Duned

Yesterday we hit the treadmill and did a nice easy hour in which we didn't check the time till the 59th minute. As we suspected running through the soreness cleared out the knee. Some residual soreness remains. We did some good book thinkin' too. Things are coming together, mentally speaking, for the Australian scene. 

We haven't talked about our QAnon contacts lately because they've demanded silence from this blog. However, Qbi Wan has given us permission to break our  silence. He says the parents vs school board conflict was partially stoked by QAnon assets and observers should expect to see more direct actions. Qbi Wan also claims that the Justice Department is designating parents as domestic terrorists so they can redirect Federal resources against Q. Qbi Wan says, 'The plan unfolds'.

Reviews  of Dune are coming in. The Critical Drinker says Dune is (mostly) brilliant. The Critical Drinker is mostly right. Ben Shapiro reviews Dune here and agrees with Will. Ben's 'biggest issue' is the musical score. The brilliant Steve Sailer notices something we noticed: 'Spaniard Javier Bardem (best known as Anton Chigurh) is amusing as Fremen chieftain Stilgar, doing a grumpy riff on Mexican Anthony Quinn’s wonderful Auda Abu Tayi in Lawrence of Arabia.' Does this mean we are also brilliant? It does.

We've been unable to watch Dune, and we've watched it twice now, without thinking of the previous two versions. We just know all the rhythms and beats. It's like we're listening to another version of a song we love. Shapiro says one hasn't seen Dune till one has seen Dune in the theatre. That's our plan. 

A lot of people talk about author Frank Herbert's amazing world building. But is the world really all that amazing? The Dune universe is eerily familiar to those of us who lived in the 20th century. Herbert wrote about a great-power conflict over a must have natural resource found only in the desert. The Atriedes are the west. The Harkonnen are the Ruskis. The Fremin are the Arabs from Lawrence of Arabia. This template also works for Medieval and Renaissance Europe. That said, Herbert's work on Fremin culture is impressive.