on the shipping lanes and airways for six months or maybe even less, supply chains would collapse and there would be mass starvation.
Maybe in six weeks.
That’s essentially what happened in Europe when the Western Empire collapsed, and the world was far more locally sourced than it is today (you’d be amazed how much grain sold in Rome came from Sicily and Egypt). Not to mention the noble who could earn a lavish living by growing grapes and olives in his estate, now had no income and only grapes and olives to eat.
Asimov wrote a non-fiction book in the late 70s or early 80s called “A Choice of Catastrophes.” I don’t recall much about it.
Here are a few things that can end or gravely harm civilization and we have no control over: super volcano eruption, gamma burst from a nearby super nova, asteroid/comet strike, massive coronal ejection from the Sun, massive Solar flare that knocks out a lot of the power grid and electronics through EMP, a rogue planet wondering the galaxy passing through can disrupt our planet’s orbit and make it too hot or too cold for life, and I think there’s more.
I know the comic and sometimes I read it, but not often. One of the questions in the book was the mole of moles. So maybe all the questions in the book are already on the website?
IN COMMITTEE OF THE WHOLE ON RESOLUTIONS PROPOSD. BY MR. P. & MR. R
Mr. LANSING…was decidedly of opinion that the power of the Convention was restrained to amendments of a federal nature, and having for their basis the Confederacy in being. The Act of Congress The tenor of the Acts of the States, the Commissions produced by the several deputations all proved this. And this limitation of the power to an amendment of the Confederacy, marked the opinion of the States, that it was unnecessary & improper to go farther. He was sure that this was the case with his State. N. York would never have concurred in sending deputies to the convention, if she had supposed the deliberations were to turn on a consolidation of the States, and a National Government.
Mr. RANDOLPH, was not scrupulous on the point of power. When the salvation of the Republic was at stake, it would be treason to our trust, not to propose what we found necessary. He painted in strong colours, the imbecility of the existing Confederacy, & the danger of delaying a substantial reform. In answer to the objection drawn from the sense of our Constituents as denoted by their acts relating to the Convention and the objects of their deliberation, he observed that as each State acted separately in the case, it would have been indecent for it to have charged the existing Constitution with all the vices which it might have perceived in it. The first State that set on foot this experiment would not have been justified in going so far, ignorant as it was of the opinion of others, and sensible as it must have been of the uncertainty of a successful issue to the experiment. There are certainly seasons of a peculiar nature where the ordinary cautions must be dispensed with; and this is certainly one of them. He wd. not as far as depended on him leave any thing that seemed necessary, undone. The present moment is favorable, and is probably the last that will offer. The true question is whether we shall adhere to the federal plan, or introduce the national plan. The insufficiency of the former has been fully displayed by the trial already made. There are but two modes, by which the end of a Genl. Govt. can be attained: the 1st. is by coercion as proposed by Mr. P.s plan 2. by real legislation as propd. by the other plan. Coercion he pronounced to be impracticable, expensive, cruel to individuals. It tended also to habituate the instruments of it to shed the blood & riot in the spoils of their fellow Citizens, and consequently trained them up for the service of ambition. We must resort therefor to a National Legislation over individuals, for which Congs. are unfit. To vest such power in them, would be blending the Legislative with the Executive, contrary to the recd. maxim on this subject: If the Union of these powers heretofore in Congs. has been safe, it has been owing to the general impotency of that body. Congs. are moreover not elected by the people, but by the Legislatures who retain even a power of recall. They have therefore no will of their own, they are a mere diplomatic body, and are always obsequious to the views of the States, who are always encroaching on the authority of the U. States. A provision for harmony among the States, as in trade, naturalization &c.-for crushing rebellion whenever it may rear its crest-and for certain other general benefits, must be made. The powers for these purposes, can never be given to a body, inadequate as Congress are in point of representation, elected in the mode in which they are, and possessing no more confidence than they do: for notwithstanding what has been said to the contrary, his own experience satisfied him that a rooted distrust of Congress pretty generally prevailed. A Natl. Govt. alone, properly constituted, will answer the purpose; and he begged it to be considered that the present is the last moment for establishing one. After this select experiment, the people will yield to despair.
