A speculative mind

  When I was a teenager, my parents bought a cabin at the beach as a little getaway for the family. My brothers and sisters had moved out by then, so it was mostly just me and the parents. The cabin was about an hour’s drive from our home, and my parents liked to spend about one weekend a month at the beach cabin. Activities there included going to the beach to collect agates and shells or staying in and playing cards or reading. This was long before computers, the internet, or cell phones. Importantly, there was no TV at the beach cabin. My parents did not want a TV there. They were trying to get away from the cares of the world for a little bit. For a teenager, this experience was like death warmed over. I dreaded these weekends. No TV. Are you kidding me? What was I supposed to do all weekend? I was not a big reader at that point in my life. Card games, yeah, okay, but how many waking hours can you play pinochle? Staring out the big picture window at the ocean was interesting ...

  I have a secret. I deceived my mother. Okay, it was like 50 years ago and she is gone now, but still . . .  I was generally a good boy. I did as I was told. My family lived a pretty strait-laced, middle-class, fairly conservative life. We were a G-rated family, well, until my older siblings broke the mold, but at this time, I was still in the mold. My friend Rich and I made a plan. Rich had asked me if I wanted to see Cabaret . He said he didn’t think much of Liza Minnelli, but he wouldn’t mind seeing her take her clothes off. We were like 13 years old and sex was ever-present on our minds as much as it was absent in our households. Cabaret was not rated R. It was rated PG. The ratings system has changed since that time. There was no PG-13; there was just the choice of G, PG, and R  (X was not an official rating).  Apparently the makers of Cabaret satisfied the ratings commission enough to escape an R rating, so it was PG.   There was therefore no law or ...

  Websters defines Empathy as: “the action of understanding, being aware of, being sensitive to, and vicariously experiencing the feelings, thoughts, and experience of another.” Empathy is what makes us human, though lord knows there are many humans who don’t seem to have any. A person without empathy is like a caveman, only concerned for himself. Selfish. It is a lack of community and by extension, a lack of the need for civilization. The person who lacks empathy can have a bit of community, but only with others exactly like himself. It seems like societies go through cycles of empathy and less empathy. Sometimes a single event can change the course of society. Prior to America’s involvement in WWII, the general feeling in America was not very empathetic. We had our own problems. We were still dealing with the lingering effects of the Great Depression, and had been for years. That kind of stress makes it hard to think of others. Hitler was slashing through Europe. He and his fol...

  When I was in school, I think I liked the idea of reading, more than actual reading. There were a number of books I read because I wanted to impress myself that I had read them. I read Frankenstein, Catch-22, The Lord of the Rings , and others. I am not a fast reader. I can’t zip through a book like some people, but I tried to with these books. The result was that I did not get much out of them (other than the naughty bits in Catch-22 ). I checked them off my list, impressed with myself. But what were they about? It wasn’t until I went to college and met my friend Vern, who instilled in me a love for reading, that my attitude changed. He introduced me to authors I had never read: Ursula K. LeGuin, Robert Heinlein, Walter M. Miller, James P. Hogan, and John Varley. His enthusiasm was infectious, and I found myself reading and actually enjoying the books. These books led me to new authors in the science fiction and fantasy realm.   Eventually I reread some of those earlier ...

  Despite both of us having science backgrounds, my wife and I share a leaning toward the artistic, though we may express it in different ways. In her life, my wife has been a painter, a poet, a singer, an actor, and a fiction writer. Not to mention a mother. I don’t remember what precipitated this event, but my wife, my son, and I were at home in the front room. My wife was responding to something my son said. She said, “remember, you get half your brains from me. If it wasn’t for me, you’d be a complete idiot.” To which my son started howling with laughter and said to me,” I think you have just been insulted.” Sometimes I feel like Rodney Dangerfield. I get no respect. But that is not an uncommon state of affairs for fatherhood. When my son was going to middle school and high school, my wife was always the one to go in with him to get him registered for classes. One time she was unable to go and I had to be the one to get him registered. “Ugh,” he said. “why can’t Mama do i...

  Science is about observation and insight. There is a difference between how the public thinks science works, and how it actually works. This is fundamental to the question of good science vs bad science. In both cases an observation is made and then a hypothesis is created to explain the observation. This is the point at which good science and bad science differ. A good scientist will then look for other evidence that either confirms or denies his hypothesis. S/he may then do experiments to test that hypothesis. If a test confirms the hypothesis, they are not finished. They may go through many cycles of experimentation and testing before they feel comfortable in publishing their results. Good scientists have to be ready to accept the fact that further testing may prove their hypothesis wrong. That is part of the process; it is essential to the process. Bad science is where after making your observation and coming up with a hypothesis, you only look for other data that supports ...

  I suppose it is time to do a wrap-up for 2024. These are my favorite books of the past 12 months. These are books that I read in 2024. That does not mean they came out in 2024 (most of them didn’t). I read a lot of science fiction and fantasy, but I read other things too, so these are the best books I read in 2024 in no particular genre and in no particular order. Again, these are just the books that I liked. You may have hated some of these books and that’s okay. This is my list. I had difficulty narrowing it down to five. That is why this top five list inexplicably contains six.   It is also why there are honorable mentions afterward.   Service Model by Adrian Tchaikovsky Comic existentialism in robot form. Who could imagine such a thing? Well, the brilliant Adrian Tchaikovsky, that’s who. Don’t let the “E” word scare you off. I promise, it’s funny.   The Dog Stars by Peter Heller A post-apocalyptic story about an airplane pilot and his dog who par...