Just like in The Golden Rendezvous, the main characters in The Last Frontier are very lively and memorable. But there is one big difference: in the first novel the main characters were people with non-fighting jobs (mostly seamen) and in this novel the main characters are involved in secret-agent/spying/underground activities. All of them.
The Last Frontier is a page turner. It’s basically a thriller about a secret agent on a mission behind the Iron Curtain. There is lots of action and lots of plot twists. The best parts are those based on confrontations, usually between two people. And all kinds of confrontations are great in this book: melee-fights, long-range shootouts, false-papers bluffs, interrogations of captured men, negotiations with enemies and even good-guys animosity about a girl. Don’t worry about the last one – it’s a tiny, almost non-existent side-topic, which is done very well nonetheless.
There is some humour in this book, but much less than in The Golden Rendezvous. Obviously the topic connected with a totalitarian system was not helpful in this case.
I must also point out that the places of action in The Last Frontier are much more varied than in The Night Without End (Greenland ice-sheet) and The Golden Rendezvous (a sea ship). I can’t name them, because it would be like giving spoilers, but believe me there are many memorable settings. Alistair MacLean was really an artist as far as short-but-good-and-climatic descriptions were concerned.
All the action takes places in Hungary, but two most important people in the Hungarian underground who are friends and who help Reynolds in his mission are a Ukrainian and a Pole. I have no idea if MacLean did it on purpose, but it was fitting perfectly to the message of the book. Poland and Ukraine have some very difficult history behind them, considering especially what happened in Volhynia and Eastern Galicia during World War II (Ukrainians massacred around 100 000 Poles, including women and children), but I believe that young generations should not be blamed for what their ancestors did. The message of the book is perfectly fitting to my beliefs. Or maybe my beliefs are based on the message of this book? I have read The Last Frontier for the first time when I was a teenager and it may have had some kind of influence on the way I look at such things.
Well, I have to write a little about negatives. First of all, some things were too easy for Reynolds (the secret agent from the West). I was especially surprised how easily he entered a heavily-guarded hotel to contact a particular person and how easily he left it. I was also disturbed by things like hotel-fire escapes connected to hotel-bathrooms, not only in the hotel I mentioned, but also in another one. Maybe such things were common in the 50s in the West, but I doubt they were common behind the Iron Curtain then, even in Budapest. Fortunately there were few such things in the book, but when they did happen they were very striking, at least to me.
The main problem with this book were numerous historical inaccuracies especially about the World War II. MacLean wrote about those times to give a background for one of the characters, but exaggerated some facts and simplified others. At first I wanted to correct all the inaccuracies but there were too many of them. Moreover it would only distract you from the positive message of the book and its overall great value. There was a seed of truth in everything MacLean wrote, but don’t take this book as a precise historical account. Concentrate on the enjoyable action and on the message.
Below there are some spoiler-free quotes to give you some idea about what message this book contains. The construction of the main plot makes it impossible to quote anything about it without spoilers, but the bulk of the book is fast and enjoyable action. The message however is true even today. The Last Frontier was not well received in 1959 – at the peak of the Cold War and I wonder how it would be judged today. The parts that I quote below are only a part of the overall message and they can be fully appreciated only after reading the whole book (with all the tragic history of the main characters from beyond the Iron Curtain and tough decisions they have to make while helping Reynolds). Enjoy!
(…) Again, the emotional colourings which would normally accompany the thought of the potentialities of a successful mission or the tragic consequences of failure had no part in his racing mind as he lay there in the freezing snow, thinking, calculating, planning, assessing chances with a cold and remote detachment. ‘The job, the job, always the job on hand’ the colonel had repeated once, twice, a thousand times. ‘Success or failure in what you do may be desperately important to others, but it must never matter a damn to you. For you, Reynolds, consequences do not exist and must never be allowed to exist, and for two reasons: thinking about them upsets your balance and impairs your judgement – and every second you give up to thinking along these negative lines is always a second that should and must be used to working out how you’re going to achieve the job on hand.’
‘By all the gods!’ (...) slapped his hand on his thigh. It’s magnificent, it’s really magnificent. My professional jealously is aroused. To have a Britisher or an American – British, I think, the American intonation is almost impossible to conceal – talk Hungarian with a Budapest accent as perfectly as you do is no small feat. But to have an Englishman talk English with a Budapest accent – that is superb!’
‘Their barbarities, their enslavement and their massacres don’t steam from world conquest?’ The fractional lift of Reynolds’ eyebrows was its own sceptical comment. ‘You tell me that?’
‘I do.’
‘Then from what in the world –?’
‘From fear, Mr Reynolds,’ Jansci interrupted. ‘From an almost terror-stricken fear that has no parallel among governments of modern times.
‘They are afraid because the ground lost in leadership is almost irrecoverable: Malenkov’s concessions of 1953, Kruschev’s famous de-Stalinization speech of 1956 and his forced decentralization of all industry were contrary to all the cherished ideas of Communist infallibility and centralized control, but they had to be done, in the interest of efficiency and production – and the people have smelled Freedom. And they are afraid because their Secret Police has slipped and slipped badly: Beria is dead, the NKVD in Russia are not nearly so feared as the AVO in this country, so the belief in the power of authority, of the inevitability of punishment, has slipped also.