“In his remarks tonight, Trump called the Laffer Curve “still, a very, very highly respected economic curve”
Sigh. More and more, people are saying it’s the best economic curve.
I offer the following corollary to the Laffer Curve — as we put more and more carbon in the atmosphere, we will hit a point where we will naturally stop.
Something I was unaware of:
I sympathize, when I was a younger man I had several delusional fantasies about the ever so lovely Miss Loren myself.
I believe that Dems need to put together a “Green New Deal”-style manifesto for election reform. (I can’t think of a catchy name at the moment.) Dems have been addressing many of these issues individually but they need to broaden the scope and make it clear that it should be as big a priority as any policy issue, as it affects the functioning of democracy itself and is part of the reason why the liberal policies have not taken effect. Because it would address issues that have systematically hurt Democrats, most Dems could get behind it, but it would also stand a chance of attracting some principled Republicans (assuming there are any left). It would include:
* Abolishing the electoral college.
* Ending partisan gerrymandering.
* Ending voter-suppression efforts, enfranchising more of the population, and increasing the availability and ease of voting.
* Proposing a safe, reliable, and easy method of voting, with a paper trail.
* Coming up with fair procedures for dealing with election disputes, minimizing the potential for abuse.
* Making ranked-choice the standard in the country.
* Enacting campaign finance reform, perhaps all the way down to reversing or overturning (via amendment) Citizens United. It’s a long shot, but far too important to give up on.
* Last but not least, reforming election law to make it harder for a foreign entity to interfere with US elections.
Did I leave anything out?
A fascinating article about Malaysia Airlines Flight 370. Turns out we have a pretty good idea of what the aircraft was doing and a good suspect as well. Probably won’t shut up the conspiracy theorists, however.
It does bring out another type of risk which any space settlement/colony will have to figure a way to protect itself against–suicidal plans of inhabitants who have access to critical systems.
I’m currently watching “The Good Place” on Netflix. I’m around one third into the second season.
The show’s set in the afterlife, where the protagonist, Eleanor, finds herself in the “good place,” as opposed to the “bad place.” Except it’s clear to her someone forked up and she shouldn’t be there.
What’s really interesting is that many episodes deal with ethical problems, with actual references to ethics and moral philosophy. Overall the stories are pretty good, the acting talent is fantastic, especially Ted Danson, Kristen Bell and Jameela Jamil.
In one episode they did the trolley problem, with an actual trolley (labelled “Ethical Express”) and simulations of actual people who can’t die, because they are simulations, but can feel pain.
The other interesting part, and I’m trying to avoid specific spoilers but consider this a spoiler alert, is that you don’t get to the actual premise of the show until the end of season one.
Interesting. A poll carried out in Northern Ireland shows a majority for a reunified Ireland if Brexit-resulting-in-a-hard-border actually occurs.
As one of the commentators pointed out–the DUP (through its incompetence) has managed to advance the march towards reunification much more rapidly than the IRA ever did in 40 years.
@Kathy:
Mike Schur (the showrunner) is a huge talent. This is a show I watched an episode of, thought, ‘no way he can pull this off,’ stopped watching for that reason, then started again impelled by my wife and daughter. Well, spoiler: he pulls it off.
One of the extra pleasures is watching Ted Danson who is clearly having the time of his life.
@grumpy realist: That was an interesting read, thanks!
@michael reynolds:
What are the odds a Janet wrote it for him? 🙂
I also thought it would get boring and repetitive soon, with Eleanor learning, re-learning, and re-re-learning the same things all over and over again(*), each time barely escaping detection. But I’ve an interest in afterlife stories so I was willing to give it a shot. Plus Ted Danson is brilliant(**).
I think there were enough inconsistencies and oddities in the first few eps to keep me interested. Something evidently was off, which in the hands of a competent writer tends to lead to a good enough payoff. The pacing is good enough to let the viewer figure things out before the characters do (something that gets mostly lost if you binge the first season quickly).
