Nowadays it seems that a wide sociopolitical spectrum describes the set of U.S. independent voters.  The techniques for defining them and counting them seem nebulous at best.  Of course, it’s hard to do the second if you haven’t done the first.  There are true independents, people who will not make a decision until the day of the election, for parties or people, although they will taunt you by saying that they tend to lean one way or the other.  There are the shifters, people who say they are Dems and vote GOP or vice versa.  Others will vote in one election and not another or not in primaries (in some states you can’t vote in primaries if you haven’t declared a nominal party allegiance).  Finally, some are third party voters who don’t vote unless they have a candidate (Socialists, Libertarians, etc)—they’re for an “independent party.”

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(Review of Steven Manly’s Visions of the Multiverse, New Page Books, 2011, ISBN 978-1-60163-129-9)

Visions of the Multiverse is a very readable introduction to some very strange concepts in physics.  Its advantage is that it’s short and requires no math expertise from the lay reader, even though much of it is really about mathematics.  However, it does require you to think about things.  Its disadvantage is that it’s short and requires no math expertise—in other words, you may arrive at the end somewhat dissatisfied by your lack of understanding of these topics.  If that’s the case, bless your soul, there are more meaty tomes (also with little or no mathematics) that expand on the ideas contained in this book.  (I’ll mention some of them below.)

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Before Libya and their insane and murderous dictator started grabbing all the headlines, the Pakistani government’s treatment of Mr. Raymond Davis was news.  First, the media in our country lamented that the Pakistanis arrested someone with diplomatic immunity.  Second, we suddenly saw an about face when reporters discovered that Mr. Davis is really a contractor with the C.I.A.  To these mentally challenged members of the Fourth Estate, I say: so what?  Nearly every embassy and consulate of every industrialized nation maintains spies working undercover as diplomats.

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Amidst the discussions to-and-fro about the Iraq War, the slovenly state of VA hospitals became a hot topic.  The moldy and dingy state of Walter Reed, the top VA hospital in the country, only emphasized the deteriorated state of a system that was a big news story in 2007.  The VA system had languished ever since WWII.  Veterans were calling the state of their hospitals their Katrina moment.  The system was incapable of handling the wounded vets that were returning home, first with Iraq and then with Afghanistan.  Although steps were taken after 2007 to improve the system, it is still woefully inadequate to treat veterans’ mental health issues.

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With the Middle East crises and the three stooges, Michele, Sarah, and Christine, the last few blog posts have been a little on the heavy side, so today let me sail into smooth seas and soft breezes to discuss a trivial thing that sometimes irks the hell out of me:  series in fiction.  It’s a criticism of my own writing profession—a self-criticism, in a way.  We all have our favorite characters and we tend to look for sequels where they appear again and again.  However, what I’m complaining about is when writers’ do it just for the almighty dollar.

Fictional characters become famous largely due to series, of course.  Sherlock Holmes would not be as famous if Conan Doyle had only written one Holmes mystery.  Miss Marple and Hercule Poirot would not be as famous if Christie had only written one of their mysteries.  John Carter, nearly forgotten by now, I suppose, would not be as famous if Rice Burroughs had written only one Martian story—and probably Star Wars would never have been made for lack of all those names lifted from them.  We readers love our series because we love the characters in them.

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