‘These fears are of their own people. But these fears are nothing compared to their fears of the outside world. (…) They cannot recognize enemies, and they can only be safe, only feel safe, if all the peoples of the outside world are regarded as enemies. Especially the west. They fear the west and, from their point of view, they fear with every reason.
‘They are afraid of a western world that, they think, is unfriendly and hostile and just waiting its chance. How terrified would you be, Mr Reynolds if you were ringed, as Russia is ringed, with nuclear bomb bases in England and Europe and North Africa and the Middle East and Japan? How much more terrified would you be if, every time the world tensions increase, fleets of foreign bombers appear mysteriously on the far edge of your long-distance radar screens, if you know, beyond any reasonable doubt, that whenever such tensions arise there are, at any given moment of the day or night anywhere between 500 and 1,000 bombers of the American Strategic Air Command each with its hydrogen bomb, cruising high in the stratosphere, just waiting the signal to converge on Russia and destroy it. You have to have an awful lot of missiles, Mr Reynolds, and an almost supernatural confidence in them to forget those thousands hydrogen bombs already airborne – and it only requires five per cent of them to get through, as they inevitably would. Or how would you, in Britain, feel if Russia were pouring arms into Southern Ireland, or the Americans if a Russian aircraft carrier fleet armed with hydrogen bombs cruised indefinitely in the Gulf of Mexico? Try to imagine all that , Mr Reynolds, and you can perhaps begin to imagine – only begin, for the imagination can be only a shadow of reality – how the Russians feel.
‘Nor does their fear stop there. They are afraid of people who try to interpret everything in the limited light of their own particular culture, who believe that all people, the world over, are basically the same. A common assumption, and a stupid one and dangerous one. The cleavage between western and Slavonic minds and ways of thinking, the differences between their culture patterns are immense and alas, unrealized.
‘Finally, but perhaps above all, they are afraid of the penetration of western ideas into their own country. And that is why the satellite countries are so invaluable to them as a cordon sanitaire, an insulation against dangerous capitalist influences. And that’s why revolt in one of their satellites, as in this country two years last October, brings out all that is worst in the Russian leaders. They reacted with such incredible violence because they saw in this Budapest rising the culmination, the fulfilment as one and the same time of their three nightmare fears – that their entire satellite empire might go up in smoke and the cordon sanitaire vanish forever, that even a degree of success could have touched off a similar revolt in Russia and, most terrible of all, that a large-scale conflagration from the Baltic to the Black Sea would have given the Americans all the excuse or reason they ever needed to give the green light to the Strategic Air Command and carriers of the Sixth Fleet. I know, you know, that idea’s fantastic, but we are not dealing with facts, only with what the Russian leaders believe to be facts.’
Jansci drained his glass and looked quizzically at Reynolds. ‘You begin to see now, I hope, why I was neither advocate of nor participant in the October rising. You begin to see, perhaps, why the revolt just had to be crushed, and the bigger and more serious the revolt the more terrible would have to be the repression, to preserve the cordon, to discourage other satellites or any of their own people who might be having similar ideas. You begin to see the hopelessness – the fore-doomed hopelessness – of it, the disastrous ill-judged futility of it all. The only effect it had was to strengthen Russia’s position among the other satellites, kill and maim countless thousands of Hungarians, destroy and damage over 20,000 houses, bring inflation and an almost mortal blow to the country’s economy. It should never have happened. Only, as I say, the anger of despair is always blind: noble anger can be magnificent thing, but annihilation has its – ah – drawbacks.’
(…) ‘Sorry to have been so long, Jansci.’
‘Not at all,’ Jansci, assured him. ‘Mr Reynolds and I have had the most interesting discussion.’
‘About Russians, inevitably?’
‘Inevitably.’
‘And Mr Reynolds was all for conversion by annihilation?’
‘More or less.’ Jansci smiled. ‘It’s not so long since you felt the same way yourself.’
‘Age comes to us all.’ (…)
‘Then what the devil am I supposed to have done?’
‘Nothing. That’s the whole point. It’s not what you do, it’s what you don’t do, it’s what you don’t show. You show no feelings, no emotions, no interest or concern in anything. Oh, yes, you’re interested enough in the job to be done, but the method, the how of it is a matter of absolute indifference, just as long as the job is done.
‘The Count says you’re only a machine, a mechanism designed to carry out a certain piece of work, but without any life or existence as an individual. He says you’re about the only person he knows who cannot be afraid, and he is afraid of people who cannot be afraid. Imagine! The Count afraid!’
‘Imagine,’ Reynolds murmured politely.
‘Jansci says the same. He says you’re neither moral nor immoral, just amoral, with certain conditioned pro-British, anti-Communist reactions that are valueless in themselves. He says whether you kill or not is decided not on a basis of wrong or right but simply of expediency. He says that you are the same as hundreds of young men he has met in the NKVD, the Waffen SS and other such organizations, men who obey blindly and kill blindly without ever asking themselves whether it is right or wrong. The only difference, my father says, is that you would never kill wantonly. But that is the only difference.’
