Weird codger wants kids in his yard
So, as I get older my fear that I may not know what I’m talking about makes me increasingly uneasy. Ameliorating this potentially debilitating Angst is another mental attribute that decreases with age: my willingness to give a shit.
That being said, since the 1950s theoretical particle physics has been dominated by ever more elaborate refinements to QFT, and I would include string theory in that category. As a tool for theoretical advancement, analytical methods of this ilk are metaphorical machetes. Very efficacious at hacking through the jungle, and marginally useful in finding one’s way, for they occasionally smack into an obstruction (anomaly, infinity, prediction at odds with experimental data, rock), and in this way you divine a path through the bush that you hope is leading someplace refulgent, full of treasure and pristine first print comics from the early days of DC and Marvel. Still, at each rocky obstruction debates will inevitably ensue as to which direction from the rock should we continue our hacking. Should we choose the direction with maximal Naturalness (more of a philosophical notion than usefully theoretical), or some direction which has fewer attributes with which we are comfortable? Over the past 40+ years theoretical physics has, with few exceptions, chosen directions from obstructions that reinforced a way of thinking that was responsible for getting them lost in the first place.
Still, given my peculiar way of thinking, and the body of work I created over those same 40+ years, I will go to my grave wondering why these machete wielding theorists don’t just get a map. For example, back in the 1920s Dirac provided theoretical physics with a very powerful map. The mainstream couldn’t help but embrace his ideas, but then came QFT and all the comfortable analytical machete stuff, and back into the jungle we went. To hell with algebraic abstraction. And that’s too bad, for there is definitely a map forward in my own work, and in many ways it’s a vastly expanded version of Dirac’s. It’s pure mathematics – Ur-maths, not concocted – yet it requires neutrinos to be Dirac, with Dirac masses. It requires there be a mirror antimatter universe, linked to ours by … screw it. Read the fuchsia papers and books. And in support of the veracity of these notions, I submit that it may not be coincidental that Dirac and Dixon are both 5 letter family names beginning with “Di”. See? Are you convinced yet?
Anyway, fuck it. You can’t redirect a river that has spent decades digging itself into a mile deep canyon.
From my latest travel memoir (unfinished)
A thing I once found alarming was the Millennial and Zoomer habit of blaming on Boomers the world’s decline into post-apocalyptic yuckiness. And, yes, to be sure, Boomers had their hands on the tiller during this recent, noticeable period of global disintegration, but let’s look less shallowly at this fact before we go dooming a whole generation to hell.
During the 1960s a great many Boomers were hippies, in favor of peace and love and LSD. And they were vehemently against an older generation that seemed hellbent on sending them to their deaths in Southeast Asia for absolutely no good reason, other than it enriched the Military-Industrial Complex. Are these the Boomers at whom the Millennials and Zoomers are so ready to point the gnarly finger of blame. Well, no, not really.
See, most Boomers were not Flower Children. Most were on a spectrum from conventional and straight-laced, all the way up to psychopaths. And in every generation, without exception, it is mostly citizens on the psychopath end of the psychological spectrum who seek and achieve power and influence. So, you Zoomers may think you’re immune to this societal disease, and that voices of reason will gain power when your turn comes, but those voices of reason cannot compete with the psychopaths.
And this is especially true in nations eschewing democracy in favor of more oppressive forms of government. I mean, yes, Putin is a Boomer, but do you think he was ever a Flower Child? He’s more like some guy whose happiest moments were in high school (or, in this case, USSR KGB), and he’s holding on to those times, carousing with his buds, invading and bombing a neighboring country, because, shit, they did have a crazy good time in high school. Remember how Czechoslovakia and Hungary rolled over so easily? Good times; good times.
Please finish The Expanse while I’m still conscious
When I was 16 I remember being resistant to growing up. I wrote poems about being an elf in a tree larking about, doing my own thing, holding the society’s need to absorb me into the body with disdain. I was immature. And I am still immature, 57 years later. It’s not just a pose, in support of which I note that I recently encountered Babymetal videos (which can best be described as a Japanese anime version of the very serious legitimate Heavy Metal musical genre; Babymetal disbanded after 11+ years 4 months ago, and only the Fox God knows if and when they’ll be back … I’m just quoting here – don’t look at me like that), and I immediately thought, “Awesome!”. As to Heavy Metal itself, I have no use for it. It is dead serious and …
Yeah, so I go in for a lot of nerd stuff: games like Skyrim; movies like When Marnie Was There (my present obsession), and of course, the new Dune, over which I swooned each of the 10 (and counting) times I viewed it. But more to the point, a couple of months ago I also swooned over the steampunk animated series Arcane. The story was terrific, but the animation was MOMA worthy in every sense.
Ok, so we’re all familiar with The Expanse (if not, what the fuchsia are you even doing here). My wife and I loved the show, and when it was canceled (the first time) we were willing to give kudos to the billionaire who bought the rights and continued the series.
During this time a brilliant, spectral, former student of my wife, said I should read the books. But … but … there are 9 of them, each of them huge. Eventually I gave in, primarily because I realized I already owned book one, which had been collecting dust on my secondary (or tertiary) to be read shelf for a year or four. So, while still watching the TV series, I plodded into book one. Then I walked – quickly. Then I ran. Crikey, this book is really good, exceeding the show even. Long story short, I read all nine in a row, and am waiting for the additional book of material not incorporated into the original nine. And at the end of book nine, I fell into a deep awestruck coma from which I have not fully recovered. Holy crap, what an ending.
Each season of the show covered roughly a single book, and there were 6 seasons. Ok, let’s pause while you do the math. Got it? Right! The last 3 books have no concomitant TV seasons. The show just ended, and before what I consider the best of the books.
In extenuation, it has to be said that book 7 picks up the story 30 years after the material in books 1 to 6. So, if you’re going to be lazy, or out of money, then it’s a viable point at which to end the show. More so if you haven’t read all the books, 7, 8, and 9, in particular. But if you have, then ending the show with just 6 seasons really sucks.
Interestingly, season 6 includes extensive material from an Expanse novella, Strange Dogs, which is not part of the primary 9 books. This material stands at odds to, and has nothing to do with, the main plot of season 6, and as anyone who has read the last 3 books will tell you, there is only one reason Strange Dogs was incorporated into season 6: the writers assumed, hoped, or just prayed that there would eventually be seasons 7, 8, and 9.
Dixon to the rescue (again)
Animate the final 3 seasons. The animation style in Arcane would do very nicely, but there are a few other animated sci fi series out there with animation styles that would do as well. This solves the problem of aging the entire cast by 30 years. It allows for effects that would be difficult and costly in a CGI/live-action version. And for fuschia’s sake, bring Alex back. Just ignore the fact that they had to kill the character off because the actor let his fame sink to his nether regions. He’s important to the story. Surely there are other actors out there who can do a Martian southern drawl. And cartoon characters can’t sexually misbehave in real life, right? Just bring him back, and we’ll pretend none of that really uncomfortable Alex has a stroke and dies crud ever happened. It was stupid in every possible respect.
So, seasons 7,8,9 with Arcane style animation; the whole Strange Dogs subplot now has meaning; Alex is back; everyone is animated to look 30 years older; and … for fuchsia’s sake! Have you even read book 9? Just do this … and soon. I’m running out of time, and it would make me so happy.
