Category Archives: Uncategorized

Thoughts on the Death of John Glenn

john glenn

Image: NASA

I’m sure most of you have heard that former Astronaut John Glenn passed away today at the age of 95. I was only seven years old, the age of my grandson right now, when Glenn became the first American to orbit the Earth in the Friendship 7 Mercury capsule on February 20, 1962. Obviously, I only had a child’s point of view of the event, but I had become fascinated with spaceflight ever since my Dad pointed out what he thought was the Sputnik satellite in the night sky (as an adult, I would find out that Sputnik could not be seen from Earth with the unaided eye, and what we were seeing was the booster used to put it into orbit, tumbling end over end).

I remember having a plastic toy Mercury spacecraft. You could remove the bottom, put the toy astronaut inside, reattach the two pieces, and pretend to blast off.

I eagerly followed the manned space program, from Mercury, to Gemini, and then Apollo.

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Book Review: Transhuman

transhumanI know I’ve read one or more science fiction novels written by Ben Bova before, but I can’t recall which one(s). However, the cover of Transhuman, published in 2014, boasts of him being a six-time hugo award winner, so this should be a pretty good novel, right?

Turns out, all six of those awards were for Best Professional Editor when he was working at Analog, not for any of his written works, although he is certainly a prolific author.

I was interested in this tale because it involves a grandpa and his little granddaughter. Being a grandparent myself, I know I’d do anything to protect them, which is exactly what 74-year-old Luke Abramson does for his eight-year-old granddaughter Angie.

You see, Angie’s dying of an inoperable cancerous brain tumor. She’s got six months or less to live. But Luke is a cellular biologist and believes a new technique he’s developed can cure Angie’s cancer.

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Who Represents the Deplorables? How Donald Trump Won the Presidency

trump

Donald Trump

I woke up this morning and hit a local news site prepared to face the report of Hillary Clinton’s inevitable win as the nation’s next President. Imagine my surprise when I discovered that Trump had won instead.

I thought maybe a mistake had been made and checked several sources to verify the report.

Yep. Donald Trump is the President-Elect.

When I got over the shock, I experienced something else I didn’t expect: relief.

It’s not that I wanted Trump to become the President, I just was terrified at the prospect of Hillary Clinton in the White House.

I don’t consider myself a low information voter and I have two undergraduate degrees and one graduate degree, so I don’t think you could say I’m uneducated.

I’ve watched Hillary Clinton dodge one metaphorical bullet after another when it seemed readily apparent that at least one of them should strike. I’ve called her “The Teflon Lady” because no allegation against her seemed to stick.

You could say that they didn’t stick because they weren’t true, but based on all the scandals and the on again/off again FBI investigations against her, it sure seemed like if she was smoking, she was on fire.

Clinton was the person who could get away with anything no matter how outrageous. This morning I found out otherwise.

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The Hopelessness of this Year’s Presidential Election

trump-clinton

Image: CNN.com

I voted early. I just couldn’t see waiting when I knew how I was going to vote, or rather who I was going to vote against.

I’ve been voting since the mid 1970s and I’ve never seen a Presidential race this bizarre.

Let’s cut to the chase.

I believe Hillary Clinton is one of the most corrupt human beings who has ever walked the Earth. I believe that beginning at a young age, she dedicated her life to political ambition and power. No other priority was and is higher in her life. She’ll do anything to advance her power. For Clinton, running for President must be like a junkie anticipating their next high. If she became President, she’ll run as fast as she can to please her billionaire supporters, both here and abroad, and to hell with the American citizens.

Donald Trump is a pig. I can’t believe he’s the GOP frontrunner (but then again, neither can the GOP). He’ll say any outrageous thing just because he can, and his supporters eat it up with a spoon. I still don’t think he actually wants to be President and that he’s doing all this just to see how people will react. If he became President, I don’t think he’d know what to do with it. He might just quit once elected.

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The Pilot Episode of “Supergirl” : A Retro Review

supergirlNow that the television series Supergirl has moved to the CW from CBS, giving it a second chance at life and a second season, I thought I’d dust off my review of the series pilot, which I wrote last year for another blog.

I hadn’t originally intended on watching the pilot episode of Supergirl starring Melissa Benoist in the title role, but it was online, it was free, so I figured, what the heck. I didn’t expect to like it all that much, but I was curious how CBS was going to adapt decades of Superman and Supergirl canon. My reaction is mixed.

I’ve read a few of the other reviews of the pilot, both before and after I saw the episode, and they range from “good but not perfect” to “triumph for everyone wanting a strong female hero for a change”. You can see examples at Yahoo News, IGN, The Mary Sue, and The Los Angeles Times.

