So over the Labor Day Weekend I did a walk around and with the aid of Hawkeye (aka Camera Girl) we spotted some creatures that look like they belong in a pint sized Jurassic Park.
Garden Patch Predators
Month: September 2017
A Rambling Wreck – Book 2 of The Hidden Truth Series – A Science Fiction Book Review
Hans G. Schantz is the author of the “The Hidden Truth” series and based on the bio at the end of the book some sort of a genius. He’s a PhD in theoretical physics and a high-tech inventor of radio frequency gadgets (e.g., near field electromagnetic ranging). Suffice it to say he doesn’t need to use a macguffin in any of his stories to fake a scientific plot line. So, it’s kind of ironic that the first chapter is named “Whatever Happened to Angus MacGuffin.”
I picked up this second volume of the series without having read the first because the premise caught my fancy. The protagonist, Peter is a college freshman at Georgia Tech who is digging up information on a shadowy organization called the Civic Circle which seems like some kind of combination of the Illuminati and villains from a Bond movie. They murdered his parents for getting in the way of an operation being carried out to hide the Civic Circle’s involvement in an assassination campaign. This campaign was meant to prevent the leading minds in electromagnetic field theory from discovering a secret that would give its wielder enormous power.
Now imagine that plot line embedded in a story that includes a freshman pick-up artist, social justice warriors on campus, a Chinese demigod, a 17th century nuclear energy program and a freshman trying to keep his grade point average high enough to keep his scholarship money intact.
It’s sort of like what might happen if one of Heinlein’s juvenile heroes (say Kip from Have Spacesuit Will Travel) was thrust into the modern era and was forced to use “SJWs Always Lie” as his freshman orientation guide while battling the Black Hats.
The book combines an elaborate puzzle involving an ancient Chinese philosophical text that seems also to be a clue to the secret knowledge that the Civic Circle is protecting. There’s a rationale involving historical figures from the early days of electromagnetic field theory to explain how this secret hasn’t been discovered by the physicists of today. There are all kinds of geeky fun throughout the plot.
One other interesting note. This is an alternate history world where President Gore was killed in the 9-11-2001 terror attacks. So, they must have completely missed out on the joys of climate change.
The action moves along and the various plot elements reach their crescendo in a nicely coordinated climax. Secrets are revealed. The damsel in distress is saved and the hero moves up the ladder of experience and prepares for his next foray against the powers of darkness.
I thought the book was good. I should probably go back now and read the first volume (but once you cheat it’s always tough to do that). But I look forward to next installment. Hopefully in it Donald Trump will be given super powers and a license to kill.
The Pod People Strike Back
Google is in the news. They are demonetizing and de-platforming the haters. And who are the haters? Whoever they say they are. And so is PayPal and Patreon and GoFundMe and on a less important front so is Facebook, Twitter and all the other leftists who are still smarting over Trump’s win. If you make money from monetizing your website through Google advertising then this can be a big deal. If you have a YouTube channel you could find a stream of income that you’ve depended on shut off. And it’s not something you can appeal. If they shut you down, that’s it.
I’ve been reading on a few sites that alternative sources for monetizing and funding are coming into being. For instance a payment site to replace Patreon ( amusingly named Hatreon) now exists. Stripe and Square perform similarly to PayPal but haven’t been banning rightwingers (yet). WeSearchr and Counter.Fund also provide crowdsourcing to the right. Gab provides a Twitter alternative.
So, problem solved? Probably not. Google is a behemoth of a company that controls the lion’s share of internet advertising. They also dominate the search business. And this is the way to control what gets seen and what doesn’t. If they think your site is guilty of thoughtcrime all they have to do is make it invisible and it will dry up and wither away. That is a big problem. There are other search engines like Brave and DuckDuckGo and, and, and … But most people google things they’re looking for. What’s a deplorable to do?
