Re: Three Body Problem

On 8/17/24 12:52, D wrote:

  On Sat, 17 Aug 2024, Lynn McGuire wrote:
 

On 8/17/2024 4:51 AM, D 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.
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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.
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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?)

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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.

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

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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.
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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.
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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.

The UK as someone points out does not have written guarantes
of Freedom of Speech as we do in the USA.  The German government
specifically outlaws discussion of the benefits of the Hitler Years.
But that has not kept their own Fascist movement worshipping Hitler
to re-emerge.
There are socialist and Socialists and Marxist-Leninist as well
as Outright Fascists.  Socialists with a small s run the US Military
forces.  The Military is supposed to support and defend the Constitution
and they remain under the control of the elected Civilians sf the Federal Government. Socialists with Capital S are seldom elected in
the USA but we have Bernie Sanders, who points out that he is a
Democratic Socialist i.e. he believes in voting for a Representative
government.
Fascists want the Industrial forces on their side and want
the people controlled, as do Marxist-Leninist parties except they
want the State which is claimed to represent the people to control
the means of production.  So the primary means of production is
the ability of women to give birth to new humans and they want to
get as many humans as possible so restrict abortions.
In Communist China this control over births was used to
lower the population with unforeseen results result in modification
of the 1 child per family rule.
In Germany under Hitler, in Russia under Communism and now
under Putin, as well as China since the Communist drove the Nationalist
out as well as some smaller nations we have totalitarian Governments
which try to control the people in pursuit of Government set goals.
In ancient Rome and Greece as well a later states a fear of
Democracy developed calling it Mob-rule.  Well they did not have
constitution but autocratic rule and the curious matter is that
they feared the mob voting itself benefits.  Aristocratic Republics
eventually fell to the most powerful creating empires.
  However in the USA today we have the most powerful economically
buying our elected representatives who vote them benefits greater than
any democratic government envisioned hand to the people of the USA.

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Incredibly sad.  And the Democrat candidate here in the USA is talking freezing food prices and making grocery stores report any changes in their prices, causing huge paperwork and never ending bureaucracies.
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Lynn
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Very popular with people spending most of their wages or stipends on eating, shelter and utilities.

 What!?! Jesus Christ, do people never learn? When has freezing prices and forcing markets under political control ever benefitted anyone except, maybe, politicians?

WW II in the USA we suffered wage and price controls and beat
the hell out of the Germans.  We also suffered food rationing and no
one died of that. We were a Totalitarian state and the pacifists suffered but we only had Radio and Newspapers as a source of information
and apart from Columnists who hated the Roosevelts not much variation
in the War messages thrown at people.  Those wartime cartoons targeting
the German Reich and the Japanese Imperial Armies were embarrassing by
the 1960s but guess what the Germans and the Japanese were treated
to the same demonizatins of the USA, UK, Netherlands, France and of
course the Portuguese all of whom had oppressed the people of the
Asia.

 Sounds like the US is up for a huge left torn in case Cackles wins. But let's hope and pray that Trump wins. All else will be a huge disaster.

A Trumps win would be a great disaster for poorer Americans, Europe and Australian, Japan, Taiwan and the semi-democratic nations of
Asia. He knows nothing about the way the economy operates and thinks
Tariffs are good for the USA which they are not.  Tariffs are good
for monied interests giving them carte blanche to charge as much
for their goods, imported or locally produced as the market will
bear. He thinks well of the most notorious autocrats like Putin
and Xi.
A left turn towards the Center and away from the Corporate Control that had left millions unemployed and poorly fed at high
prices.  Biden helped start policies that helped and Kamala Harris
and Tim Walz may help to continue that turn until we are on the
track of FDR and Elanor, Truman and Eisenhower. Even tricky Dick
Nixon thought of giving the people an guaranteed income.

I doubt very much that any billionaires will have to sell
their multiple homes or any of their luxurious Yachts unless
Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren are ever appointed or
Elected to positions of such power.  The accumulation of wealth
by billionaires is usually quite bad for the economy as the
circulation of the money supply is supposed to be best for
the economy but the wealth of multi-Billionaires represents in
plain terms, Constipation of the money supply and the economy.

bliss
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