Re: Three Body Problem

On Fri, 16 Aug 2024, Lynn McGuire wrote:

On 8/16/2024 4:55 PM, William Hyde wrote:

Lynn McGuire wrote:

On 8/16/2024 1:26 PM, BCFD 36 wrote:

Awhile back, The Three Body Problem was mentioned. In that thread, there was no mention of the current Netflix version. Was this mentioned somewhere else and I just missed it? Google groups is of no help any more.
 I have just started the series and I am intrigued, so far. Just two episodes. My wife is rather "meh" about it, but she said the same thing about Star Trek 1 which in reality she HATED so I may be watching it after she goes to bed.
 ----------------
 Dave Scruggs
Senior Software Engineer - Lockheed Martin, et. al (mostly Retired)
Captain - Boulder Creek Fire (Retired)
Board of Directors - Boulder Creek Fire Protection District (What was I thinking?)

 I did not like the Netflix version, have yet to read the book.  Too much time spent on the China Cultural Revolution and their violence against the educated.  Felt like a Children of the Corn mini series.  I gave up after two episodes.

 I've known several people whose lives were damaged by that event.  And these were the lucky ones, who made it to the west.

 

 One scientist I knew never got over it, especially the abuse suffered by her mother.  One might have expected her father, an educated man who had lived in the West and still had children living there to be as big a target. But he was left alone, she said, because he was a renowned gerontologist and  the Party leadership was getting older.
  Another distinguished scientist told me he reached the last year of secondary education only to realize that he'd learned absolutely nothing owing to the constant meetings and demonstrations.  Ignoring his teachers, he packed four years of school into one.  Judging by his subsequent career, he kept up that level of effort for  the next few decades.
  William Hyde

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One of my Dad's mainland Chinese grad students from OU lived with us for a couple of years from 1973 to 1974 and worked for my Dad from 1973 to 1995. He came over to the USA in 1966 or 1967 and got a PhD in Chemical Engineering from OU in 1973.  I heard enough stories from him about growing on a farm in China, living in a cave, starving all the time.  If our family did not eat everything at supper then he would finish everything off.  It took my mother several months break him of that habit.  But he never got fat.  He never mentioned anything about the Cultural Revolution but I suspect it was the reason why he left China.
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He was incredibly smart, he would give me an algorithm and I would code it up in Fortran 66 for him in a subroutine and give him the card deck. He was very submissive, he would never look you in the face, would always look down.  He went back to mainland China in 1995 to help with his sister's export business.  Sadly, he soon had a heart attack and passed away.  His sister was kind enough to call my father and tell us.
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I know several people in the USA who had to leave Iran when they had their cultural revolution.  Mostly engineers working for USA companies like Dupont in Iran.  I've gotten a few stories from them, grim, very grim.  One of my classmates at TAMU disappeared at the midyear of our junior year in 1980 when the Iranian Embassy in the USA sent him a letter cutting off his funds and ordering him to come home.  They also revoked his visa but President Reagan gave all those people green card status in 1981.  He refused to go home to Iran since he was a nephew of the Shah, he figured that they would shoot him the minute he stepped off the plane.
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In other words, the various Cultural Revolutions are a little too real for me and I do not enjoy reading about or viewing them.
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Lynn
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With this historical luggage I can never understand how people in europe can insist on voting for socialists. Give them enough power and they tend to repeat themselves. Just look at the socialist UK government now cracking down on free speech. Very sad.