Well, mostly wait. We should start using all the alternatives because we need to make a start. But don’t fool yourself into thinking you can move a mountain with a teaspoon overnight. There’s no magic bullet for 100 years of ignoring the problem. These institutions are entrenched and they don’t like you and they want you to go away (meaning drop dead).
One thing we can and should do is network. Find like-minded folks and communicate and support each other. If they sell stuff, look at it. If it’s as good or even almost as good as stuff from the pod people buy it instead. And when you do buy from them let them know why. And if you have stuff for them to buy let them know and maybe they will. Support these alternative institutions and spread the word. Put links on your site if you find something good.
And it’s not all gloom and doom. Look at the Dragon Awards. Only two years running and already it is a fantastic alternative to voting in the fully converged Hugo Awards. I used to waste money voting in that thing. And that money was then spent on feeding SJWs at the WorldCon. Instead I can vote in the Dragon Awards for free and have a much greater impact. And that is a direct result of the puppies (sad and rabid) standing up to the pod people and saying we don’t believe you and we’ll go our own way.
So, there are cracks in the wall. And if you apply pressure at these weak points damage can be done. And don’t forget, Trump isn’t a friend of Silicon Valley. They don’t like him and he doesn’t like them. If he sics the anti-trust dogs on them Google will grovel pretty quickly. It will be interesting to see if the investigation into search algorithm tampering is resurrected.
So be of good cheer and go out and deplore with a smile on your face and a song in your heart. Somewhere out there in the bowels of Google the pod people are beginning to fear you.
2017 Dragon Awards Winners Announced
The results have been announced and just as with last year, the Hugos have been shown once again to be way outside the mainstream. Of course, not everything I voted for won. But enough did and enough other stuff that did win was at least recognizable as SF&F. Sure, there’s some stuff written by SJW allies but at least it was stuff people actually buy so the really egregious stuff was passed over completely. Here’s the complete list:
http://awards.dragoncon.org/2017_winners/
Kudos to the winners and especially to Larry and the other puppies, sad and rabid, for starting the fire in that dumpster known as the Hugos. Like anything that’s been shown defective the Hugos have been replaced with something that actually works.
Cowboy Bebop – A Sci-Fi TV Review – Part 3
I have now finished off all the Cowboy Bebop (CB) available as DVDs on Netflix (Discs 4 and 6 are permanently unavailable). This includes the 2-hour movie which I watched last night. And I think that’s sufficient to allow me to make a definitive judgement on the series vis-à-vis my taste.
It’s good.
It has some weaknesses from my point of view. There is a silliness that can be annoying for me. The crazy adolescent girl Edward can be a bit much. Some of the episodes are pretty thin on plot. And some of the space battle scenes seem (not surprisingly) cartoonish. I think most of this can be chalked up to the standard cartoon sci-fi conventions. Things are simplified and standardized to allow economic production of the animation product. And to be fair, since I have never been a comic book or movie consumer, I’m not their primary audience. To an anime consume, CB is probably well to the right side of the standard deviation curve with respect to production values, plot and characterization.
I like the quality of the animation especially the scenes in outer space. Some of it is strikingly well done. I liked the scenario of independent contractors moving in and out of the legitimate world acting as bounty hunters while they themselves are not without a certain air of criminality. And obviously here are the similarities with Firefly. After viewing the majority of CB I’ll state that I’m convinced that Whedon borrowed heavily from it when making Firefly. But I’m sure CB borrowed from earlier anime for some of its ideas so I don’t think it’s a big deal. But I will say that at this point I’d much prefer a big screen (or big budget tv) version of CB were made rather than of Firefly. Whedon is such an SJW that he’d probably have Serenity going back in time just to battle Donald Trump. My only hedge on having CB instead of Firefly is that is I’d like to see Jet Black played by Adam Baldwin. He would be damn near perfect for the part.
