About Wyrd Smythe
The canonical fool on the hill watching the sunset and the rotation of the planet and thinking what he imagines are large thoughts.
It’s been over two years since I wrote the Worst NCIS Ever! rant post, and I still think that was weak plotting. That episode was the premiere of the 10th season, but clinkers like that one episode seem incredibly rare. They’re turning out powerful, engaging stories even after 12 years. Still my favorite show currently airing.
So why is that the spin-off show, NCIS: Los Angeles, is such an ugly sibling to me? It seems so different that it’s as if it’s not part of the franchise, but some other — far less worthy — show. The new spin-off, NCIS: New Orleans, is so far proving to be as attractive as the first sibling, which puts the ugly one in even greater contrast.
Last week’s episode was so bad I just have to rant about it.
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14 Comments | tags: G Callen, Hetty Lange, JAG, Kensi Blye, Marty Deeks, NCIS, NCIS:Los Angeles, NCIS:New Orleans, Owen Granger, Sam Hanna | posted in Rant, TV
You couldn’t know this, but my blogging workspace is littered with balls of virtual crumpled paper. The ones writers make when they rip failed writing attempts from their typewriter, smush them up in disgust, and toss them disdainfully over their shoulder. This post — which has been in my mental queue for well over a year — has the strongest resistance to being written that I’ve ever encountered.
I wrote the note you see here somewhere back in 2013. It seemed like exactly the sort of thought chain that would make an interesting post. Many of the items in that chain (consciousness, art, science) are things that fascinate me and are even areas this blog tries to discuss.
So why is a post about it so dang hard to write?
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18 Comments | tags: art, consciousness, experience, Isaac Newton, language, questions, relaxation oscillation, Technology, Vitruvian Man | posted in Philosophy, Science
The punchline is that I was suddenly struck by how modern fiction seems to have conditioned me to expect an apparent White Hat to secretly be a Black Hat. The question I find myself asking now is whether fiction has actually changed (and if so why) or is it just me? The more I think about it, the more I’m inclined to think modern fiction has changed.
If so, does that reflect a modern sensibility about people today? Does the rise of the modern anti-hero bring with it the idea of the betrayer? Do we expect so little of people anymore that our heroes need to be dirty and double agents seem matter of course?
This all started with Diane Duane…
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9 Comments | tags: anti-hero, Deep Wizardry, Diane Duane, Ghosts of Mars, High Wizardry, Judas, Manse Everard, Poul Anderson, So You Want to be a Wizard, Star Trek, Star Trek novels, story plots, storytelling, Time Patrol, Weeds, Young Wizards | posted in Books, Sci-Fi Saturday
I never intended this blog to be a movie or TV review blog, but I’ve found myself posting about various films or TV shows I’ve really liked (or — in a few cases — really hated). I often get too lost in a story to see myself as a good reviewer or analyst (serious film critics often amaze me by what they pick up on), but storytelling is a favorite area of mine, and I do enjoy writing about it.
Hence forth, I plan to be more open to writing about movies and TV shows. I do enjoy sharing some of the little known gems I find, and — if nothing else — it’s nice to have a record of those and my reactions to them at the time. And (as always) I enjoy a good rant about the ones that pissed me off. I make no claim to being a particularly good critic; take any of these as just my 1/50th of a buck’s worth.
Today I want to share three critically acclaimed, utterly delightful, gems.
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30 Comments | tags: James Spader, Jim Jarmusch, John Hurt, Maggie Gyllenhaal, Mia Wasikowska, Nick Hurran, Only Lovers Left Alive, Rare Exports: A Christmas Tale, Santa Claus, Secretary (movie), Tilda Swinton, Tom Hiddleston, vampires, Virtual Sexuality | posted in Movies
This is a long-winded comment in reply to Mike Smith’s recent blog post (and comments therein), Steven Weinberg’s new book on the history of science. We got to discussing a personal letter written by Albert Einstein about a year before his death in 1955. The letter — which seems to present religion as “childish” — surfaced in the public eye when it was sold at an auction in 2008. Given Einstein’s generally expressed views about religion, the letter appears to undercut those views.
Or does it? Atheists and theists alike have tried to claim Einstein as their own, but his views are complex enough to resist a clear victory by either side. The letter seems a point in favor of atheism, but that may be an over-simplification.
In any event, my reply ran long (and was getting kind of off-topic), so I decided to use it as an excuse to try to get back into blogging again…
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42 Comments | tags: Albert Einstein | posted in Opinion, Religion
Today is the last Day of Christmas. If you’ve been following the song, your house is filled with leaping Lords, milking maids, two groups of musicians, and an awful lot of birds. But now you can usher them out, take down the lights and decorations, and put the tree out on the curb for pickup.
I’m guessing some of you did the de-decorating on December 26th and didn’t even buy your true love a partridge. On the other hand, the 2015 Christmas season apparently begins on August 31st (and includes “Black November”), so it’ll be back before you know it!
Until then, it’s time to get back to the grindstone.
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37 Comments | tags: 12 Days of Christmas, blog, blogger, blogging, college, Gibbs' Rules, grindstone, high school, January, Janus, millstone | posted in Life
The Earth orbits our star, Sol, at a distance of roughly 93 million miles (150 million kilometers) — a distance we call an Astronomical Unit (AU). Our little rock is just under 8,000 miles wide (a bit over 12,000 km) and has a surface area (including oceans) of just under 200 million sq miles (510 million sq km). Depending on how you look at it, the Earth seems very large or very small.
What if, instead of a rock spinning around its star, it was a ring encircling it? Suppose the ring spun fast enough (770 miles per second) to create “gravity” on its inner surface? And suppose the ring was one-million miles wide and had walls 1000 miles high long both rims to keep air inside? Such a ring would have a surface area equal to about three-million Earths.
And what you’d have is Larry Niven’s Ringworld!
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26 Comments | tags: Dyson sphere, Elysium (movie), Freeman Dyson, Larry Niven, Ringworld, Teela Brown, The Ringworld Engineers | posted in Sci-Fi Saturday
Here in January we’re almost equally distant from the previous professional baseball season (which ended in September) and from the coming one (which begins in April). Pitchers and Catchers report for Spring Training in mid-February, position players report later in the month. Spring Training games begin in March.
At various points in 2014, I picked up DVD copies of two (actually four) favorite baseball movies, plus one I’d never heard of, but found in a $4.99 bin somewhere. They’ve all been siting patiently waiting for me to watch them.
I thought: New Year’s Day sounds like the perfect time to do that!
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24 Comments | tags: Bleacher Bums, Bob Uecker, Bull Durham, Cleveland Indians, David S. Ward, Durham Bulls, Harry Doyle, Kevin Costner, Lysistrata, Major League, Margaret Whitton, Rene Russo, Ron Shelton, Susan Sarandon, Tim Robbins, Wild Thing | posted in Baseball, Movies
10 Comments | tags: 2015 | posted in Life
The end of the calendar year: a time for a rambling look back at what was and wiping the blackboard clean for the scribbles of a new year. It’s been thirty years (and some change) since I moved from Los Angeles to Minnesota. That was roughly half my life ago.
I realize the former is a city while the latter is an entire state, but L.A. is so much a place unto itself (call it a state of mind) that I really do think of the move that way. It took years to shed my West Coast cloak — that Los Angeles state of mind — but now I’m a full-on Minnesotan.
Looking back, those three decades form three distinct acts.
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17 Comments | tags: 2014, blog, blogger, blogging, Champagne, Happy New Year, Minnesota, New Year's Eve, Samantha, three, trilogy | posted in Life
Logos con carne 
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