The Terror (2007)

In 1845 two 3-masted sailing ships of the Royal Navy, HMS Erebus and HMS Terror, embarked on a journey under the command of Sir John Franklin to find the Northwest Passage, the perhaps non-existent path connecting the Atlantic and the Pacific Oceans across the impenetrable ice of the Antarctica. Manned by veterans of many polar expeditions, they were equipped with steam engines, central heating systems, reinforced hulls designed to withstand the assaults of ice, a state-of-the-art medical laboratory, and enough food supplies stocked to last for 5 years.  They sailed past Greenland, and then, despite the multiple rescue expeditions sent after them in the coming years, were never been heard from again. 

Jason Aaron, Ron Garney: Adamantium Men (2010)

Whenever I'm thinking about great comic stories, there is one that always springs to my mind, but uniquely, with a touch of disappointment. The reason is that it's not exactly a great story. It's a very good one, possibly among the three best Wolverine stories, at least in my book, but it misses something. Still, I think there is a legitimate category of almost greatness (more like exceptional B-movies than flawed A-s) and its heroes should not go down in memory lane unsung.

This is the song for Adamantium Men.

The Kominsky Method (2018-2021)

TV shows used to give work for actors at the beginning or at end of their careers. Jumping board for young unknowns, retirement shelter for washed-up has-beens. Their entertainment value was accordingly measured. That has shifted (to realize how much, check how many of the first X-files episodes you can watch and compare the experience with what you get from a just below-average show of today). Although it's old news that TV shows have caught up with feature films in prestige and surpassed them in quality, it's still quite rare, and therefore feels special, when an A-movie actor appears in one. 

Rolf&Alexandra Becker: Dickie Dick Dickens

Dear listeners, don't forget to turn on your radios next time to follow the spectacular, sensational, and astonishing adventures of the most dangerous man in America, Dickie Dick Dickens!

- with these words and a cliffhanger ends every episode of the story of a larger-than-life thief who rises to be the most famous gangster of the 1920s Chicago, if not the world.

Charles Wheelan: Naked Money (2017)

For many years, Tim Harford's The Undercover Economist and its sequel, The Undercover Economist Strikes Back, were my favorite go-to books when I wanted to remind myself of the basics behind some current economic phenomena. My only formal education in the field was a 2-semester, 4 hours per week, economics course at university, which taught me exactly a handful of primary school-level equations with acronyms whose meanings I didn't know even during the exams I passed. (I don't want to be unduly harsh to those professors, so hanging them for wasting hundreds of thousands of hours of young lives I wouldn't recommend. Just fire them ceremoniously.)

 

Robert Wright: Why Buddhism Is True Book (2017)

Earlier I admitted that, although I'm generally, albeit moderately, interested in Buddhism, I can only really appreciate books on the topic from Western authors. Since then, my snobbism has raised to new heights (or sunk to new lows), as nowadays I can only digest the rare Buddhist books from Western scientists. I think the reason is that with something both so subjective and abstract, even very smart people can get carried away by wishful thinking, confirmation bias, or just insufficient training in critical thinking. A scientist is trained to avoid logical fallacies, to think in probabilities rather than certainties, and to distrust even beautiful theories until they are confirmed by data. They are not infallible, but at least more immune to self-deception.

Michael Shermer: Giving the Devil His Due: Reflections of a Scientific Humanist (2019)

Should Intelligent Design be taught alongside evolution in public schools? What sort of government should we set up on future Mars colonies? Should Nazi speech be banned? What's the story with Jordan Peterson? Does the scientific community stifle dissenting voices of mavericks? Could the monuments at Göbekli Tepe be the legacy of a great civilization predating every other we currently know about? Would the ban on assault weapons decrease the number of mass murders in America?

Michael Shermer's new book is a collection of 27 of his essays over a wide range of topics as the examples above suggest. They focus on religion, politics, humanism, controversial intellectuals, and most of all, the primacy of free speech.