‘I make friends wherever I go,’ Reynolds murmured.
Jansci was wandering, not arguing, and he drifted from his own people to his youth amongst them. The transition seemed pointless, inconsequential at first, but Jansci was not an aimless wanderer, almost everything he did or said or thought was concerned with reinforcing and consolidating, both in himself and all his listeners, his almost obsessive faith in the oneness of humanity. When he spoke of his boyhood and young manhood in his own country, it could have been any person, of any creed, remembering with a fond nostalgia the happiest ours of a happy land. (…)
‘Mad?’ Reynolds swore. ‘He’s an inhuman fiend. Tell me, Jansci, is that the sort of man you call your brother? You still believe in the oneness of humanity?’
‘An inhuman fiend?’ Jansci murmured. ‘Very well, let us admit it. But at the same time let us not forget that inhumanity knows no frontiers, no frontiers in either time or space. It’s hardly the exclusive perquisite of Russians, you know. God only knows how many thousands of Hungarians have been executed or tortured till death came as a welcome release – by their fellow Hungarians. The Czech SSB – their secret police – were on a par with NKVD, and the Polish UB – composed almost entirely of Poles – were responsible for worse atrocities than the Russians had ever dreamed of.’
(…)
‘(…) And to all of that you might say: It is all one, it is all communism. And you would be right, my boy.
‘But what would you say if I reminded you of the cruelties of Falangist Spain, of Buchenwald and Belsen, of the gas chambers of Auschwitz, of the Japanese prison camps, the death railways of not so long ago? Again you would have the ready answer. All these things flourish under a totalitarian regime. But I said also that inhumanity has no frontiers in time. Go back a century or two. Go back to the days when the two great upholders of democracy were not quite as mature as they are today. Go back to the days when the British were building up their Empire, to some of the most ruthless colonization the world has ever seen, go back to the days when they were shipping slaves packed like sardines in a tin, across to America – and the Americans themselves were driving the Indian off the face of their continent. And what then my boy?’
(…)
‘(…) As to what I was saying, I fear that I talk too much and at the wrong time. You don’t feel even a little more kindly disposed towards our worthy commandant?’
‘No!’
‘Ah, well,’ Jansci sighed philosophically. ‘Understanding the reasons for an avalanche does not, I suppose, make one any more grateful for being pinned beneath it.’
‘It is essential, I think, to hammer home the idea of peace, the idea of disarmament, to convince the Russians, above all things, of our peaceful intentions. Peaceful intentions!’ Jansci laughed without mirth. ‘The British and the Americans filling the armouries of the nations of Western Europe with hydrogen bombs – what a way to demonstrate peaceful intentions, what a way rather to ensure Russia will never relax its grip on the satellites it no longer wants, what a way to drive the men of the Kremlin, scared men, I tell you, inexorably nearer the last thing in the world they want to do – sending the first intercontinental missile on its way: the last thing they want to do, because they know better than any that, though in the deep cellars in Moscow they may survive the retaliation that will surely come, they will never survive the vengeful fury of the crazed survivors of the holocaust that will just as surely engulf their own nation. To arm Europe is to provoke the Russians to the point of madness: whatever else we may not do, it is essential to avoid all provocation, to keep the door of negotiation and approach always open, no matter what the rebuffs may be.’
‘It is essential to watch ‘em like hawks, I would say,’ Reynolds commented.
‘Alas, I thought we had made him see the light,’ the Count mourned. ‘Perhaps we never will.’
‘Perhaps not,' Jansci agreed. ‘But he’s right, all the same. In the one hand the big gun, in the other the olive branch. But the safety-catch must always be on, and the hand of peace always a little in advance, and you must be endlessly patient – rashness, impatience could bring the world to catastrophe. Patience, endless patience. What matter a blow to your pride when the peace of the world is at stake?’
(…)
Jansci paused and wearily shook his head. ‘The governments of the world may not be mad, but they are blind and their blindness is but one step removed from insanity. The desperate, most urgent need this world knows or will ever know, is the need for an effort without parallel in history to get to know ourselves and the other people of the world even as well as we know ourselves, and then we will see that the other man is just as we are, that right and virtue and truth belong to him as much as to us. We must think of people not as conglomerate mass, not conveniently, indiscriminately, as a faceless nation: we must always remember that a nation is made of millions of little human beings just like we are, and to talk about national sin and guilt and wickedness is to be wilfully blind, unjust and un-Christian; and while it is true that such a nation may go off the rails, it never goes off because it wants to, but because it couldn’t help it, because there was something in its past or in its environment that inescapably made it what it is to-day, just as some forgotten incidents, some influences that we can neither recall nor understand, has made each one of us what we are to-day.’
Before the 2024-25 season is over I have to make mathematical projections of the MVP and the MFP values. The assumption behind the projections is that every player and every team will play exactly the same way they have been playing so far (the numbers of projected team wins are rounded to whole numbers).
