something extraordinary

I cannot tell you how many times I have received this spam message from a wide variety of senders:

Hey [first name], Something Extraordinary Is about (sic) Happen to You. I know you live in [town] area and you (sic) name is [surname], so trust me!

I get these all the time in the Gmail account I have under my married name. The combination of first and last names is not uncommon, so I'm guessing my email was melded with several people's real identities through data-mining.

Nevertheless, the "I know you live in [town] area" is always the wrong town, but the emails always use the same four town names, presumably all in the United States.

All of the above aside, the laziness of the message amuses me. It's a badly written and stupid come-on. Do people even fall for this? You know my real name so I can trust you? Fat chance.

Spammers and internet bad characters trade and sell email lists all the time on the dark web. You'd think they'd put a little effort into creating and trading messages that actually sound like they were written by a native English speaker.

found at last

Dating back to when I was fourteen, I have always kept a list of every book I read. Given that 99 percent of what I read comes from the public library, that list also reflects what I borrowed.

But a few books slipped through the cracks over the years. For no particular reason, when I finished a book, I didn't get a chance to add it to the list.

Back more than ten years ago, when I was still living in Los Angeles, I borrowed a novel from the library that I really liked but neglected to add to the list. I've always regretted that oversight, because I couldn't remember the name of both the book nor the author but wanted to read more by that writer.

I figured a day would come that I'd stumble across the book again. It took more than ten years, but that day finally came.

I was at the library over the weekend and noticed that book waiting to be reshelved. Eureka! I had found it at last.

The novel is Border Crossing and the author is Pat Barker. I checked out the book again and have read it. It was just as good as the last read. The story deals with a shrink whose marriage is deteriorating at the same time he counsels a former client who was convicted of murder as a child.

Barker has written a total of fourteen novels to date. I'm really excited because now I can read all of them, but I will pace myself so it's not like eating an entire crate of chocolates all at one time.

satellite in a briefcase

I think this is pretty amazing. As part of its current mission, NASA is sending two tiny CubeSat satellites to Mars that are so small they could fit into a briefcase. Each one weighs less than thirty pounds.

They "only" cost $18 million, and while that's still a lot of money, it's only a fraction of what typical satellites cost at hundreds of millions of dollars.

The pair survived a 300 million mile journey to Mars, demonstrating how tiny satellites can withstand deep space travel.

The duo will serve as communications relays for the InSight robotic probe that landed on the Red Planet this week. Thousands of them may soon be circling earth for a variety of commercial purposes.

Hopefully, when these things fall to the surface, as satellites are known to do, they'll burn up entirely on re-entry. Because no one wants to get hit on the head with a burning briefcase.

a child named daniel

My mid-pregnancy ultrasound is now done and dusted and we know the gender of our next child: he's a boy.

While I've always thought I'd be a better parent to a male than female child -- I'm afraid I might be too competitive with a girl -- I was a bit disappointed. The plan is that Child Three will be our last one, so I will never have a daughter. At least some day I should have some daughters-in-law.

Even before I became pregnant, both James and I had agreed that if we had a third son, we would name him Daniel. It's a name both of us really like and other Daniels are on both side of the family, plus a good friend of my husband.

That means all three of our sons will have been given traditional names -- Joseph, Thomas, and Daniel. Some people might find that boring or unimaginative, but I like that tradition. There will be no Kirbys or Thorns or Orions or Tophers, at least in our wing of the family.

a quiet place

My Hollywood friend sent the first wave of award season DVD screeners which arrived last week. Because I had wanted to see it, first up for us was A Quiet Place, a horror thriller about an invading alien race that is blind and cannot smell but with incredible hearing and thus hunts by sound.

We both liked some aspects of the movie but overall would give it a mixed review. The acting was quite good and arguably Emily Blunt's best performance. The children were outstanding.

The script and story are full of holes and logic flaws, however. Society and social order is supposed to have collapsed, with most living creatures having been killed and devoured. Yet fifteen months after this happened, electricity is still freely available -- there can't be a generator because that would be noisy -- and cornfields and neatly planted, presumably cultivated by noisy farm tractors.

Blunt plays a young mother who goes into labor at a critical plot moment while being stalked by aliens. This starts out as a really tense moment with all sorts of wonderful potential jeopardy -- how does a woman endure labor and childbirth soundlessly? But then there's a clumsy timecut and the tension completely evaporates. Boo hiss.

So if you've not yet seen it, I would recommend but with a caution that it's a far from perfect movie.

sniffy cliche

Whoever keeps the Official Directory of Cliches needs to add this one to it: grieving people in movies, TV shows, and books who sniff the clothes of the recently departed.

