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.
There is no question ‘the urge to write is strong in this one’ but these days I’m weary (on many levels) of writing structured blog posts. At the same time, after so many years of writing for presentation, it’s hard to relax one’s own rules enough for a major style change. But it’s what I keep reaching for.
Seeking that, as well as catharsis from a world that has either gone mad, or — at the very least — is driving me mad, I realized, a-ha: Brain Bubbles! While intended for off-the-cuff passing thought posts, many turned out as collections of related (or unrelated!) thought bubbles.
So pop the cork and let the bubbly flow…
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Leave a comment | tags: Anyone But Trump, comment section, democracy, democratic society, Donald Trump, election 2016, GOP, NPR, politicians, Republican Party, social change, social issues, social media, Trump is a loser, Trump is a monster | posted in Brain Bubble, Politics, Society
Yesterday’s post was a rant; this one counters with a rave. The bad news is that it’s my even earlier writing chops from three years prior to the Stargate review, plus — as this was essentially an email — the writing is especially informal and unstructured.
The original plan was to write a new piece on Grand Canyon, because it’s one of my all-time favorite films, and I wanted to do it proper justice. The “review” you’re about to read I wrote shortly after seeing the film for the first time, so it lacks any thoughts I have about it after 25 years and many viewings since then.
But I’m all about clearing my weblog backlog (the blog bog), so here it is in all its informal gushy glory.
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13 Comments | tags: Alfre Woodard, Danny Glover, Grand Canyon, Grand Canyon (movie), Kevin Kline, Lawrence Kasdan, Los Angeles, Mary McDonnell, Mary-Louise Parker, Meg Kasdan, modern life, Steve Martin, violence in movies, violent society | posted in Movies
You read the title correctly, dear Reader, this is, indeed, a review of a movie that came out 22 years ago. (And tomorrow I plan to post a review of a movie from 25 years ago!) This blog of late is operating in a personal archeology vein (or would vain be the better word in this case?) as well as a sociopolitical one. Remembrances and Rants R me!
The two reviews this weekend are very Yang-Yin in nature: I really hated Stargate and really loved Grand Canyon (in fact, it’s one of my all-time Fave Five movies). Yet the former film spawned a multi-film and TV series franchise, so there you go.
If anything, the amusing thing is how much I hated the film. It passed some threshold that put it forever on my blacklist…
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5 Comments | tags: James Spader, Kurt Russell, Roland Emmerich, Stargate (movie) | posted in Movies, Sci-Fi Saturday
With modern live moving at such a fast pace, the span of a week often moves things along rapidly (even when one has deliberately taken the rat race off-ramp). My personal life doesn’t change much (because of that whole off-ramp thing), but the world at large careens along in its usual Zippy way.
But as I continue the summer project of converting my long-time storage room into an office-library (as intended when I moved in back in 2003), I do unearth long-lost personal archeology finds that take me back. A few bits go back to high school, but a lot of it is from college.
One significant find is from a few years after…
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4 Comments | tags: Anyone But Trump, democracy, Democratic Party, democratic society, dialectic, Donald Trump, election 2016, GOP, Hillary Clinton, HRC, Khizr Khan, Olympics, politicians, Republican Party, social issues, social media, Trump is a loser, Trump is a monster, tyranny of the majority, US Constitution | posted in Life, Politics, Society
If you’re anything like me, you’ve probably spent a fair amount of time wondering what is the deal with tesseracts? Just exactly what the heck is a “four-dimension cube” anyway? No doubt you’ve stared curiously at one of those 2D images (like the one here) that fakes a 3D image of an attempt to render a 4D tesseract.
Recently I spent a bunch of wetware CPU cycles, and made lots of diagrams, trying to wrap my mind around the idea of a tesseract. I think I made some progress. It was an interesting diversion, and at least I think I understand that image now!
FWIW, here’s a post about what I came up with…
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9 Comments | tags: 3D space, coordinates, cube, dimensions, geometry, line, point, rectangular coordinates, right angle, square, tesseract | posted in Math
Speaking of big strike outs, my Minnesota Twins continue to slog along at the bottom of the pack. Things actually got a bit exciting just before the All-Star Game break, but the last week or so suggests the Twins are reverting to the hapless form from the first few months.