With the assumptions described above, the current NBA 2025 MVP race list is this:
1. Shai Gilgeous-Alexander: 2866.3 (projected team wins: 67)
2. Nikola Jokic: 2146.2 (projected team wins: 49)
3. Jayson Tatum: 2066.4 (projected team wins: 61)
4. Donovan Mitchell: 1845.8 (projected team wins: 65)
5. Karl-Anthony Towns: 1784.6 (projected team wins: 53)
6. Evan Mobley: 1738.1 (projected team wins: 65)
7. Darius Garland: 1711.3 (projected team wins: 65)
8. Jalen Williams: 1710.3 (projected team wins: 67)
9. Jarrett Allen: 1685.8 (projected team wins: 65)
10. Giannis Antetokounmpo: 1637.2 (projected team wins: 46)
11. Anthony Edwards: 1603.6 (projected team wins: 48)
12. LeBron James: 1566.1 (projected team wins: 50)
13. Derrick White: 1505.9 (projected team wins: 61)
14. James Harden: 1498.2 (projected team wins: 48)
15. Alperen Sengun: 1495.9 (projected team wins: 54)
16. Tyrese Haliburton: 1441.6 (projected team wins: 49)
17. Jalen Brunson: 1427.3 (projected team wins: 53)
18. Josh Hart: 1405.0 (projected team wins: 53)
19. Ivica Zubac: 1394.8 (projected team wins: 48)
20. Pascal Siakam: 1382.5 (projected team wins: 49)
Shai Gilgeous-Alexander will be the winner of the race – the remaining few games won't change anything in this regard. There are many new faces on the list (when compared to previous seasons), but to me the most surprising one is Josh Hart! Respect to all of them!
With the same assumptions (described above) the current NBA 2025 MFP list is this:
1. Jordan Poole: 927.1 (projected team wins: 18)
2. Miles Bridges: 903.1 (projected team wins: 20)
3. Tyrese Maxey: 799.8 (projected team wins: 24)
4. Walker Kessler: 788.8 (projected team wins: 17)
5. Keyonte George: 768.3 (projected team wins: 17)
6. LaMelo Ball: 764.7 (projected team wins: 20)
7. Collin Sexton: 754.2 (projected team wins: 17)
8. Trey Murphy III: 746.6 (projected team wins: 22)
9. Devin Booker: 713.9 (projected team wins: 37)
10. Tyler Herro: 706.5 (projected team wins: 37)
11. CJ McCollum: 705.0 (projected team wins: 22)
12. Cameron Johnson: 655.6 (projected team wins: 26)
13. Kevin Durant: 651.3 (projected team wins: 37)
14. Scottie Barnes: 650.2 (projected team wins: 30)
15. Bub Carrington: 649.1 (projected team wins: 18)
16. Trae Young: 645.8 (projected team wins: 39)
17. Bam Adebayo: 641.2 (projected team wins: 37)
18. Alex Sarr: 635.2 (projected team wins: 18)
19. Lauri Markkanen: 624.4 (projected team wins: 17)
20. Yves Missi: 611.3 (projected team wins: 22)
There is not a single player in the top-20 both on the MVP list and on the MFP list.
I have just learned that Miami Heat suspended Jimmy Butler indefinitely! Reportedly he walked out of a shootaround after learning that he would be coming off the bench from now on.
I hope that no team will trade for him and that he will waste the rest of this season without pay! In that case it would be VERY interesting if he would opt-in to his player option for the next season.
The Chicago Bulls front office impressed me again and this is NOT sarcasm! I really mean it.
I loved their decision to stand pat at the last trade deadline and I love their decision to now trade Alex Caruso away as quickly as possible.
I think that before the last trade deadline some of the other teams claimed that they were interested in Zach LaVine, but in fact wanted Caruso just as much as LaVine FOR THE SAME TOTAL PRICE. I think it was the reason why the Chicago Bulls front office didn't do ANYTHING at the last trade deadline – they didn't want to give Caruso away “for free”.
Now they traded Caruso away as quickly as possible and it feels like showing a finger to all those other teams that wanted to fleece them. Now the other teams that claim they are interested in Zach LaVine have to come up with a good offer just for LaVine. Do you want (just) Lavine? Then prove your real interest by giving a good offer!
The same thing applies to the LaVine's agent – do you claim you can find a good trade for (just) LaVine? Then prove it!
I have to add that I am devastated that some Internet sites that “seem to be all about Chicago Bulls” constantly criticize the Chicago Bulls front office, blindly repeating all kind of crap being spread by the other teams that want to fleece the Chicago Bulls.
In a recent article about the Caruso trade I found a quote that suggested that the Chicago Bulls front office wanted (at the last trade deadline) as many as 4 first-round picks for Caruso. This is BULLSHIT. I am 100% sure that it was the price for both LaVine and Caruso, so quoting such a misleading claim is completely pathetic.
On the same (supposedly “all about Chicago Bulls”) site I found an even worse thing – one of the proposed trades (after the Caruso trade) was this: LaVine (to 76ers) for a single SECOND round draft pick! A player like LaVine just for a single SECOND round draft pick! What a fucking disgrace proposing such a deal!
