All the Secrets of the Universe and Some Really Important Stuff Too!
Reviews of books, movies, tv shows and other items
Five states have 19 counties (probably urban centers) that have more voters registered than they have adult residents, California, Colorado, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, and Virginia. The federal government is going to litigate this. Sounds like a good idea.
I like this summary. I’m not sure about the Iraq withdrawal conclusion but it seems to hit the main points well.
https://amgreatness.com/2020/01/05/trumps-counterpunching-as-grand-strategy/
This episode is essentially a murder mystery story. Kirk is the detective and the members of the crew and a band of traveling Shakespearean actors are the props. The leader of the acting troupe is suspected by Kirk of being a mass murderer who slaughtered four thousand of his citizens where he was a colony leader. The only surviving witnesses who can identify the murderer are Kirk and Lt. Riley of the Enterprise. The biggest complication is that, of course, the suspect’s daughter is a buxom blonde that has caught Jim Kirk’s eye.
Other than the love interest, which is slightly tedious, the Shakespearean motif is relatively amusing, with chunks of Macbeth and Hamlet slung around at slightly appropriate moments. Spock is alarmed by the Captain’s secretive and erratic behavior and McCoy is his usual contrary self. Outside of the plot we are regaled with Lt. Uhura singing something Star Treky and we are given one last walk through by Yeoman Janice Rand on the bridge. Apparently she was fired shortly before this episode and this was her swan song. A pity. She was pretty.
The plot and the love story resolve themselves as the guilty receive poetic justice and madness and death are the fruits of murder. I’d give the story a 7. Shatner has almost no opportunity to perform any tumbling, bare chested gymnastics or over the top histrionics. I’ll call it a 1 on the Shatner mockery scale. That a 7 // 1. Not too bad.
I enjoyed the section where she looked at the cognitive dissonance and panic when an academic tried to point out the equivalence between the transgender and trans-racial delusions. Only difference; one is dogma, the other is heresy.
The Menagerie was a reformulating of the first Star Trek pilot episode, “The Cage.” Jeffrey Hunter was the original pick to be the captain of the Enterprise, Captain Christopher Pike. But the network rejected that pilot and when Roddenberry asked Hunter to do the second pilot he bowed out. So, the original story of the Enterprise on Talos IV is embedded in the two-episode story of Spock’s mission to help Captain Pike.
The plot revolves around events that involved the Enterprise long before Jim Kirk was captain. Chris Pike was the captain during the Talosian incident and his science officer at the time was Mr. Spock. Fast forward to Jim Kirk’s Enterprise and Spock fakes a distress signal from a Star Base in order to kidnap a critically injured and horribly disabled Christopher Pike and hijack the Enterprise to reach Talos IV. Captain Kirk and the star base commander Commodore Mendez follow after the Enterprise and once aboard they put Spock on trial for mutiny. Spock provides evidence in the form of an audio-visual record of the Talosian incident which as it turns out is being transmitted to the Enterprise by the Talosians. This transmittal explains why Talos IV is quarantined by the Federation and nature of the Talosians powers. The resolution of the trial and Captain Pike’s fate are the climax of the story.
This story is one of Star Trek’s best. Even though this is a cut and paste of the earlier episode with the later additions for the Spock plot it is an interesting story with characters that are at least as interesting as the normal crew. I would say Jeffrey Hunter does an excellent job as Captain Pike and it is interesting to think what the series would have been like if he had stayed with the show.
The nature of the Talosians powers and their intentions for Captain Pike allow the storyline to include several scenes that involve Pike and the girl Vina in some fantasy episodes. There’s even one scene where she’s painted green and dancing around in a harem outfit (and of special interest to Orion’s Cold Fire, she’s described as a green-skinned Orion slave girl).
A notable item from the story is the casting of Majel Barrett, the woman who went on to play the always annoying Nurse Chapel, as Pike’s First Officer known as Number One. Barrett played her part as a cold logical officer. In this part she was far more entertaining than with her Chapel character.