I remember first seeing this once or twice in movies. It worked then. But then everybody started doing it.

Somebody died and then a spouse, lover or friend neatens up the place associated with the dead person, finds a sweater or robe or nightgown, and then buries his or her face in said garment. Sniffing ensues. Soundtracks soar into weepy stanzas.

This cliche has now crept into fiction, too. I've encountered it two or three times in the last year alone.

Do people do this in real life? Some surely do. Others surely do not.

It becomes a cliche in film and print because it no longer grows out of character when everyone does it. It just becomes a trope and a tired one at that.

In all fairness to screenwriters, they may not be writing this on the page. The actors or directors may be responsible. But you novelists have no excuse.

Stop it already.

the golden age of podcasts

The New Yorker is currently running a feature article about the rise and rise and rise of podcasting.

The most popular podcasts now have tens of millions of downloads per month. And there are now half a million podcasts now available to download. Almost all of these are free.

I've written before here about how I'm a podcast fan. I like how I can consume media on my own schedule and not a broadcast schedule.

Social tastes are changing. Broadcast media is declining. Streaming media is booming, both audio and video. Podcasts are the future and, arguably, much of radio will soon be the past.

The article also argues that podcasts can be manipulative, but I'd argue that could be true for any media -- books, magazine articles, documentaries, and television programs in addition to podcasts.

It's just common sense not to believe a single source without question. Unfortunately, not everyone is equipped with independent research skills.

Everyone should do this. When you hear or read something that interests you, check out another source and see if there are opposing points of view. Learn to separate opinion from fact.

prague spring

Last night I finished reading Simon Mawer's newest novel Prague Spring. I've written about the author several times before on this blog because I really like his work.

In short, I really liked Prague and there's a lot going on to recommend it, but it won't be my favorite Mawer novel to date. That still is his magnificent The Fall, one of the best English-language novels of the last several decades, in my opinion.

Prague deals with weighty issues -- the Czechoslovanian challenge to the Soviet Union in 1968 -- and is populated by interesting, compelling characters. The author also uses a skillfully constructed "ticking clock" to keep amping up the tension but does it deftly and subtly.

My big problem with the book is the ending. I have no problem with novels with ambivalent closings, but that's not what Mawer offers here. The book just stops, like the last few chapters are missing.

Given he later wrote a sequel novel to his recent The Girl Who Fell From the Sky, I'm left wondering if Prague will be followed by another book in a year or two about the same characters but some years later. I certainly hope so.

Nonetheless, I recommend Prague Spring with the warning that you might find the ending a letdown.

first world problem

Problem: cat wants out in the rain but doesn't like rain falling on itself. Possible solution: a waterproof catcoat. First-world anxiety: what if the cat gets spooked by the coat and runs away.

What I like best about this is the feline illogic -- it doesn't want raindrops falling on itself but has no problem plowing through water and getting its feet wet.

Happy Thanksgiving everyone!

sex recession

The Atlantic just published a rather long article titled "Why Are Young People Having So Little Sex? Despite the easing of taboos and the rise of hookup apps, Americans are in the midst of a sex recession."

The reasoning seems sound to me. Nonetheless, it made me sad to read.

Sex can be one of the greatest joys of life. Denying yourself that joy is a pity.

Yes, less sex by high school students is arguably a good thing. But this article and its statistics covers a lot more than that age group.

"Signs are gathering that the delay in teen sex may have been the first indication of a broader withdrawal from physical intimacy that extends well into adulthood," the author says. "Today’s young adults are on track to have fewer sex partners than members of the two preceding generations. People now in their early 20s are two and a half times as likely to be abstinent as Gen Xers were at that age; 15 percent report having had no sex since they reached adulthood.... The average adult went from having sex 62 times a year to 54 times."

This article deals primarily with the United States, but these trends are seen fairly consistently across all first-world nations. And, of course, the birthrate continues to decline in these same countries.

The only conclusion I can reach after reading this is that there needs to be some kind of grassroots movement to get people to fuck more often. While that may sound like I'm being silly, I'm not.

Economic growth is tied to population growth. If a population is barely growing, or even shrinking due to ultra low birthrate, then an economy cannot sustain any kind of long-term growth.

Our social prosperity is reliant on a healthy population growth. So fuck more often, people! Before it's too late!

flat earthers

The Daily Beast is currently running an article about people who believe and embrace the idea that the earth is flat.

I just cannot understand how some people are so deliberately ignorant. I could understand if someone was from a primitive, remote tribe and believed this. But people living in the modern world?