The Chicago Bulls front office impressed me by trading Caruso away as quickly as possible and I firmly believe that they won't “trade” LaVine away for such a pathetically low price. Good job, guys!
2024 World Snooker Championship has just started and already there were 5 results that I liked very much! These players already advanced to the second round:
David Gilbert
Stephen Maguire
Shaun Murphy
Judd Trump
Stuart Bingham
There are several other players I like very much who can still advance to the second round, so it can get only better. Something tells me it will be a truly great tournament overall!
Before the 2023-24 season is over I have to make mathematical projections of the MVP and the MFP values. The assumption behind the projections is that every player and every team will play exactly the same way they have been playing so far (the numbers of projected team wins are rounded to whole numbers).
With the assumptions described above, the current NBA 2024 MVP race list is this:
1. Nikola Jokic: 2524.9 (projected team wins: 57)
2. Shai Gilgeous-Alexander: 2215.9 (projected team wins: 57)
3. Jayson Tatum: 2188.8 (projected team wins: 64)
4. Luka Doncic: 2172.5 (projected team wins: 51)
5. Giannis Antetokounmpo: 1995.3 (projected team wins: 50)
6. Anthony Edwards: 1800.8 (projected team wins: 57)
7. Anthony Davis: 1755.5 (projected team wins: 47)
8. Domantas Sabonis: 1699.4 (projected team wins: 46)
9. Jalen Brunson: 1694.7 (projected team wins: 50)
10. Kevin Durant: 1658.0 (projected team wins: 49)
11. Chet Holmgren: 1598.8 (projected team wins: 57)
12. Jaylen Brown: 1590.6 (projected team wins: 64)
13. LeBron James: 1543.6 (projected team wins: 47)
14. Damian Lillard: 1490.1 (projected team wins: 50)
15. Kawhi Leonard: 1480.1 (projected team wins: 52)
16. Derrick White: 1478.1 (projected team wins: 64)
17. Paul George: 1477.6 (projected team wins: 52)
18. Devin Booker: 1475.2 (projected team wins: 49)
19. Rudy Gobert: 1470.6 (projected team wins: 57)
20. Stephen Curry: 1449.9 (projected team wins: 46)
Nikola Jokic will be the winner of the race. One (last) game of the season won't change anything in this regard. Towards the end of the race Shai Gilgeous-Alexander suffered an injury, which ruined his chances. Otherwise he would be very close to winning. Jayson Tatum's team has the best record, but Tatum's per-game value is too low. It doesn't matter because his team is focused on winning the NBA championship. Luka Doncic's team record is too low plus he missed 11 games (13.4% of the season, which is 1/7.5th) and this is why Doncic is only 4th.
With the same assumptions (described above) the current NBA 2024 MFP list is this:
1. Victor Wembanyama: 1170.0 (projected team wins: 21)
2. Kyle Kuzma: 1085.5 (projected team wins: 15)
3. Cade Cunningham: 1019.9 (projected team wins: 14)
4. Miles Bridges: 962.2 (projected team wins: 20)
5. Deni Avdija: 952.3 (projected team wins: 15)
6. Jordan Poole: 902.6 (projected team wins: 15)
7. Jalen Duren: 875.5 (projected team wins: 14)
8. Devin Vassell: 845.0 (projected team wins: 21)
9. Scottie Barnes: 817.0 (projected team wins: 25)
10. Tyus Jones: 810.9 (projected team wins: 15)
11. Jaden Ivey: 807.6 (projected team wins: 14)
12. Brandon Miller: 789.1 (projected team wins: 20)
13. Corey Kispert: 762.7 (projected team wins: 15)
14. Jaren Jackson Jr.: 742.8 (projected team wins: 27)
15. Keldon Johnson: 719.2 (projected team wins: 21)
16. Mikal Bridges: 706.5 (projected team wins: 32)
17. Deandre Ayton: 704.1 (projected team wins: 21)
18. Dejounte Murray: 696.5 (projected team wins: 36)
19. Tre Jones: 688.4 (projected team wins: 21)
20. Collin Sexton: 679.9 (projected team wins: 31)
Victor Wembanyama is at the top of the MFP list. I bet many people thought he would make a great turnaround for the Spurs, like David Robinson did in his rookie year. Well, Robinson had also Willie Anderson (10th pick from the previous draft) and Sean Elliot (3rd pick from the current draft), while he was 1st pick from the draft 2 years before (he had to serve 2 years of military service), so such expectations for Wembanyama were clearly unfair. But Gregg Popovich didn't help with achieving a better team record either.
There is not a single player in the top-20 both on the MVP list and on the MFP list.
Before the 2023-24 season is over I have to make mathematical projections of the MVP and the MFP values. The assumption behind the projections is that every player and every team will play exactly the same way they have been playing so far (the numbers of projected team wins are rounded to whole numbers).
