Loneliness

 Although there's always Hope in prison, everyone is lonely.  Separation from family and friends makes inmates desperately lonely.  Also, since the inmates aren't sure of whom the other inmates are, they also distrust everyone and everything.  That's isolating individuals from each other.  The only remedy is visitations from family and friends and writing letters and phone calls (this costs money).  In fact, postal stamps are used as money when inmates trade with each other.

Hope

 Count your blessings that you have never been to prison.  What do you think inmates think of their future?  I suppose it would depend on their sentence and situation.  The lifers I know, always, always have hope they will be released.  And lo and behold, I've seen it happen.  Two were given compassion release, and lived a few good years, after.  More eventually had their cases overturned; thanks to the Innocence Project and current DNA testing.  Then there's the Mattis cases.  Quite a few of my "cloistered brothers" are free, due to the Mattis decision.  There was also evidence tampering in the chemistry scandal in MA. Another former inmate had his case overturned when his accuser admitted lying!

There's always hope.  The future may be bleak, but no one gives up hope.

A Hostage Situation

 When I was reading the dialogue in Nelson DeMille's Cathedral, I couldn't help but think of former state trooper, Michael Proctor.  Proctor was raked over the coals and lost his job because of the language he used when texting friends and colleagues.  I read the same racial slurs, misogynistic language, profanity, and offensive remarks, and abusive names and slurs, used in Cathedral.  That's the way cops talk.

Unfortunately, for Proctor, his texts were read.  The cops in Cathedral are fiction.  But when you're in war and sometimes cops and the bad guys are at war, one has to demonize the other to work themselves up to battle mode.

Basically, the plot is the IRA kidnapping the Archbishop of New York, and three others.  The IRA is holding them inside St. Patrick's Cathedral and threatening to blow the church and everyone in it to smithereens, if their demands aren't met.  What do they want?  They want the IRA prisoners in Ireland released.  

This is a nail biter.  You kind of think that it will never happen, but how to solve the situation, had me stumped.  There's a little mysticism involved.  The leader of this group, Brian, had a mystical experience in Whitehorn Abbey, when he was saved from the police.  Near the end, the cop defusing the bomb, felt her fingers dismantling the bomb when she hadn't a clue how to go about it. Also, Brian, when he was dying (spoiler) saw the same priest from Whitehorn Abbey, visit him. 

The detailed strategy was excellent.  The pace was fast.  The dialogue was realistic.  It's a classic thriller.

Unknowing or Not Knowing

 Can you tell I'm reading, "The Cloud of Unknowing?"  I have started reading this too many times to count.  Lately, I have been giving the book another reading.  As far as my pea brain can figure out, Not Knowing is being completely ignorant.  Whereas Unknowing is what you call believers who haven't learned what's important, yet.  

Anti-Terrorism

 You know why I haven't been blogging?  I've been too busy reading Nelson DeMille's tomes.  I finished The Lion's Game and couldn't wait to read the next, Night Fall.  Fortunately, my reading was interrupted by the Fourth of July celebrations.  My reading orgy stopped because the Fourth of July, is not only a celebration in the USA, it's a special celebration.  The country is 250 years old, so all the stops were pulled out.  The weather cooperated to make sure the celebrations continued as planned.  Coincidentally, the FIFA World Cups are still going on here, so there're more celebrations.  Plus,  ta-da!  

                                            🙌

This is my 55th wedding anniversary.  That's not a typo.  Hubby and I have been married 55 years.  We didn't do anything to celebrate, now, because hubby fell and is recuperating.  We play on going on a harbor cruise to see the Tall Ships in Boston, in a few weeks.  More about that, after the fact.

Back to the two books.  The Lion's Game has protagonist John Corey pitted against the jihadist, Asad Khalil. Khalil was a kid when the US bombed his family.  Hence, his training in extreme Muslim.  He is strictly Old Testament, "an eye for an eye."  Khalil knows he'll be caught eventually and killed.  Khalil welcomes this.  It is insurance into heaven.  He will be a martyr.

    Corey uses his New York cop smarts, more than his Federal anti-terrorist experience to go after Khalil.  Khalil does kill too many in his revenge lust, but Corey leans so hard on him, that he escapes--barely.  So you know they'll be a sequel.

    I don't mind Corey's sarcasm.  His quick come-backs have me laughing out-loud.  I am intrigued by his observations and deductions.  

    All of the above, seduced me into immediately getting into Night Fall.  The beginning is genius.  A couple involved in an extra-matrimonial affair and video-taping their romp in the ocean when an airplane explodes in the background.  It is taped.  Was it shot down?  The tape tells the story but they're not turning it over to the authorities.  Would you?  It would devastate their families.

   The story begins five years after the plane crash.  Corey's wife never believed the official story that there was a mechanical malfunction, when 200 witnesses saw a rocket blow up the plane.  So, she gets her husband, John Corey involved.  His meticulous detective work finds the evidence of what really happened.

Humanity Matures

 Why do we consider human limitations as just that, "limitations?"  What we are, we are.  No one is perfect.  Some people are incapacitated, ill, elderly, etc.  This is reality, not a defect to be corrected.  We get by.  We get by with a little help from our friends, as the song goes.  Helping others is humanity at its best.  Also, it establishes a relationship between those who help and need help.  Isn't that good?  Establishing relationships with others is what humans do.  

AI = Seeds

 Can you explain how a seed germinates?  I don't mean adding water and sunlight.  I mean what is inside the seed that makes it start to grow into an entity.  No one can.  No one completely understands how and why.  The same is true of AI.

I never thought about that until reading Magnifica Humanitas.  The terminology used in paragraph 98, is cultivated.  AI is not built; it is more like a seed that has been watered and put in the sun. The computer designers and software and hardware designers create a framework within which the intelligence works.  It is like the sun and water on the seed.  The seed blossoms into something.  The designers try this and that until the right combination gels, and it blossoms into something.  How and why?  Presently, no one knows.  

Hold on!

Exactly.  More research, more understanding needs to be done, before full permission is given to just plunge forward.  Remember the movie, Hal 9000. The problem is that the humans trust, depend, and follow the computer HAL.  HAL is the authority over the humans.  The movie is a cautionary story.

HAL 9000 at a Glance#

Designation	Detail
Full name	HAL 9000: Heuristically programmed ALgorithmic computer
First appearance	2001: A Space Odyssey (1968), film and novel developed in parallel by Stanley Kubrick and Arthur C. Clarke
Activation	12 January 1992 at the HAL plant in Urbana, Illinois (the film’s date; the novel says 1997)
Function	Governing intelligence of Discovery One: navigation, communications, diagnostics, life support
Voice	Douglas Rain, who returned for 2010: The Year We Make Contact (1984)
Confirmed kills	Frank Poole and the three hibernating crew members of Discovery One
Cultural standing	Ranked the 13th greatest film villain of all time by the American Film Institute, the highest placed non-human on the list

#