A speculative mind

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Symmetry

One of the things that scientists concern themselves with is symmetry. Symmetry is found in nature, in biology, in chemistry, in physics, and in art. Symmetrical things seem pleasing to the human mind. They strike a chord with us. Scientists (ever the categorizers) are not just content with noting that something is symmetrical, but how is it symmetrical. What type of symmetry does it have? They also include more esoteric concepts of symmetry that have nothing to do with physical shape. We say that human bodies are symmetrical. And if we are symmetrical, that must make it a good thing right? If something is symmetrical, you can slice it in two right down the middle and each half will be the mirror image of the other. The specific type of symmetry that humans have is called bilateral symmetry. This means you can only slice us in two along one specific plane to get that mirror image. Slice us any other place, divide us any other way, and it will not work. So, humans are bilaterall

Mickey 7 (review)

A couple of years ago I remember seeing the book Mickey 7 (by Edward Ashton) on bookshelves in the library, in bookstores, and other places. It seemed to be popular. I remember seeing it, but it didn’t generate any interest in me. Maybe I associated it with baseball. Mickey Mantle was the most prominent baseball player when I was growing up. I never really liked baseball. Or, maybe I associated it with the Toni Basil song “Mickey.” I never really liked that song. Maybe it was the cover? Whatever the reason, I never picked it up or even sought to see what it was about. Then I heard someone talking about it, and thought I would give it a try. Okay, I liked it. The Mickey of the title is in a group of colonists trying to scratch out a living on a cold barren planet. Mickey has an unusual job. He has the job the no one should want. He is an “expendable.” His body and brain patterns have been fully recorded, and should he die (he definitely will die, and that is not a spoiler) a new bo

The Outsider

I am reading The Outsider by Stephen King. The first 150 pages or so I found disturbing. Not for the reason you might think. It is not scary, not creepy in a traditional horror way, but disturbing in a tragic way. The first hundred to 150 pages is tragedy on top of tragedy. The most disturbing thing to me (it is disturbing to me anytime I encounter it in any story) is a false accusation. A man is falsely accused and may well be convicted of a horrific crime. That kind of thing disturbs my soul. It makes the whole world seem wrong. I have always been disturbed by stories with that kind of thing. And why not? It happens in real life too. That makes it all the more horrific. In the Jim Crow South, all you had to do was make an accusation against a black man to set the lynch mob in action. No need to bother with a trial. But even if there was a trial, the outcome was a foregone conclusion, innocent or not. We see Vladimir Putin inventing charges against people and they get locked up (or

Roy Batty Figures it out

This is written with the assumption that the reader has seen the film Blade Runner . If you haven’t, you may not get much out of it. In one of the last scenes in Blade Runner , the killer android Roy Batty, who holds Deckard’s life in his hands, has a remarkable speech: “I've seen things... seen things you people wouldn't believe. Attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion. I watched C-beams glitter in the dark near the Tannhäuser Gate. All those moments... will be lost in time like tears in the rain. Time to die.” I am told that the speech that was written was not working very well, and Rutger Hauer was told to just improvise something. Wow. He nailed it. At this point in the film Roy Batty has been the villain throughout. We have been rooting for Deckard (Harrison Ford) to take him out, but it is not going well, and it seems like Batty is about to kill him. At the last second, Roy Batty pulls Deckard up, to keep him from falling to his death. Then he delivers this

Iron Flame (review)

Iron Flame is the second book in the Empyrean series by Rebecca Yarros. The first book was The Fourth Wing. If I had to characterize this series, I would say it is a little like Harry Potter meets Game of Thrones. As incongruous as that pairing may sound, I think it works. But like the Game of Thrones books, this series is not for children. Violet Sorrengail is a student at a military academy with dragons. Dragons are part of the training, but in this case it is more like the dragons are saying “how to train your humans”. In the first book we learned the dark secret that separates her group of friends from the rest of her classmates (from the rest of her country). But Violet is a scholar as well as a soldier, so she has to try to work out answers, not just solve them by brute force. In this book, Violet and her frustrating love interest Xaden are walking a tightrope, trying to do what they can for the cause without alerting the leadership with what they know. They are also wal

Band of Brothers

I am rewatching Band of Brothers . I first watched the miniseries 10 or 12 years ago. This time I finally convinced my wife to watch it with me. I know it is not her kind of show. Too real, too violent. But it is so good, I really wanted her to see it. It is hard to watch at times, but as a whole, it is a thing of sheer beauty. Band of brothers: In Shakespeare’s Henry V , the king is rousing his men to battle with what is known as the St. Crispin’s Day speech. He has to make them believe that he is their comrade as they are his. They will stand together or fall together. At one point Henry says, “. . . we few, we happy few, we band of brothers!” Historian Stephen Ambrose must have thought that line the perfect title for this story; the story of Easy Company, part of the 101 st Airborne Division as they made their way though the pages of World War 2. As we get to know some of the characters (all based on real soldiers who fought for Easy Company) we can imagine that they are repr