With the assumptions described above, the current NBA 2024 MVP race list is this:
1. Shai Gilgeous-Alexander: 2436.5 (projected team wins: 56)
2. Nikola Jokic: 2340.9 (projected team wins: 54)
3. Jayson Tatum: 2295.2 (projected team wins: 64)
4. Giannis Antetokounmpo: 2178.5 (projected team wins: 51)
5. Luka Doncic: 2013.3 (projected team wins: 48)
6. Anthony Edwards: 1819.0 (projected team wins: 58)
7. Donovan Mitchell: 1794.9 (projected team wins: 56)
8. Karl-Anthony Towns: 1793.8 (projected team wins: 58)
9. Kawhi Leonard: 1781.7 (projected team wins: 56)
10. Domantas Sabonis: 1778.0 (projected team wins: 47)
11. Kevin Durant: 1688.6 (projected team wins: 49)
12. Anthony Davis: 1654.7 (projected team wins: 44)
13. Jalen Brunson: 1633.0 (projected team wins: 49)
14. Paul George: 1618.0 (projected team wins: 56)
15. Chet Holmgren: 1604.7 (projected team wins: 56)
16. Jaylen Brown: 1602.6 (projected team wins: 64)
17. James Harden: 1584.5 (projected team wins: 56)
18. Joel Embiid: 1560.0 (projected team wins: 49)
19. Damian Lillard: 1547.4 (projected team wins: 51)
20. Rudy Gobert: 1535.0 (projected team wins: 58)
Shai Gilgeous-Alexander is the leader of the race! Respect! However, if I had to guess I would say that the race will be won by Jayson Tatum. We'll see.
With the same assumptions (described above) the current NBA 2024 MFP list is this:
1. Victor Wembanyama: 1243.4 (projected team wins: 16)
2. Kyle Kuzma: 1207.7 (projected team wins: 14)
3. Cade Cunningham: 1076.5 (projected team wins: 12)
4. Tyus Jones: 1035.6 (projected team wins: 14)
5. Scottie Barnes: 1011.7 (projected team wins: 28)
6. Deni Avdija: 1011.1 (projected team wins: 14)
7. Devin Vassell: 997.0 (projected team wins: 16)
8. Miles Bridges: 936.9 (projected team wins: 20)
9. Jalen Duren: 901.0 (projected team wins: 12)
10. Keldon Johnson: 899.7 (projected team wins: 16)
11. Jaden Ivey: 849.1 (projected team wins: 12)
12. Jerami Grant: 822.0 (projected team wins: 23)
13. Jordan Poole: 799.8 (projected team wins: 14)
14. Trae Young: 783.8 (projected team wins: 36)
15. Jeremy Sochan: 769.4 (projected team wins: 16)
16. Jaren Jackson Jr.: 769.2 (projected team wins: 29)
17. Mikal Bridges: 764.5 (projected team wins: 32)
18. Brandon Miller: 741.5 (projected team wins: 20)
19. Alperen Sengun: 740.1 (projected team wins: 36)
20. Ausar Thompson: 721.0 (projected team wins: 12)
Victor Wembanyama is at the top of the MFP list. What a terrible season by the San Antonio Spurs, but it's obviously not the fault of Wembanyama.
There is not a single player in the top-20 both on the MVP list and on the MFP list.
Before the 2023-24 season is over I have to make mathematical projections of the MVP and the MFP values. The assumption behind the projections is that every player and every team will play exactly the same way they have been playing so far (the numbers of projected team wins are rounded to whole numbers).
With the assumptions described above, the current NBA 2024 MVP race list is this:
1. Joel Embiid: 2701.7 (projected team wins: 59)
2. Giannis Antetokounmpo: 2537.9 (projected team wins: 62)
3. Nikola Jokic: 2455.1 (projected team wins: 56)
4. Shai Gilgeous-Alexander: 2338.5 (projected team wins: 55)
5. Jayson Tatum: 2217.6 (projected team wins: 64)
6. Damian Lillard: 2089.5 (projected team wins: 62)
7. Tyrese Maxey: 2089.1 (projected team wins: 59)
8. Luka Doncic: 2078.1 (projected team wins: 48)
9. Karl-Anthony Towns: 1990.0 (projected team wins: 64)
10. Anthony Edwards: 1831.1 (projected team wins: 64)
11. Domantas Sabonis: 1717.3 (projected team wins: 50)
12. Jaylen Brown: 1715.4 (projected team wins: 64)
13. Rudy Gobert: 1647.8 (projected team wins: 64)
14. Anthony Davis: 1621.0 (projected team wins: 44)
15. Chet Holmgren: 1616.1 (projected team wins: 55)
16. Derrick White: 1571.0 (projected team wins: 64)
17. Jalen Brunson: 1561.8 (projected team wins: 47)
18. Kawhi Leonard: 1543.1 (projected team wins: 48)
19. LeBron James: 1528.9 (projected team wins: 44)
20. De'Aaron Fox: 1482.0 (projected team wins: 50)
Early results are always too optimistic, but very interesting nevertheless. To me the most notable things are that Shai Gilgeous-Alexander is 4th and Tyrese Maxey is 7th.
