A speculative mind

  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...

  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 ...

  You have heard about athletes getting their second wind? It is not that they feel better, that they are warmed up and ready to run more easily. It is not psychological (at least, not all psychological). No. There is an actual physiological truth to a second wind. It all has to do with respiration. When I say respiration, I am not talking about breathing. Respiration is a biochemical process that happens at the cellular level. It is how the cell gets energy. There are lots of chemical processes that are constantly going on in each cell, and those processes require energy. Without a constant feed of energy, the cell will die. The more demands there are on a cell, the more energy it needs. For example, every one of your muscle cells need more energy when you are running.   In fact, you won’t be able to run if the cells don’t have sufficient energy for it. The energy currency of the cell is a molecule called ATP. You may have heard that sugar is how our bodies get energy, wh...

  I must confess that I was not a great reader as a kid. Once I had got through the children’s literature and started reading more adult like books, I would balk at reading anything too thick. I was an avid science fiction fan, but my entertainment came mostly from TV and movies. But I do remember reading Jules Verne at an early age. I read journey to the Center of the Earth , and From the Earth to the Moon . I think I tried to read 20,000 Leagues under the Sea, but it was pretty “thick” and I don’t think I made it very far. By age 11 or 12, I did not know much about contemporary science fiction. I only knew about the old classics (or things that they had made movies about). As I got older, I would occasionally try something big and impressive. I read Frankenstein , and I confess I didn’t get much out of it my first time through. It was more like I was just reading it so I could say I read it. There were several books like that. In Junior High I read Catch-22 and there were a lot...

  I have finished reading Patrick Stewart’s autobiography, Making it So. I have long been an admirer of Stewart. Being a fan of Star Trek, I was thrilled in 1986 when it was announced that the new Star Trek series which was to be called Star trek; The Next Generation , was to feature him as the captain of the Enterprise: Jean-Luc Picard. It had been a long time since the end of the original series, and us Trekkies eagerly awaited the new one. I had seen Patrick Stewart a number of times before this. The first time I had seen him (though I didn’t realize it until years later) was in the wonderful miniseries I Claudius . I saw him in Dune and A few other things. It was enough for me to start noticing him. He had a great voice and spoke with conviction. Until reading his book I had no idea that he grew up in a poor household in Yorkshire and had a thick Yorkshire accent. His accent would have sounded something like the scullery maid Daisy or some of the other lower servants in Down...

  It is a staple of science fiction: the mirror world or mirror universe, or parallel universe. Star Trek has used it any number of times, as have some of the Marvel movies. You know, the characters you are following somehow transition to an alternate universe where there are copies of themselves, but the alternate universe selves are altered. Perhaps if the originals are good, the alternates are bad. Or, perhaps the captain in one universe is a bricklayer in the other. It is a fun concept to play around with in a fictional setting, but like the concept of travel, it doesn’t really work if you think about it too hard. There could certainly be other universes that were belched out of the Big Bang at the same time ours was. They might even start out with the same materials in the same quantities. But a parallel universe? One that has another version of you and me in it? That doesn’t work. The two universes would have to be absolutely identical and our doppelgangers doing the same ...

  I have heard it said that the difference between being a professional musician and an amateur musician is this: An amateur musician practices until they get it right. A professional musician practices until they cannot get it wrong . That makes some kind of sense to me. They were talking about classical musicians, but I wondered about other kinds of musicians and for that matter other kinds of artists. I, myself am an amateur actor. The idea of practicing a scene until you could not get it wrong, just doesn’t work. You can practice memorizing your lines until you can’t get them wrong, but you don’t have to be a professional to do that. And memorizing lines is only about ten percent of what it takes to be an actor. To be a professional actor does take training. There are not many professional actors who simply lucked into a career. It takes work. It takes practice too, but not the kind of practice that a musician engages in. You don’t go over and over a particular part or scene ...