(*) Of course that’s exactly what happens, but we don’t get to see all 800+ times when it does.
(**) As good as Danson is playing Michael, I like to think John Laroquette would have turned in a similar dead-center performance
@grumpy realist:
In 2001: A Space Odyssey (spoiler: it’s not), Clarke mentions at one point that any system can be protected against accidents, but not against malicious intent.
@Kathy: I hardly ever watch 30 minute comedy series but I like Kristen Bell and Ted Danson so thought I would give it a try. I can honestly say I’ve never seen a show as tightly written and acted. Virtually every line pays off in some way, if not then, later on. One of my favorite “blink and you miss it” examples is a scene set in hell:
MICHAEL: “Hey, boss. I’m back.”
SHAWN: (tossing a small canister towards Michael) “Welcome home. Axe up!”
MICHAEL: (catching it) “Oh! New scent! ‘Transformers.’”
SHAWN: “Yes. It makes you smell the way ‘Transformers’ movies make you feel.”
So of course hell’s deodorant would be an especially ridiculous Axe scent. End of joke. Except several scenes later Michael comes back to Eleanor amidst much hectic panic but she still manages to scrunch up her face, wave her hand in front of her nose and say,
ELEANOR (Kristen Bell): “Ohhh! How do you smell loud and confusing?!”
It’s just a beat, or maybe only half a beat and there is no lead in or follow up, so I didn’t even catch it until the second or third time I watched it. The show is just chock full of stuff like that.
@Kathy:
I have an afterlife story I want to write, but it wants to be on the screen more than book. But it’d be hideously expensive to produce.
The CEO of Hell. Satan was always an artist – when he took over hell from the Greeks it was nothing but grayscale and shuffling spirits. The Lake of Fire? Sure, it’s cliché now, but back in the day? But he was never a numbers guy and now the population is out of control. New arrivals barely get a dip in the Lake ‘O Fire, the Demons Union won’t let new demons be created or work rules changed, they’re having boundary issues with Muslim hell, Richelieu is running a shadow government…
So the Board, consisting of various out-of-work gods (Odin, Apollo, Huitzilopoctli) and run by GTF (God the Father) and The Kid (an insufferable expert on all things human – Hey, I lived with those people 2000 years before the invention of the shower!) decides it’s time to replace Satan. They hire a recently departed Disney executive on the theory that he has experience managing large crowds. Satan is given a genteel retirement on earth, there to exercise his artistic skills.
150 million as a feature, 9 million an episode, for a satire that’ll piss off every religion? Yeah.
@michael reynolds:
Nice touch!
@michael reynolds:
The big problem with afterlife stories is the sheer numbers involved. About 50 million die each year, give or take. Average that to 136,893 people every day, and the gods must be omniscient and omnipotent just to deal humanely with such large numbers of people.
BTW, there’s a scene in Niven and Pournelle’s “Inferno” where Benito, referring to Dante, complains to Carpenter “He met too many people he knew or had heard of, and too many Italian speakers.” In the course of the novel, Carpenter goes and meets too many people he knew or had heard of, and they all spoke English 🙂
@Kathy: I watched “The Good Place” from the beginning on my Hulu feed from NBC. Alas, you can probably stop watching about 2/3ds of the way through the Season you’re on now. By the end of the second season, the show starts to get stale, but the plots involving “the Trolley Dilemma” and such are still clever.
By the third season, I’m only watching in hopes of seeing the plot resolve–and because I think Kristen Bell is cute. Maybe Hulu’s reboot of “Veronica Mars” will scratch that itch, though.