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V for Vendetta: A Retro DVD Review

vYesterday, I reviewed the V for Vendetta graphic novel. I was generally impressed, but a lot of “dystopia” material came out of the latter half of the 20th century, so by the time I got around to reading Moore and Lloyd’s work, I found it hard to be overly impressed. Also, the length of the story and the numerous elements introduced made it difficult to follow at times. That figures prominently into my review of the film V for Vendetta (2005).

First of all, who wouldn’t be excited to watch a film starring Hugo Weaving (as “V”), Natalie Portman (as “Evey”) and particularly John Hurt (as “Adam Sutler”)? I was really looking forward to the experience but at the same time, worried because films almost never do justice to their original print or graphic novel source. This time, I’m not so sure the rule holds.

I mentioned before that I believe Moore was a bit too lengthy in his writing of the graphic novel. It made it difficult for me as the reader to be able to grasp and hold all of the various threads he introduced and have them all come together in a cohesive manner by the last page. As a film where everything had to be introduced, expressed, and resolved in 132 minutes (the film’s running time), brevity and economy was forced upon the story, making the movie version of “V for Vendetta” quite a bit more efficient than the print version. Of course, part of the motivation behind cutting down the length was to accommodate modern audiences, both in how long they can tolerate sitting on their bum in a movie theatre, and in appealing to a wider population than might be attracted to Moore’s and Lloyd’s production.

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Review of the Graphic Novel “V for Vendetta”

vI’m repurposing another review I posted sometime back on another blog.

When I wrote this review, I hadn’t yet seen the film V for Vendetta (2005) starring Natalie Portman and Hugo Weaving but I just finished Alan Moore’s and David Lloyd’s graphic novel (originally a ten-issue comic book series) and thought, given the wide use of the Guy Fawkes mask by “hacktavist” group Anonymous and some protesters with the Occupy Wall Street movement (which is worn in both the comic book and film versions of the story by the main character), that it was high time to look at the source material for these modern, real-life responses to what we think of as oppression in our world.

The original comic book series was developed and published in 1985 by writer Alan Moore, a self-proclaimed anarchist, and artist David Lloyd. Essentially it is one in a long series of dystopian dramas set in the near future (the late 1990s in the comic book series), this time in England. A nuclear war has destroyed much of the developed nations of the world but left England untouched, at least directly. In response to the war, a totalitarian government has come to power, styled after the Nazis, and has seized total control of the country. Much like Orwell’s 1984, omnipresent government surveillance observes the public, while a propaganda campaign continually feeds the citizens the usual “the government is on your side” messages, underscored by threats for thinking otherwise. Headed by “the Leader” who uses organizations called “Nose,” “Ear,” and “Mouth” as detection and communication conduits, and an information system called “Fate,” every aspect of an individual’s life is monitored and controlled.

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Batman: Under the Red Hood, a Retro DVD Review

red hoodYes I know, this is old. The animated film was released in 2010, but sometimes I don’t get around to watching things right away. Actually, I’m repurposing an old review I wrote for another blog. Time to let it out for a breath of fresh air.

This review is loaded with spoilers, so if you haven’t seen this video yet and you want to preserve the mystery, don’t read any further. You’ve been warned.

OK, it was fabulous, and I don’t give out compliments lightly. The suspense in this tale had even me twisting in my seat. I was actually nervous about how it all would come out. Go figure.

Several major pieces of Batman comic book history are adapted for this story.

First, Jason Todd, the second Robin, being killed by the Joker. That happens right at the beginning and is the set up for everything else. Jason is beaten to a pulp with a crowbar, left for dead, and then, before Batman could get there, the place blows sky-high. No fake death. Batman gets to the site of the explosion less than a minute later and picks Jason’s broken body out of the rubble. He’s dead. No faking it.

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We Are All Israelis

Israeli flagI just read an article called Remembering 911: Five Important Lessons. It was written by Rabbi Benjamin Blech for a Jewish educational website. The first lesson is “We Are All Israelis”. Here’s the relevant quote:

Immediately after 9/11, the phrase “we are all Israelis” appeared in some reports. But it was soon forgotten or hijacked by other groups and different causes. Yet it captured a profound truth. The enemies of Israel turned out to be the same enemies intent on destroying the Western world and civilized society as we know it.

For years the United States as well as other democracies watched the terrorism and the intifada and the butchering and the sadistic slayings of innocents from afar and thought it had nothing to do with them. Suddenly came the recognition that there is no longer a concept of distance for terror. 9/11 made clear that an ocean can no longer keep Americans safe from attack and that the battle against jihad isn’t restricted to Jerusalem.

It’s not desirable or convenient to certain social and political groups in America to closely identify with Israel, especially with such a potentially inflammatory phrase as “We Are All Israelis”. But here on the commemoration of the terrorist attacks against our nation and our citizens on September 11, 2001, I have come to see that we aren’t “Israeli” enough.

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