Monthly Archives: September 2023

Cruising SF Movies

Whatever you think about Tom Cruise the person, it’s hard to dispute that Tom Cruise the actor has turned out a lot of very worthwhile films. It’s hard to find many duds in his filmography but easy to spot noteworthy titles. Ever since Risky Business (1983) and Top Gun (1986), Tom Cruise has starred in movies so memorable that they became part of our cultural lingo.

More importantly for this Sci-Fi Saturday post, Tom Cruise has appeared in a perhaps surprising number of science fiction movies. Even more importantly, nearly all of them are good science fiction movies. Some of them are even really good.

Unfortunately, one of his rare duds is among them.

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Friday Notes (Sep 23, 2023)

It occurred to me that, to some extent, I’d like my most of my blog posts to be like these Friday Notes posts: extemporaneous ramblings and the setting free of any notes recently captured. And some old stories (and maybe a few pictures).

It’s not that I want to stop ‘splaining stuff, my inner teacher is strong. (Is it man-splaining if you’re a teacher?) It’s been one of my things since grade school. Spead knowledge!

But the rambling sure is easy. And fun!

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QM 101: Intro to the Schrödinger Equation

It’s been a while, but the two previous posts in this series (this one and this one) explored the mechanism behind partial differential equations that equate the time derivative (the rate of change), with the second spatial derivative (the field curvature). The result pulls exceptions to the average back to the average in proportion to how exceptional they are.

Such equalities appear in many classical physics equations where they have clear physical meaning. Heat diffusion (explored in the previous posts) is a good example.

In quantum mechanics, they also appear in the Schrödinger Equation.

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Resist!

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Stay resistive, my friends! Go forth and spread beauty and light.


Friday Notes (Sep 8, 2023)

Another (very) late edition and in the same week [see previous post]. In this case, it’s because I hadn’t planned a Friday Notes post for today, but I’ve gotten so indolent lately that I’m falling out of the habit of blogging. (Or, the eternal question, have I perhaps gotten weary of it?)

But, as polite people say, “Stuff happens.” And because it does, I have enough perishable notes that I may have to put out two Notes editions this month.

Assuming I can get back in the blogging habit.

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Mystery Monday 9/4/23

A late edition Mystery Monday post because I’ve been distracted by various and sundry. I’ve meant this for more than one previous Monday. Not gonna miss another.

Having pretty thoroughly explored the British Queens of Crime as well as (the American) Ellery Queen, I’ve turned to new pastures: the Butch Karp / Marlene Ciampi stories by Robert K. Tanenbaum and the Matthew Scudder stories by Lawrence Block. And French author Maurice Lablanc!

Plus, I’m disgruntled by Dark Winds, an AMC TV series that (too loosely, IMO) adapts two novels from the Navajo Tribal Police series by Tony Hillerman.

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