On another thread, Doug commented on Maine becoming the 8th state to legalize assisted suicide, and that brought to mind something that has bothered me for several years now. Even short of assisted suicide, we have very little to help people and their families cope with dying. I realized this when my father, then in the middle stages of dementia, contracted pneumonia. My mother, also quite elderly, woke up in the middle of the night to find him in terrible distress, choking and gasping for air. It was confusing and panicky situation for all involved and given his distress everyone felt that something needed to be done. Long story short, he ended up in the hospital. But that is a place we bring people to get better, when what we needed was somewhere or someone who could alleviate the pain and distress and allow his illness to follow its natural course to death. Instead, he was hospitalized for a couple of weeks and then moved into a rehabilitation center where every day he woke to compete disorientation. By the time he returned home he was horrified to find this old lady hovering around him (his wife of 55 years) and couldn’t understand the difference between what was happening on the TV and what was going on outside the window in his boring suburban neighborhood. He lasted for more than a year after that and it was to no one’s benefit.
I’m not blaming the hospital for this. Complaining that they did what they were built for makes as much sense as bringing your car into the garage and then complaining they attempted to fix it. But it would be good for everyone involved if instead of calling an ambulance we could have called someone else that would have given him pain medication and whatever else would have relieved his discomfort without needlessly prolonging his life.
@Just nutha ignint cracker:
We’ll see. I do have some idea how the plot ought to be resolved. I’d like to know how close I get.
@michael reynolds: Speaking of your stories, I’m just finishing Gone. Very enjoyable book, and I’m looking forward to reading your non-YA work.
On the audiobook front, I got “A Canticle for Leibowitz” by Walter M. Miller Jr.
I found it a bit ridiculous that a new dark age(*) would revert to medieval norms and practices so faithfully. I mean specifically copying books by hand and illuminating the resulting manuscripts (and, yes, that was a complaint of mine of the otherwise fair segment of the season 4 finale of Babylon 5, which I can see was probably inspired by the Leibowitz tale).
Ok. So they lost a lot of knowledge in the nuclear war and subsequent unrest. Sure. I get it. but they know such things as the printing press are possible, and have a notion of how they work. It would be a simple matter for the Catholic church to recreate it.
Otherwise it is going rather well.
Oh, it is funny what happens when a medieval mindset tries to copy a blueprint. So much ink!
(*) While the period has been partly rehabilitated by modern scholars, it’s fair to say Europe as a whole, and the western part in particular, regressed technologically, culturally, and politically after the fall of the Western Roman Empire; and that the Eastern empire (aka the Byzantine Empire) didn’t fare much better, for all that if continued to stand.
It’s also worthwhile to point out the Dark Ages were solely a European phenomenon, not affecting areas like the Middle East, Asia, the Americas, etc.
@Kathy: Have you read the book before? It is an unbelievable book. I remember finishing it, putting it down, and shaking my head in awe and amazement.
I’d love to see a movie of it, but I can’t see how to film it, considering the span of time it covers and the complexity.
@grumpy realist:
I never quite got around to it. I’d heard of it plenty of times, and it was referenced a lot here and there. It is a classic, after all. But I’ve no idea what it’s about, past what I’ve read so far (about 3 or four chapters). I knew it was a post-apocalyptic story, nothing else.
Ah, that’s quite a coincidence. I just finished reading “City” by Simak, a collection of stories that span several thousand years, keeping one character, a robot, present in most stories.
@Kathy: I thought the “no printing press” thing had as much to do with the anti-technology mindset than an inability to recreate.
Fox News and I both have contempt for their viewers 😛
@MarkedMan:
My hypothesis is that anti-technological prejudices fall quickly by the wayside when war or conflict is common. Then everyone wants the latest.
BTW, this reminds me of a question I asked myself once: given that striking coins and printing text is essentially the same kind of process, that is, a negative image on a die pressed into a medium to leave a positive image, and that coins have been struck since the iron age at least, why did the printing press take so long to be developed?
But, looking back, there may be a great many obvious reasons, from the ink to the medium used, to the lack of a big market for printed material.
@MarkedMan:
As a 67 year-old chronic asthma patient, I feel your pain and frustration–especially at this moment because I’m having my first seasonal asthma attack (2 weeks long now) in about 15 or 20 years after about 8 years of what passes for “remission” for asthmatics. I had pneumonia nearly every year, many years more than once, for about 20 or so years while I was growing up and my experience is that it just sucks and that alleviating the pain and distress doesn’t happen. It may be that LABAs and LAMAs provide the type of relief that you would like for people, but they didn’t for me the times I had pneumonia while I was in Korea. I am sorry that your dad had to suffer as he did and particularly that the aftermath of his hospitalization was as traumatic as it was. I hope he had a peaceful passing in the end. Some sort of emergency hospice care would have been a good alternative maybe. Does that exist?