Those peddling absurd theories are more understandable, albeit without a sense of decency. They're hucksters selling a con. They see gullible fools and try to fleece them.

Ultimately, I guess the American education system has to be faulted for this, for those from the United States who believe this kind of gibberish. These people were not taught how to think for themselves, how to discern whether an idea might have merit or was preposterous on its face.

101-years-old

This is very cute. A 101-year-old woman is absolutely starstruck at meeting French President Emmanuel Macron on Armistice Day.

She also thinks Angela Merkel is Macron's wife. There's a good reason she might have thought this: Macron's wife is old enough to be his mother.

At least she didn't ask Merkel of she was Macron's mom.

At 101, she would have been an adult during the Nazi occupation of France. I'd love to know what her experiences were like.

lady green beret

For the first time in history, a woman has completed what is known as the U.S. Army's Special Forces Assessment and Selection process, meaning she could end up the first female green beret.

She now will be the first woman to enter the Special Forces Qualification Course, the final step in qualifying to become a green beret. Not everyone is able to complete this last step.

Women were not allowed to attempt to become special forces personnel prior to 2016. Some have tried to reach the Special Forces Assessment and Selection level since then but did not succeed.

The successful candidate was not named because of potential future secret missions.

I hope she goes all the way. She must be a total badass, because she's reached a level that most who try do not succeed. It would be a bastard to come so close but not go all the way.

Many, both men and women, don't like the idea of female soldiers in combat roles. I don't agree. I think every woman should have an equal opportunity to compete with men for any role. The same for men who wish to try for typically female professions.

Of course, there are some jobs for which women could never qualify. Jockstrap models come to mind. The same for men. Who wants to see men modeling bras?

gothic girl

Grant Wood's "American Gothic" is arguably the most famous twentieth century American painting. The man in the painting was modeled by the Wood family's dentist and the woman model was the artist's sister Nan.

The artist later worried that his sister might have felt hurt by her dour image in "Gothic" so he decided to paint a more flattering portrait of her, seen below (enlargement). It was Wood's most favorite painting and the only one of his that he kept for himself.

Yesterday, the painting was due to be sold at Sotheby's in New York but is mysteriously missing from their post-sale report. The auction gallery published an interesting short article about the work, seen below, before the sale.

There seems to be an interesting untold story here. How did Wood's original painting end up at the sale? And why did it apparently not sell?

double negative tattoo

Perhaps this tattoo's owner believes this is a witty phrase, but the double-negative makes it pointlessly vague. You have to read it through several times while trying to figure out exactly what he means.

Cancel out the double negatives and he's saying "everybody is immortal." Huh? Is this supposed to be religious or merely a Deep Thought?

It also appears to be on the part of the arm that's usually the least visible. So unless he walks around with his forearm up in front of his face like Bela Lugosi in an old horror movie, it's not likely to be seen.

the big hack

While I didn't understand some of the technical aspects, I nonetheless thought this article was fascinating.

In a thumbnail: servers in the United States and elsewhere in the first world -- including those on highly classified systems -- contain a tiny hardware hack that allows China to spy on anyone using the equipment.

It sounds like many people in the affected industries were surprised when this was revealed. When you use components manufactured in a country's adversary, then you should be surprised if it didn't happen.

Amazon's equipment was compromised but they were fairly above board about it. Apple's equipment was compromised and they quickly went into cover-up mode.

It also sounds like it will keep happening again until the industry switches from a reactive stance to a proactive stance. These hacks need to be found before the fact, not after the fact.

This is the future. Our greatest threat will not come from armies or bullets or bombs but from the tiny digital soldiers hiding inside our own electronics.

mad bombers

Last night, I finished this book as part of my ongoing program to self-educate myself about twentieth century history.

While the titular incident in the work is the 1920 Wall Street bombing, a crime that killed thirty and was never solved, it's really a much broader history of American radicalism from the Haymarket Massacre of 1886 up to the 1929 Wall Street crash.

What struck me about this history was the sheer number of incidents of public violence that occurred in that roughly forty-year period. While I already knew about some of the labor incidents, there were plenty of random acts of terrorism, too.

Having also recently read a book about the Patty Hearst kidnapping and 1970s radicalism, I was struck by one similarity between the two eras -- much of the violence was for violence sake. Mad bombers always seem to have a similar idea -- that random public bombings will somehow be the catalyst for a massive public uprising.

That, of course, never happens. Survivors draw together to peacefully mourn their losses. The perpetrators are almost universally condemned.

