Foundation
Puppy: off Phrase of the day: trial by jury
I had jury duty again today, which implies that if you’re on standby and are told not to come in, then your number goes back in the hopper. I was on standby half a year ago, I think. This time I had to hike all the way out to Roxbury to do my civic duty, which involved sitting in a room for three hours before being dismissed. The prospect of twelve angry Bostonians had scared all the bad guys into plea bargains, the judge informed us. And he disapproves of Judge Judy.
While awaiting my chance to say “string ‘em high”, I read half of Asimov’s Foundation. It’s been about twenty years since I read the trilogy last, so I was surprised just how familiar it was. Maybe that’s just Asimov, though. It never ceases to amaze me what people got away with in the good old days of sci-fi. Asimov’s idea of the decline and fall of Galactic science is the disappearance of nuclear power - in other words, a shift from 1954 to 1942. Twelve thousand years of civilization and…well, it doesn’t become me to mock the Great One. Foundation stands on the principles of psychohistory rather than the cheesy terminology of “nuclear blasts”. Still, Tolkien should have gotten the Hugo for best series ever. He knew about the rise and fall of empires…