@Jen:
Thank you, that is very kind of you. Also, cha-ching! Another couple bucks!
@Kathy: I guess that it is important to remember that part of what made the ages “dark” for Europe was the deliberate decision to purge all of the ancient wisdom from society–a variation on Pol Pot’s solution to what to do for Cambodia. Mostly I was struck by the irony of the types of writings from St. Leibowitz that attracted the attention of the “theologians” of the emerging society.
And in an age where so much of our collected knowledge is being stored on electronic media, the possibility of falling into another dark age in the wake of a major nuclear conflict is not as far-fetched as it might seem.
@Teve: During the final years of her life, my mom, a loyal Fox News viewer, also believed that the Iraq war began at the start of Obama’s administration. Sigh…
I saw an interesting comment today. “Give a man a fish and he will eat for a day. Teach a man to fish and he will eat for a life time… unless, of course he doesn’t have access to a pond or a river.”
@Just nutha ignint cracker: Unfortunately, hospice in the US doesn’t work that way. It takes a fair amount of time and paperwork to get everything set up – weeks rather than days or hours. He did eventually die in hospice care and that was a good thing. No tubes, no electrodes and all the ice cream he wanted to eat, while he could still eat it.
I suspect that in the error of house calls the attending physician, finding someone in his condition that day, might well have simply dosed him with enough morphine to end his pain and, incidentally, his life, and only mention to the family that “his time has come”. And I don’t think that’s a bad thing.
@Just nutha ignint cracker:
Heinlein thought as much in “Friday,” one of his last works. Also Randall Munroe says in his book “What If” that it would be impossible to print out the contents of Wikipedia.
But a lot of knowledge is stored in books kept in large libraries, most of which are located in cities that would be targeted in a nuclear war… The thing is, I don’t believe a massive exchange of nuclear warheads is likely, much less inevitable (though I’m still not through Ellsberg’s book on nuclear war planning). I also think nukes will be used in war again someday, unless everyone who has any disarms.
I’m an optimist that way. Nukes are poor weapons for modern warfare.
@michael reynolds:
Out of curiosity, do you get anything from Scribd?
@Kathy:
I haven’t read what if although I’d like to, but I think there’s a project to print out a copy of Wikipedia and they estimate it would take a little over a million pages.
@Teve:
you should. He’s the guy who does the xkcd web comic, and the book consists of humorous, but accurate, answers to science questions he gets from readers. It turns out there are many ways to destroy the world, collapse civilization, and cause massive regional catastrophes.
I’m quite sure about the Wikipedia thing, but I might be mistaken. It’s been a while since I read it (the audiobook read by Wil Wheaton). I think it’s due to the constant updating, but, again, I’m not sure.
Oh, illuminating the Moon with laser pointers is not possible 🙂
@Kathy: Randall Munroe and I have very similar educational backgrounds and interests. I’m sure you know about it but for anybody who doesn’t there’s actually a site that explains every single XKCD comic, which is pretty amusing. And there’s a site with the what ifs, but I go to those less frequently. I think one of the recent ones was the question what would happen if you had a mole of moles, and the basic answer is well it would be the size of the Moon 🙂
man I was going to watch a lot of Chernobyl tonight but I just finished the first episode and it was so grim and painful that I just can’t go on right now.
Kyle K. (survivor of Parkland school shooting, but is pro-gun and has been prancing around the Young Republican cocktail circuit) has had his acceptance to Harvard yanked due to racist etc. remarks made when he was 16, so of course all the Usual Suspects on the Right are having a cow.