So, really, mad bombers just seem to like to blow stuff up and get a lot of attention, and the whole business about a public uprising is just a way to con themselves.

This period photograph was taken within the hour after the bomb exploded (enlargement).

testicle horror story

Yes, I know, reading the Daily Mail is the mental equivalent of pulling dried gum off a park bench and chewing it. But sometimes their strange news items are just too tempting to miss.

Take, for instance, this recent item in their pages about the Aussie in Seattle who died after injecting his testicles with silicone. If you click through to the link, you can see him and his big balls in a tiny pair of underwear.

Apparently some people thing elephant balls make you look desirable, but I think it looks like he has a very full diaper. Did it not ever enter his mind that such a stunt could have major health consequences?

Then again, is this any weirder than women who get cut-rate silicone breast injections in motel rooms from unqualified charlatans? Silicone belongs in the bathroom as tub sealer, not inside your body.

porn no more

Politico magazine is currently running a feature article about how the Republican Party in the United States has largely abandoned porn as a political issue. My response to that is: good; it's about time.

Yes, sometimes porn can go too far or exploit someone or be consumed by the wrong person. But so can a lot of vices that aren't outlawed: tobacco, liquor, gambling, fatty food, and much more.

The whole idea of outlawing porn was always ludicrous in this modern era, given that the Supreme Court severely limited what could be banned.

As a result, the whole issue was more about posturing than actually anything substantive. No more.

penis versus snake

A man in Bangkok, Thailand, sat down on the john at work and got the shock of a lifetime -- a ten-foot python hiding inside the toilet bit him on the penis. He had to pry the creature off his manhood which then required fifteen stitches.

My warped mind immediately wondered if the same thing would have happened had a woman sat down on the snake-infested toilet. I suspect not.

The snake may have thought the man's junk was a little creature to eat. A woman has no dingle-dangles and thus a less tempting crotch.

But I wouldn't want to test this out. Reading about this makes me want to never visit Thailand, where snakes in toilets are apparently not rare.

blood scare

Yesterday I noticed blood in my underpants. While blood spotting is common in the first trimester, it's not something that should happen in the second trimester, where I am now.

It was not a heavy flow of blood and I had utterly no pains whatsoever, but I went to the doctor just to be sure. The MD thoroughly checked me out and said all looked well. Baby's heartbeat is strong and healthy.

So the doctor asked some questions.

Was I spending a lot of time on my feet? With two small children, the answer was an obvious yes.

Had I lifted anything heavy in the last few days? Yes.

Was I staying hydrated? Not really. If I restrict my liquids, I don't have to pee as often.

The MD then informed me that all three of these could have caused the blood spotting. I've been ordered to spend more time off my feet, not to lift anything heavy, and regularly hydrating even if I have to pee a lot.

So the husband and I discussed this and he will be taking over some responsibilities so I can spend less time on my feet.

Nonetheless, I'm glad this was a false alarm and a good warning that I need to be more careful. The MD said it's not uncommon for women in subsequent pregnancies to be more active than they should be but do so because they're much more acclimated for being with child. Now in my third pregnancy, this described me perfectly.

hairy flabby hoodie

I did a double-take at the image seen below, which I first saw in a click-through ad on Imgur. I then found several people on Amazon were selling it; this seller seems to have the best product pictures.

This is both funny and sort of gross at the same time. This would be a good hoodie for a woman to wear if she was committing an armed robbery because it would confuse the witnesses.

I can't imagine a fit man wanting to wear this. A woman might wear it when she just throws something on and doesn't really want men looking at her.

I suspect this was made by actually photographing a hairy, flabby man. There is some kind of photographic fabric printing process where high-quality images can be turned into crisp fabric printing. Joey has some sheets on his bed printed with a giant lion photo, and I suspect this hoodie is something of the same.

payback is a bitch

Congressman Jason Lewis of Minnesota has regularly been criticized for his misogynistic remarks on his radio program.

He once said on-air: "It used to be that women were held to a little bit of a higher standard. We required modesty from women. Now, are we beyond those days where a woman can behave as a slut, but you can't call her a slut?"

What does he call men who sleep around?

As far as the appropriateness of calling women sluts, he got his answer on Tuesday: he was defeated. By a woman. I wonder what he's calling her behind closed doors.

Lewis must not have been the sharpest knife in the Congressional cutlery drawer. When you repeatedly trash half the people who may vote for -- or against -- you, then you can't complain when your words come back to haunt you.

Far more people are penalized for what they said than what they left unsaid. You'd think Lewis would have known that before he got into politics.

dopesick once more

I finished Dopesick last night. I don't think the book is perfect by any means, but I have to say it's one of the most memorable works I've read in a good while.