The Twins played their 108th game of the season back on August 4th. That’s two-thirds of a season. As of their first third, things were looking uglier than ever in their history. Fortunately, the second third here was significantly better, and July was even kinda awesome.
The batting has definitely improved, but the pitching is just killing us.
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3 Comments | tags: American League, Atlanta Braves, baseball season, Major League baseball, Minnesota Twins, MLB, Tampa Bay Rays, Texas Rangers, Twins 2016 | posted in Baseball
To the dismay of physics geeks everywhere, theoretical particle physics struck out at the plate this year. Three swings, three misses. (Well, maybe one wasn’t really a swing. More a taken ball the umpire called a strike.) It was a crushing disappointment for those of us hoping for a rule-change to the game.
On the other hand, cosmology geeks got three recent home runs, so there was victory (with more coming!) for those who peer at the big and distant. On the other other hand, none of those were game-changers either. (They were just, you know, awesome.)
Since I follow both physics and cosmology, win some, lose some.
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8 Comments | tags: ATLAS, CERN, CMS, dark matter, Dawn mission, diphoton bump, experimental physics, gravity wave, higgs boson, IceCube, LIGO, LUX, NASA, neutrinos, New Horizons, new physics, pentaquark, Pluto, Pluto is a planet, sterile neutrinos, supersymmetry, theoretical physics | posted in Physics
When the world hits your eye like a nasty pigsty… that’s not amore, that’s Weltschmerz (best English translation: “world pain”). It’s a term I’ve been meaning to post about for years, since it — or rather what it defines — lies at the heart of most of my Rant posts. (Yeah, this is another Drafts post I’m finally setting free.)
Fundamentally, it speaks to a disconnect or gulf between what one feels ought to be true in the world compared to what actually is true. Implicit in the term is a moral bias regarding the ought; it doesn’t, for example, apply to the gap between wishing you were rich while being poor.
It seems to me very much a word for our times.
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7 Comments | tags: scam artists, stupid people, stupidity, Weltschmerz | posted in Life, Rant
And whiplash from SMH!
I’m having a tough year; damn near everything pisses me off these days. I’ve never been angrier at the human race than I am lately. My disdain for people is at an all-time high, and that’s a sick way to be. It’s not at all natural for me.
In fact, retirement brought me a long-time-coming epiphany of sorts. I’ve long been known as one of those angry, critical types. A high school friend once named me “the angry young man” (so this has been going on a while). I’ve always accepted it as true. What I finally realized is that it isn’t me…
It’s you.
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11 Comments | tags: Anyone But Trump, democracy, democratic society, Dunning-Kruger effect, face palm, John Cleese, lemon juice, modern life, Operation Breakthrough, shaking my head, social change, social issues, social media, social mores, stupid, stupid people, stupid stupid stupid, stupid TV, stupidity, Trump is a loser, Trump is a monster, whales | posted in Politics, Rant, Society
Now that I’m retired and no longer motoring around the hallowed halls of The Company, it isn’t the annoyance it once was, but this post has been sitting in my Drafts folder for well over three years. As something that annoyed me considerably for 30+ years, it’s worth recording (to me, I mean).
I find that it still does sometimes occur on the highway, and when it does, it reminds me and keeps the rant alive. In any event, I’ve been wanting to use the next line for years! (Just needed the right post.)
You know what bugs me? Well, lots of things, but in this case it’s…
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4 Comments | tags: annoyances, annoying people, car traffic, driving, foot traffic, hallways, human obstacles, obstacles, pedestrian traffic, pet peeves, throughway | posted in Rant
Logos con carne 
BB #50: Blog Bubbles
Seeking that, as well as catharsis from a world that has either gone mad, or — at the very least — is driving me mad, I realized, a-ha: Brain Bubbles! While intended for off-the-cuff passing thought posts, many turned out as collections of related (or unrelated!) thought bubbles.
So pop the cork and let the bubbly flow…
Continue reading
Leave a comment | tags: Anyone But Trump, comment section, democracy, democratic society, Donald Trump, election 2016, GOP, NPR, politicians, Republican Party, social change, social issues, social media, Trump is a loser, Trump is a monster | posted in Brain Bubble, Politics, Society