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.
I’m not a fan of commercial holidays. In particular, I’m not a fan of the idea of one day a year to mark some emotion or thought I’m supposed to have on schedule. I don’t need a calendar reminder to honor my mother, father, or sweetheart (or to be thankful or charitable).
And I’ve been to the well of romance many times in my time, but (alas) every bucket drawn has evaporated, spilled, or been kicked over. Drought may have dried that well, but I still believe in love.
So for lovers everywhere, a lovely love song…
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2 Comments | tags: Bruce Springsteen, Fire (song), Genesis (band), I'm on Fire (song), Peter Gabriel, Pointer Sisters, Scrubs, Sledgehammer (song), Solsbury Hill (song), South Park, Stephin Merritt, The Book of Love, The Magnetic Fields, Valentine's Day | posted in Life
After watching more cable news than is actually mentally healthy, I’ve come to a number of conclusions, the most important of which is this.
If I ran for president (and why not, everyone else is), I would run on a single platform that ignores all other issues (such as ISIS, economic disparity, failing infrastructure, racial conflict, immigration, global warming, or even Zika).
My platform: No More TV Prescription Drug Ads!
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7 Comments | tags: commercials, funny, humor, prescription drugs, tv commercials | posted in Brain Bubble, Rant, TV
It took almost exactly 100 years. In 1905, über-geek hero Albert Einstein presented four papers of major significance to the world. One of those was about Special Relativity. It took Einstein ten more years to figure out the General theory of Relativity. He presented that work in November of 1915.
One of the predictions of General Relativity is that gravity warps space, creating gravity waves (which move at the speed of light). And while many other predictions of GR have been tested and confirmed (to very high precision), we’ve never quite managed to detect gravity waves.
Until September 14th of 2015!
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10 Comments | tags: Albert Einstein, black hole, General Relativity, gravity, gravity wave, LIGO, Special Relativity, Theory of Relativity | posted in Physics
I finally watched The Imitation Game last night. I have a great deal of regard for Alan Turing, and I’ve always enjoyed codes and cryptography (the story of breaking the Enigma machine is especially fascinating), so I was really looking forward to finally seeing it.
And… I didn’t like it. A lot. Turns out it reflects everything I see as wrong with movies — and with society — in these social media-driven, over-amped, uncritical modern era days.
Watching the movie to get away from politics, it dragged me right back for having the same lack of authenticity, made up conflict, and disregard for history.
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25 Comments | tags: Alan Turing, Andrew Hodges, Benedict Cumberbatch, Bletchley Park, Bombe machine, codebreaking, Enigma machine, Joan Clarke, Keira Knightley, Sherlock, The Imitation Game, Turing Test | posted in Movies, Rant
You know you’re a True Minnesotan when you wake up, realize that while it’s 19 out, it’s also a clear blue sky because the storm passed during the night, so you hurry through breakfast so you can go out and play in the snow.
By which I mean shovel your sidewalk and driveway before the condo crew show up and spoil the fun.
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10 Comments | tags: Minnesota, sesame chicken, snow, snow storm, winter, winter storm | posted in Life
This past weekend, weary of political pundits pondering the pending Primary, I thought I’d submit to the advertising and buzz surrounding the new NBC show, Blindspot. All of the first ten episodes are currently available through OnDemand, and the network has really been pushing the show.
So, on Saturday I sat down, popcorn at the ready, to binge watch those episodes. I’ll give you the punchline now: By the tenth episode I was pretty fed up with it.
It seems to be an inferior take on another NBC show, The Blacklist.
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23 Comments | tags: Blindspot, Castle (TV series), Forever (TV series), Jaimie Alexander, James Spader, NBC, Sullivan Stapleton, The Blacklist, Tom Selleck | posted in Rant, TV, TV Tuesday
Here we go again…
Here we go again! Political mechanics (rather than celestial mechanics, quantum mechanics, or auto mechanics) brings the Silly Season of a presidential election around once more. Tonight, in Iowa, the results of the first of the Primaries will give us the first clues whether He Who Must Not Be Named gets traction.
The social mechanics, along with technology, seems to make this election cycle unlike any seen in American politics. Despite a common assertion, the world (society, really) does evolve and change!
So, no one knows what will happen tonight!
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13 Comments | tags: Anyone But Trump, beer, Bernie Sanders, Cygnus X-1, democracy, Democratic Party, democratic society, dialectic, Donald Trump, election 2016, Flat Earth Brewing, GOP, Hillary Clinton, HRC, Iowa Primary, Leon Wieseltier, Marco Rubio, politicians, Republican Party, rhetoric, Sierra Nevada Brewing, Silly Season, social issues, Ted Cruz, Trump is a loser, Trump is a monster | posted in Opinion, Politics
There is a bit of delicious schadenfreude with regard to the mainstream (“establishment”) Republican party scrambling to correct for The Donald. The GOP spent years training their electorate to respond to noise and nonsense; now they’re stuck behind an interloper cuckoo bird who’s a master at noise, nonsense, and (worst of all) media.
Between the chirping Donnie Boy and the incoherent lipsticked pit bull, it’s quite an entertaining show. Of course, no one will actually vote for the guy, right? Those big crowds just turn out to see the show, right? They’ll never show up at the actual caucus…
Right? Right??
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22 Comments | tags: Anyone But Trump, Bernie Sanders, cable news, common cuckoo, cuckoo bird, democracy, Democratic Party, democratic society, dialectic, Donald Trump, election 2016, GOP, Hillary Clinton, HRC, illusion, lies, Marco Rubio, Martin O'Malley, Republican Party, rhetoric, social change, social issues, striped cuckoo, Ted Cruz, Trump is a loser, Trump is a monster | posted in Politics, Rant
Washington (D.C.) is the expected epicenter of an approaching patch of extreme weather, an historic storm that is, in large part, due to the damage our modern society has done to the environment. And utterly without irony, there’s going to be a big snowstorm there, too.
The crazy weather does seem suited to the craziness going on in politics. As with climate change due to the increase of CO2, the flow of other pollutants into public discourse has changed the social environment.
The Earth’s weather is getting chaotic, and so is its politics.
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8 Comments | tags: Anyone But Trump, Bernie Sanders, cable news, Democratic Party, democratic society, dialectic, Donald Trump, election 2016, GOP, Hillary Clinton, HRC, illusion, lies, Marco Rubio, Republican Party, rhetoric, snow, snow storm, social issues, Ted Cruz, winter, winter storm | posted in Politics, Rant
My impulse was to here write, “It’s been an interesting week,” but in reality, it’s just been a week much like those that came before it. The social weather forecast: continuing craziness with scattered outbursts of outright insanity.
President Obama gave his final State of The Union (SOTU) speech on Tuesday, and so I find myself writing about how proud I was of my president for the second time in as many weeks (and, very possibly, the only two times since he was elected).
Watching that speech, I kept thinking, “Where has this guy been for the last seven years?”
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6 Comments | tags: cable news, democratic society, dialectic, Edward R. Murrow, election 2016, illusion, lies, Nikki Haley, President Obama, rhetoric, social change, social issues, social media, social mores, Walter Cronkite | posted in Politics, Rant
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