The author does not build the book with a linear narrative structure, which I much prefer, but instead moves around back and forth from topic to topic. The latter is a perfectly valid approach to a non-fiction book, but it's not my personal favorite.

Much of the tale is anecdotal and therein lies its power to move. At the same time, it's just relentlessly bleak. The outlook for someone addicted to opioids is really poor.

Fixing the problem will be extremely difficult. But it has to start at the top of the food chain at the drug's source and not on the street with the small-time dealer.

The most important message of the book is that if you're a big pharma company and create a dangerously addictive medicine and then sell it as beneficial and not addictive, you will only receive the lightest slap on the wrist for that. But if you're caught selling a few pills illegally of that same drug, you're looking at serious prison time.

Something is very, very wrong with that picture.

did you vote yet?

I did. Absentee by mail, of course. Voting way early is sort of anti-climactic but I have no choice. I'm still conditioned to expect results later the same day I voted.

Australia has mandatory voting so almost every adult votes here who's eligible. I'm not as warm to compulsory voting as I once was. A government demanding you do something is somewhat disquieting, even if that something is good for you.

At the same time, I think voting is something people should do out of civic pride and responsibility. Not voting should be such a faux pas that people don't even consider that an option, like farting in public.

the artificial intelligence bogeyman

The Atlantic is running an interesting, thoughtful article blurbed on the cover of the October 2018 issue "How AI Could Give Rise to Tyranny."

While I think the author makes some good and valid points, I think he overestimates the potential power of artificial intelligence. He seems to see AI as some sort of Hal 9000.

AI can be human-like but it can never be human. AI may be able to do fairly complex rote tasks faster than a human, but I think it can always be outwitted by a smart human because it was made by humans.

If you ever watched the Jeopardy IBM Challenge, you know that Watson the AI computer can make some spectacular blunders. But it could be defeated in a much easier way -- kill its power source.

AI in the future may be used to fool some people and could thus be used effectively by a dictator. But skilled and determined humans could always defeat it. That might require some spectacular destruction, but I think people would prevail.

chocolate cheese nut sandwich

I made the boys toasted cheese sandwiches for lunch yesterday. While I was fixing them, an idea popped into my pregnant brain: make one or two for myself with cheese and... and... and... how about nuts and chocolate!

I defrosted the rye bread, sprinkled some chocolate chips on top, then a few nuts, and then a thick layer of cheddar cheese. Toasted and oh my!

They were messy. Joey asked what it was. I told him. He had a face like I told him I was snacking out of some cat's litter box.

blood curdling

I saw the movie poster below (enlargement) and it gave me vertigo. This is for a new documentary film about Alex Honnold who climbs up the 3,000 vertical face of Yosemite's highest cliffs without rope, support, or nets.

He just uses his hands and feet.

This obviously takes a great deal of courage and strength and discipline. At the same time, I think he has to be a little bit nuts. One slip, one cramp, one bugbite and splat.

You know you might have selected the wrong pastime when the worst possible outcome is a horrible, painful death.

But hey, how about that view!

dopesick

I've started reading this book about the runaway opioid epidemic effecting the United States. I'm not far enough along to get an overall impression of the book, but I did sit up and notice some startling and memorable details.

When I was talking to my husband last night about the book, I said that in the earlier years of the epidemic, the ease with which people could get opioids, it was as if they were entirely legal. While many people obtained them legally through their own doctors, far more people obtained them illegally in the underground marketplace and still do.

So in that sense, the opioid epidemic provides a great argument against a liberalized drug decriminalization policy. People widely self-medicated with opioids and looked what happened.

The so-called War on Drugs has been deeply flawed for a long time. But the way to remedy this is with careful study and reform, not a wholesale decriminalization of all drugs. Otherwise, you could end up with a country half occupied by drug-addled wastrels who are only a drain on society.

case histories

I'm nearly finished reading the novel Case Histories, by Kate Atkinson. It's not her first book, but it is the first book of hers I've read.

Case is described by some sources as "a detective novel," but it really is so much more, because Atkinson is an absolutely terrific writer. The book is written in a literary style with a genre novel engine. It's just fantastic.

Reading this definitely makes me want to dive into more of her work. She's 66 and has published ten novels to date, so she's not hugely prolific.

So I don't want to read her books all at once. I want to pace myself so I can stretch out the enjoyment if her other books are as good as Case. Given she's won numerous prestigious literary awards, there's every reason to expect I will.

I always love to discover a writer new to me who I really like out of the gate. But then again, who doesn't?