Re: Three Body Problem

On Sat, 17 Aug 2024 11:51:46 +0200, D <nospam@example.net> wrote:

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On Fri, 16 Aug 2024, Lynn McGuire wrote:
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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.
>
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.
>
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.

First, the UK has a different view of free speech than the USA.
/Their/ gummint can prohibit stories from running in newspapers at
all; ours can not, at least not before they have been published.

Second, they appear to be talking about holding people responsible for
the consequences of their actions. Starting a riot or crying "Fire!"
in a theater had /always/ been punishable speech. Just because they
are doing it online may make it harder to prove (depending on how the
law is written), but not impossible, and certainly not make it
unreasonable to try.

I should also point out that their ability to have US citizens
extradicted will depend on how the relevant treaty is written and the
relevant process. If this requires the crime charged to be a crime in
this country, then things may get a bit ... sticky. Consider the LA
prosecutor's attempt to have Roman Polanski from Switzerland [1]: it
failed because the Swiss concluded that he had been sentenced and had
served his sentence and so there was no meat in the LA's hamburger.

[1] This occurred during the Great Recession. Given the reduced tax
income of those times, I have been known, from time to time, to wonder
how many rapists and murderers were /not/ prosecuted because the money
needed was spent on their "get Polanski" obsession.
--
"Here lies the Tuscan poet Aretino,
Who evil spoke of everyone but God,
Giving as his excuse, 'I never knew him.'"