Shōgun (2024)

I just finished watching the 2024 Shōgun, which I enjoyed very much.

I read the book around December 1988 — followed over the next years of reading every single other Asia-saga novel that James Clavell wrote — during my elementary school's winter break. I was so captivated that that was basically all I did during that winter break. I was already a slow reader back then, and now I read much more slowly than I did back then. (I also don't have time to basically only read a book nonstop for a couple of weeks.) I was fascinated by the epic combined with the portrayal of how East and West saw each other through their interactions. This was the first book in my life that had ever captivated me that way, and I was really excited when I saw a poster for the new miniseries a few months ago.

The 2024 series did a great job of capturing that, and it was aspects of those interactions and contrasting views (and part of the scene of peeing in a garden to consummate an agreement, and I am pretty sure that I know which scene in the new tv series corresponds to that vignette) that really stood out to me. However, most of this runs together through all of Clavell's works, and I can't really separate Shōgun from the others. I had forgotten almost all of the plot, but from Wikipedia it seems that the new series adapted it very well.

I never watched the 1980 miniseries. There was a 1988 miniseries of Nobel House. I also never watched that one, but I did notice Shōgun and Tai-Pan (and knew that Nobel House was by the same author, and Tai-Pan also caught my eye because of the Apple II game of almost the same name that was inspired by the novel) on a bookshelf in my parents' house (nobody else in the household had read these epic books), so I picked up Shōgun, which became an important part of my own personal history, even though I forgot so much of it.

I suppose that a new Nobel House miniseries may be possible? That one, too, was a particularly awesome book. (I also enjoyed the others, although I gave up on Tai-Pan the first time and started over and read it only a couple of years after, because I could put up with the rougher writing of that earlier work with the thoughts of it as a prequel to Nobel House.)

Smurfy Peer Review

Resolved: I am going to start taking inspiration from The Smurfs when I write referee reports for articles that particularly annoy me.

To wit:

"Where did the authors smurf up this idea?"

"This figure is smurfed."

"The authors might want to consider smurfing the abstract a little bit more."

Update: I know; I know: this isn't very smurfy of me.

Update 2: "A total smurf job."

The Multiplex Social–Slayage Network of Buffy the Vampire Slayer

Here is the multiplex social–slayage network of Buffy the Vampire Slayer.

The Buffy social network: slayage and love links. https://t.co/xwQ0DoKpAG

— Peter Sheridan Dodds (@peterdodds) March 11, 2018

This figure is definite fodder for talks. Also, if somebody sets up the adjacencies, we should compute some centrality and versatility measures.

Knight Rider and the Non-Existence of Functions

I think that some mathematics presentations would benefit from an obvious allusion to Night Rider (where you need to imagine the proper word emphasis from the TV series).

"In this paper, I will present a shadowy flight into the dangerous world of a function that does not exist."
Coming in 2018 to a university near you.

Here is the original quote (which you can find on this page): Narrator: Knight Rider, a shadowy flight into the dangerous world of a man who does not exist. Michael Knight, a young loner on a crusade to champion the cause of the innocent, the helpless, the powerless, in a world of criminals who operate above the law.