Since Captain Kirk has a relatively small part in these two episodes, he really had no chance to demonstrate his special acting skills. Interestingly, the plot does have a couple of incidents where Jeffrey Hunter had to react to psychic torture with exaggerated facial expressions and spasmodic body gestures. It appears then that the writers and directors are partially responsible for all the histrionics that Bill Shatner is so famous for. But obviously he had a greater ability than Hunter at hamming it up.
So, with respect to scoring I’ll go with 10//2
First Ohio, now Georgia. That’s 98,000 fewer fake votes that can be manufactured when the Democrats are looking to steal an election.
Let them scream and shout about voting rights all they want. In an age when the government and even corporations know your blood pressure GPS location, not knowing whether a voter is alive or dead, or living in another state is a fiction that no longer needs to be allowed. Tammany Hall needs to be shut down.
Forgive the jocularity but Alpha Orionis (aka Betelgeuse) is of course of great interest at Orion’s Cold Fire. Sporting such an alarmist title as “Is Betelgeuse About To Explode?” I should condemn this article but as a general interest essay and coming around the time of the Star of the Magi I felt I should link to it.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/startswithabang/2019/12/25/is-betelgeuse-about-to-explode/#69d9c21d47bf
A very interesting article by the ZMan on the result of only having one retailer, one bank, one local college, one local law firm. Even the rich folks have nowhere to send some of their children to work. He is right about this, I’ve seen it affecting even the cloud people. Now that the working class has been liquidated, they’re coming for the rest of us. Oh well, at least we’ll get bread and circuses for a while.
This is my favorite version of Marley’s ghost on film. The outrage and despair at being called a “good man of business” is one of the high points of the film.
For the sake of accuracy let me say that his is actually an audiobook. It’s found on Audible which is an Amazon company.
This is the third installment in the Tom Stranger saga but Audible has bundled all the earlier episodes in with three new chapter in the series adding up to eight hours of listening time. The Tom Stranger stories are a goofball joke that Larry Correia of “Monster Hunter International” fame spun out in 2016 as a lark. But he got Adam Baldwin (of Firefly and Chuck fame) to do the narration and the first one was so much fun to listen to that I’ve kept up with the nutty series ever since.
The idea is exactly what the title implies. Tom Stranger is an interdimensional insurance agent. He travels throughout the multiverse settling claims on any policies meant to protect a client in one dimension from interference by any being from a different dimension. So, as a for instance, while in our dimension back in 2016 Barack Obama was president of the United States, in another universe Adam Baldwin wasn’t just an actor but was also elected president. So, when something from our universe threatened this alternate reality, Tom Stranger was called in by the policy owner, Adam Baldwin, to restore the balance and repair the damage.
Now Larry Correia was the originator of the Sad Puppies campaign against the SJWs of pink science fiction so tweaking liberals and other weirdos is a healthy chunk of the content and motivation for the stories. But everyone else, including himself, Adam Baldwin and even nominal allies like President Trump come in for abuse somewhere in the story. The only group that consistently escapes abuse are manatees. Tom is presented exactly like the earnest insurance agent he is, humorless, efficient, extremely uncool and incorruptible.
I will say right up front that if you don’t like goofball humor and don’t appreciate pretty heavy handed SJW bashing this may not be your cup of tea. Also, right now the book is free if you start a trial membership of Audible. I guess if you cared to you can get it free and then cancel the trial membership. But I just bought it because I’m a trillionaire. Otherwise it is $28 dollars which seems like a lot of money for a goofy book. So, I’ll say that this book is definitely not for everybody. Also Audible is one of those services where the audio file doesn’t reside on your computer but streams from their servers. Being a geezer, this annoys the hell out of me.
Going back to the story, it’s something that I like but it has several things going for it for my tastes. First off, I was a participant in the Puppy Wars and enjoy anything that tweaks the SF SJWs. Secondly Larry Correia is a very funny guy and writes a really clever satire. And finally, Adam Baldwin is great fun as the narrator.
So, there it is. A specialty product that isn’t for everyone but satisfies a niche for a special audience.