The number of spoiled brats who seem to think that a tearful wail should get you out of all repercussions never fails to surprise me. It’s even more aggravating in this case, because 1) this kid didn’t apologise until someone dragged out the old texts and showed his brattiness in full color, and 2) he certainly hasn’t done anything to indicate an actual change of mind, except flap his mouth a lot. (How about volunteering to tutor minority kids who need help with reading and math, hmm?)
Then when Harvard refused to “accept the apology” he threw a Twitter snit-fit, whining about how Harvard had accepted slave-owners back in the past and how unjust it was that they wouldn’t talk to him. (He seems to think that he’s negotiating the terms of a contract. Dude, you aren’t.)
Can someone tell this entitled little twerp that no, getting admitted to Harvard is not a Constitutional individual right? And no, nearly getting mowed down by some nut with a gun does not provide you with a scott-free waiver of all of your faults?
@MarkedMan: Sorry. “era” not “error”.
My god, has my spelling and grammar really gotten this bad? Can’t I blame spell check or sumpin’?
@Kathy:
This is just me spitballing, but I don’t think it would take a nuclear exchange to see society collapse to the point where oxen pulled plows are state of the art again. With what I’ve seen of supply chains and manufacturing, if you could kill transport on the shipping lanes and airways for six months or maybe even less, supply chains would collapse and there would be mass starvation. And if you could kill the railroads it would happen in the US too, probably in a matter of weeks. Aside from direct food shipments, there are very, very few production processes that don’t rely on inputs of all kinds of raw and processed material, electronics, exotic metals, rare earths, etc, etc, and manufacturing processes are closely held secrets – certainly not in any library book. Sure, if one or two of them were unobtainable we would figure out a way, but if suddenly everything from outside the US was off limits we might never recover. And we and China are probably in the best shape to weather such a storm. The rest of the world would be in even grimmer shape.
@Kathy:
I’ve never even been to the site. No, I’m an Amazon market drone. They make it so easy.
@MarkedMan: we think about nukes and global pandemics but I’d really like to see some deep-geek Neal Stephenson-type nonfiction examining the most likely civilization-level catastrophes.
@MarkedMan: ….based on my experience, spellcheck is a likely candidate. When I was writing one of my sentences above spellcheck tried to shove in “coloratura” for “color”. (It just tried to do it again!) I suspect it’s because my computer is toggled to British English spelling….but it still allows me to write “connection” rather than “connexion” so it’s not pure historical British English spelling.
@grumpy realist: I wish I could blame spellcheck, my god, I truly do. But I hand write letters to my kids when they are away at college and I’ve made that their/there mistake there, in their letters. (Heh) It’s not like I don’t know the difference. And I don’t think I used to make that mistake. The slow decay of a mind? Or one too distracted to process correctly?
@michael reynolds:
Then I should let you know “Gone” is on Scribd in ebook form. I hope you get something for that.
@MarkedMan:
Maybe in six weeks.
That’s essentially what happened in Europe when the Western Empire collapsed, and the world was far more locally sourced than it is today (you’d be amazed how much grain sold in Rome came from Sicily and Egypt). Not to mention the noble who could earn a lavish living by growing grapes and olives in his estate, now had no income and only grapes and olives to eat.
But what would cause shipping to collapse?
@Teve:
Asimov wrote a non-fiction book in the late 70s or early 80s called “A Choice of Catastrophes.” I don’t recall much about it.
Here are a few things that can end or gravely harm civilization and we have no control over: super volcano eruption, gamma burst from a nearby super nova, asteroid/comet strike, massive coronal ejection from the Sun, massive Solar flare that knocks out a lot of the power grid and electronics through EMP, a rogue planet wondering the galaxy passing through can disrupt our planet’s orbit and make it too hot or too cold for life, and I think there’s more.
@Teve:
I know the comic and sometimes I read it, but not often. One of the questions in the book was the mole of moles. So maybe all the questions in the book are already on the website?
@Kathy:
the untold story of notpetya
Sigh. More and more, people are saying it’s the best economic curve.
I offer the following corollary to the Laffer Curve — as we put more and more carbon in the atmosphere, we will hit a point where we will naturally stop.