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May 16, 2023

TV Tuesday 5/16/23

Back in March I posted about the Japanese manga/anime franchise Lupin the Third (aka Lupin III aka Lupin the 3rd). And about my love of stories about clever thieves, a love clearly shared by many given all the stories and movies made over the years — from Robin Hood to Inside Man (2006) and beyond.

Because I’ve been watching various Lupin III anime TV shows, Amazon Prime’s mighty algorithm suggested a Japanese live-action spin-off, Daughter of Lupin (2019; 11 episodes). It’s quirky, silly, exciting, delightful, romantic, and fun. Definite thumbs up!

I also have some movie double-features to tell you about.

8 Comments | tags: Daughter of Lupin, Donnie Yen, Iko Uwais, Lupin the Third, Martial Arts Movies, Tony Jaa | posted in Movies, TV Tuesday

May 15, 2023

Mystery Monday 5/15/23

By Wyrd Smythe

If you search for [queens of crime] you’ll turn up four names: Agatha Christie, Dorothy L. Sayers, Ngaio Marsh, and Margery Allingham. They’re all leading lights from the Golden Age of Detective Fiction.

I’ve known about and read Christie and Sayers since grade and high school, respectively. I’d seen Ngaio Marsh’s name many times over the years but don’t recall ever seeing Allingham’s. Recently I’ve worked through Marsh’s oeuvre. Now I’m exploring Allingham’s.

I’m also working through another queen: Ellery Queen.

7 Comments | tags: Agatha Christie, Albert Campion, Dorothy L. Sayers, Ellery Queen, Margery Allingham, Ngaio Marsh | posted in Books, Mystery Monday

May 7, 2023

Lonely Lament

By Wyrd Smythe

The loneliest number?

Sometimes being single gets old. The tragedy for some lonely is they told the world, “I want to be alone! Go away!” And the world shrugged, listened and did. But the lonely often hope someone sees them enough, and loves them enough, to cross the barrier. (Regrettably, sometimes those who do are drawn for the wrong reasons or are predatory — the lonely can be easy prey.)

This post is a buffer flush of things I’ve written over many years in those moments when the silence and emptiness marked itself. They go back, in some cases, decades. More recently, though, I’ve found the secret to my own happiness and don’t suffer from these feels much anymore!

And I’ve realized (and embraced) that I was always a hermit at heart.

20 Comments | tags: loneliness, poetry | posted in Life, Sunday Sermons, Writing

April 28, 2023

Friday Notes (Apr 28, 2023)

By Wyrd Smythe

Last month I put out two editions of Friday Notes, and this month I almost missed posting any (today being my last chance). To some extent, that’s just normal ebb and flow, but it’s also that I’ve been distracted by Real Life™ (such as it is).

I’ve been doing a lot of (in many cases rather interesting) reading lately — words going in rather than out — and I think any writer will tell you that’s the easier direction. Sometimes the much easier direction.

But I do have some notes (and pictures)…

13 Comments | tags: Bentley, Fermi Paradox, Moby Dick, silicon, snow, winter | posted in Friday Notes

April 25, 2023

TV Tuesday 4/25/23

By Wyrd Smythe

I don’t know how it is with hobbies and interests for others, but mine — the ones that persist, anyway— are typically cyclic. I’ll be into something, reading, blogging, programming, trying to learn quantum mechanics, whatever, and then I’ll burn out or get temporarily tired of it and take a break.

Watching TV is definitely an interest that waxes and wanes. Through most of March, it was more or less on the wane. In April, though, it waxed, and one result of that is another TV Tuesday post.

Perhaps not surprisingly (given my tastes), the main entry today is a Japanese anime series, but there are a number of side dishes, including some movies that snuck in because I watched them on TV.

3 Comments | tags: anime, Japanese anime, Netflix | posted in Movies, TV Tuesday

April 22, 2023

BB #85: More Fraction Fun

By Wyrd Smythe

I don’t know why I’m so fascinated that the rational numbers are countable even though they’re a dense subset of the uncountable real numbers. A rational number can be arbitrarily close to any real number, making you think they’d be infinite like the reals, but in fact, nearly all numbers are irrational (and an uncountable subset of the reals).

So, the rational numbers — good old p/q fractions — though still infinite are countably infinite (see this post for details).

More to the point here, a common way of enumerating the rational numbers, when graphed results in some pretty curves and illustrates some fun facts about the rational numbers.

4 Comments | tags: charts, fractions, graphs, rational numbers | posted in Brain Bubble, Math

April 21, 2023

Sapiens: The Book

By Wyrd Smythe

The previous two posts (this one and this one) each discussed an aspect of Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind (2011), by Yuval Noah Harari. While those aspects grabbed my attention and got me thinking, I took very little from the rest of the book.

In fact, reading the latter two-thirds got to be something of a chore. It had many examples from comparatively modern history (given the full breadth of our existence) but they didn’t seem to amount to a unified whole. The author seems not to connect dots his own text presents.

Final score: two bits I liked and took away (and posted about) but the rest of the book I left behind. I give it a Meh! rating and a thumbs down.

4 Comments | tags: history, homo sapiens, humanity | posted in Books, Society

April 20, 2023

Sapiens: Revolutionaries

By Wyrd Smythe

The previous post focused on a single, to me key, aspect of Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind (2011), by Yuval Noah Harari. This post focuses on the other aspect of the book I found compelling. The last one was about the power fiction gave homo sapiens. This one is about the Agricultural Revolution (the AR).

And other important Revolutions that followed, but the AR wrought a profound change on the human race. It was our first step towards societies and civilization. It ushered in the first cities and led to kingdoms and empires.

It also led to materialism, greed, health issues, theft, and war.

14 Comments | tags: history, homo sapiens, humanity, storytelling | posted in Books, Society

April 19, 2023

Sapiens: Storytellers

By Wyrd Smythe

While not usually my cup of tea, Amazon Prime offered Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind (2011), by Yuval Noah Harari, and I thought I’d give it a try. I’d never heard of the author, and don’t usually read anthropology or sociology books, but the blurb made it sound interesting (don’t they always).

I did enjoy the first third. The author discusses two aspects of our ancient past that really grabbed my attention. Unfortunately, he went on to lose it. In a big way. For me, the latter two thirds of the book added little and missed what seemed some key connections.

So, three posts (at least): one each for the two attention grabbers; one more for the book overall. This first one is about our special ability as storytellers.

20 Comments | tags: history, homo sapiens, humanity, storytelling | posted in Books, Society

March 29, 2023

It Takes a Thief

By Wyrd Smythe

I’ve been a fan of Japanese anime since the 1980s, but in the last decade or so I’ve come to appreciate it even more (because what’s been coming out of Hollywood lately so often has little redeeming value). As fans of the genre know, anime can be as creative and engaging as any form of storytelling you care to name.

Lately, I’ve begun exploring the Japanese media franchise, Lupin the Third (aka Lupin III or Lupin the 3rd). It began back in 1967 and comprises multiple manga, at least six anime TV series, over a dozen films, and other related media.

It taps into our love of master thieves. The fictional monkey-faced Lupin III is acknowledged worldwide as the greatest (and most fun) thief in the world.

16 Comments | tags: anime, Japanese anime, Lupin III, Lupin the Third, thieves | posted in Books, Movies, TV