With the same assumptions (described above) the current NBA 2024 MFP list is this:
1. Cade Cunningham: 1435.2 (projected team wins: 6)
2. Kyle Kuzma: 1291.2 (projected team wins: 15)
3. Victor Wembanyama: 1229.3 (projected team wins: 12)
4. Keldon Johnson: 1142.3 (projected team wins: 12)
5. Desmond Bane: 1057.4 (projected team wins: 26)
6. Scottie Barnes: 989.8 (projected team wins: 31)
7. Tyus Jones: 967.4 (projected team wins: 15)
8. Zach Collins: 946.7 (projected team wins: 12)
9. Trae Young: 935.6 (projected team wins: 34)
10. Ausar Thompson: 926.0 (projected team wins: 6)
11. Jaren Jackson Jr.: 914.8 (projected team wins: 26)
12. Daniel Gafford: 890.2 (projected team wins: 15)
13. Devin Vassell: 885.9 (projected team wins: 12)
14. Jerami Grant: 874.5 (projected team wins: 21)
15. Deni Avdija: 867.7 (projected team wins: 15)
16. Isaiah Stewart: 853.4 (projected team wins: 6)
17. Pascal Siakam: 827.1 (projected team wins: 31)
18. Jordan Poole: 822.1 (projected team wins: 15)
19. Terry Rozier: 777.0 (projected team wins: 21)
20. Jeremy Sochan: 771.2 (projected team wins: 12)
Victor Wembanyama is 3rd on the MFP list, mostly because his team won only 4 games out of 28 played so far. It doesn't speak well about Gregg Popovich at all (I am pretty sure that he also has a big influence on the front office of his team, so he's responsible for the “weak team” anyway). As far as pure coaching is concerned, for comparison, Ime Udoka coached his team to 15 wins in 27 games, which is a knock-out against Popovich.
There is not a single player in the top-20 both on the MVP list and on the MFP list.
Jayson Tatum won the race, but his per-game value was not so special. Joel Embiid, the official MVP, was second on my race list, which means that my calculations once again were almost perfect.
I must admit that Embiid really surprised me this year – last year I thought that it was then the best opportunity ever to give him the MVP award and yet he came up with an even better season. Respect!
I have to point out that James Harden finished the race at the 13th place, but he played only in 58 games. Quite an achievement.
This book (The Day We Found the Universe by Marcia Bartusiak) is so good that it should be in print forever! Unfortunately it seems that it's not in print anymore – I had to buy a used one.
I. Extremely accessible style of writing.
This book reads like a novel and yet it contains so much astronomical info that it's hard to describe. Reading the book was a very pleasant experience.
II. Little known facts from history.
This book is mostly about astronomy and astronomers, but there are also some fun facts about the second half of the XIX century and about the early XX century. Among others it's about how first professional observatories were founded and/or financed and about how the American society was changing over time.
III. Astronomers who don’t get enough credit.
I’ve learned about many astronomers who were as important and as good (sometimes even better) than Edwin Hubble, but they were active much earlier, so they simply had inferior equipment. They all have one thing in common – they don’t get enough credit for what they had done.
This is why my review is so long – I wanted to at least mention some of them (they never appear in just one Internet article, but are “spread out” over different topics). This is my (mini) tribute to them.
III.1. James Keeler (who died unexpectedly in 1900 at the age of only 42).
Keeler discovered that the number of nebulas (what we now generally call faint fuzzies) was much bigger than what the famous William Herschel thought, by extensively using photography combined with a reflecting telescope.
Some photographs that taken by Keeler were completely stunning to other astronomers from that time. On this page there's an example (Orion Nebula):
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crossley_telescope
James Keeler was also a master of spectroscopy and in 1985 he proved (by detecting The Doppler effect) that the rings of Saturn (or rather their particular parts) orbit the planet with different speeds (the closer to the planet the faster they move) – the theory came from James Clerk Maxwell in 1856.
III.2. Heber Curtis (the “winner” of the Great Debate from 1920).
From 1902 to 1920 Curtis continued the work of Keeler on nebulas by using the same reflecting telescope, so if Keeler hadn't died unexpectedly Curtis maybe wouldn't have taken part in the Great Debate at all (it could have been Keeler in his place).
His “win” in the Great Debate was not really complete – he was right that (some of) the nebulas were other galaxies far away, but he was also WRONG that our galaxy was only 30 000 light-yers wide and that our Sun was close to the center of our galaxy (he shared a typical view of our galaxy then).
Ironically Curtis “gave up” the race for determining the distance to M31 (or other “spiral nebulae”) just months after the Great Debate by leaving the Lick Observatory to become director of the Allegheny Observatory in Pittsburgh – a much worse location for astronomical observations.
III.3. Vesto Slipher (who made the second Edwin Hubble's big discovery – redshift increase with distance – much easier).