Anyway, I would say that the CB movie demonstrates how a longer treatment of the material improves it. More characterization shows through and there is more scope for interesting story telling. Also, the animation of the city in the movie was extremely well done. It looked like whole sections of New York City were digitized to make the action possible in the chase scenes. And speaking of the chase scenes, one of the flying chases was a little too long. Although intricate and well laid out it eventually started to drag on. The fight scenes between the protagonist Spike and his nemesis were very good and enjoyable. Most of the minor characters were fairly well utilized. Surprisingly, the seemingly superfluous presence of the welsh corgi dog on the space ship actually felt like a positive addition to me. But maybe I just like dogs.
So, bottom line, Cowboy Bebop is good sci-fi anime. If you don’t particularly like anime you still might enjoy it. It has piqued my interest in the genre enough that I’m going to give another anime movie (Ghosts in the Shell 2.0) a look-see and find out if this was just a one off or not.
See you Space Cowboy!
End of Summer Blues – Postscript
https://orionscoldfire.com/index.php/2017/09/02/end-of-summer-blues/
I was reading through some blogs this morning and found a differing opinion on the end of summer on the TheZman’s site http://thezman.com/wordpress/?p=11398#respond . Well, to each his own but I will add that it’s easy to say you like snow and cold when you live in Baltimore. Of course, it makes sense to say that you don’t like hot weather when it’s as sticky as it is down there in August. Nuff said.
End of Summer Blues
In New England, the end of summer is akin to how it must have felt to the pyramid-building slaves when their break period was about to end. A wonderful but horribly short respite was giving way to endless unimaginable agony. And this cycle would repeat itself until merciful death interceded. It’s just like that.
Summer is breathtakingly beautiful because of the contrast to what follows. It was less than 40◦F here this morning. On the second day of September. Still summer! And it goes rapidly downhill from here. Sure, we’ll have some warm days. Over eighty sometimes. But it’s just a cruel tease meant to highlight just how bad things will soon be. In the last decade or so New England has unleashed a new and terrifying alternative to winter storms. This is where a freezing rain or snow descends on us in October while the trees are still full of leaves. The trees in this condition hold onto much more snow and ice than normally and therefore huge branches and limbs can break off the trees. And that’s how millions of people end up without power for days or even weeks. So, what you have is houses without heat, some without a stove, some without water, which means without toilets. It’s such a joy. So, installing an emergency generator really isn’t an extreme decision. It’s sort of mandatory if you want to eat and drink and stay warm and go to the bathroom and, you know, live.
So, why am I writing about this? Well mostly to let you people living in other parts of the country know how lucky you are. Sure, they have hurricanes down south and earthquakes in the west and tornadoes in between but those only very infrequently effect you. Here we know as sure as night follows day that we will be wet, miserable and cold for eight months of the year, every year until we die or we have the good sense to get the hell out of this purgatorial region.
And why don’t I leave? Ah, I am bound with the strongest and most adamantine of chains, the grandmother/grandchildren bond. If a woman is possessed of an industrial strength maternal instinct (as, sadly, Camera Girl is) then no power in the ‘Verse short of a strategic thermonuclear strike will pry her away from these rugrats.
So here I am. The rollercoaster is at the top of the lift hill and the slow ratchet up is done. We’re staring down but the bottom has not yet dropped out of our stomachs. Here we go.
End of depressing preamble.
So, I’ve got this cool three-day weekend. Some relatives are coming up. I’m going out to take some seasonal photos and I’m bound to hang out with the grandsons too. Plus, the mystery of the disappearing quail needs to be answered. I’ve put out a game camera and hope to catch some photos of them gamboling around in the woods and thickets. And finally, I’m finishing up the available Cowboy Bebop discs from Netflix. I decided to try out another anime title (Ghost in the Shell 2.0) and it just arrived. All in all, it sounds like I’ll be having a very good time.
A very happy and relaxing Labor Day Holiday to all you good folks out there reading OCF. I’ll have more serious stuff right along soon but today just enjoy a good rest and do something fun.