Already in 1914 Slipher presented his paper titled “Spectrographic Observations of Nebulae” where he described that of the 15 nebulas he had observed that far 3 were approaching Earth and the rest were moving away, some of them with huge velocities (Slipher got a standing ovation with Hubble present in the audience).
https://ui.adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/1915PA.....23...21S/abstract
By 1925 nearly all of 45 measured velocities of the “spiral nebulae” were Slipher's, but when Hubble used Slipher's velocities he didn't credit Slipher at all in 1929 or didn't credit Slipher properly in 1931. Only after 2 DECADES, in 1953, Hubble gave Slipher proper credit, admitting that Slipher “had contributed 42 out of 46 nebular velocities then available”.
Fortunately other astronomers knew that Slipher deserved significant credit and “the Royal Astronomical Society presented its highest award, the Gold Medal, to him in 1933”.
III.4. Henrietta Leavitt (who discovered and measured Cepheid variables).
Cepheid variables turned out to be crucial for determining distances to globular clusters or to other galaxies. Leavitt discovered them while working as one of women “computers” (which was Edward Pickering's idea). In the following fragment of the book – about George Hale – there is a funny quote (with reversed order of words) from an article by Vera Rubin (“People, stars, and scopes” in Science vol. 309 from 2005): “Pickering discovered women and Hale discovered money”.
https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.1117658
III.5. Harlow Shapley (the “loser” of the Great Debate from 1920).
I must admit that I have been impressed by what I learned from the book about Shapley. Some people remember him only as the “loser” (of the Great Debate), but the reality was completely different. Moreover his story is quite inspiring. I also liked the fact that he had a strong sense of humor that was often self-depreciating.
Shapley grew up on a farm and his father was a hay dealer. Later, in order to save enough money to go to college, he worked for some newspapers as a reporter, including a crime/police reporter. This fact probably explains why he sometimes overreached in his own theories and conclusions, but he was right in many astronomy cases anyway.
Shapley concentrated on finding distances to globular clusters and discovered that they are very far. He was the first to claim that out galaxy was much bigger than it was previously believed – he “won” the Great Debate in this regard, however he overestimated its size (300 000 light-years instead of 100 000 light-years). He was also right that the Solar System wasn't near the center of our galaxy.
His biggest mistakes were not trying to find Cepheid variables in “spiral nebulas” AND blindly believing in what his friend Adriaan van Maanen was claiming – that the spiral nebulas were (slightly) rotating over several years (which “proved” that they had to be relatively close). This is why he “lost” the debate as far as the locations of spiral nebulas were concerned (he thought they were in our galaxy instead of outside).
It's interesting to note that there is no transcript of the actual Great Debate and the articles published a year later were actually deepened and extended. “It was the written version, vastly altered and amended, that ultimately established the legend handed down by succeeding generations of astronomers, many coming to believe it was the bona fide transcript of the April scrap”.
Shapley was even worse than Hubble at (not) giving credit to other people, especially to Henrietta Leavitt and Ejnar Hertzsprung (who was first to “calibrate” the relationship discovered by Leavitt), but Shapley actually did his own calibration of Cepheid variables and used several additional assumptions, combining them with his immense work on globular clusters.
Shapley was a little “too brave” in his far-reaching assumptions, but he was also able to change his views. After Hubble presented his findings about the distance to M31, Shapley understood what they meant – that the spiral nebulas weren't part of our galaxy. It created a kind of rift between Shapley and his friend van Maanen (who was more stubborn before admitting that his rotating spiral nebulas must have been a mistake).
By the way: Shapley also made some very interesting observation of ants (the animals). “He began to study the travels of ants around the observatory, noticing that the higher the temperature, the quicker their pace. One species ran fifteen times faster once the Sun heated the insects by an additional 30ºC. (…) His findings were published in scientific journals.”
As for Shapley's self-depreciating humor (and Marcia Bartusiak's fantastic style of writing) here's an example:
“(… ) Finishing up in 1907, at the age of twenty-one, he at last qualified for admission to the University of Missouri, just as his schoolteacher mother had always desired.
Given his years of experience reporting on midwestern mishaps, Shapley had always intended to major in journalism, but upon arriving on campus he discovered that the promised opening of the university's School of Journalism had been delayed. “So there I was,” said Shapley later in life, “all dressed up for a university education and nowhere to go. 'I’ll show them' must have been my feeling. I opened the catalogue of courses and got a further humiliation. The very first course offered was a-r-c-h-a-e-o-l-o-g-y, and I couldn't pronounce it! … I turned over a page and saw a-s-t-r-o-n-o-m-y; I could pronounce that – and here I am!” Shapley, a lover of tall tales since he was a child, was just joking around. He actually was in need of a job, and an offer from Frederick Sears, head of the university's astronomy department, to work for him at 35 cents an hour was likely the deciding factor.”
IV. Edwin Hubble demythologized.
I was actually negatively surprised what kind of person Hubble was – on one hand extremely intelligent and gifted, but on the other hand desperate in search of identity and very insecure about how other people looked at him. Ha came from the Missouri state (exactly like Shapley), but later developed a strong British mannerism, “becoming a full-fledged (some might say rabid) Anglophile”. “Hubble cultivated an air of sophistication and restraint around his colleagues. The cold and standoffish persona of his youth never went away. Hubble kept his distance and maintained a regal air. (…) As other astronomers put it, he was a “stuffed shirt,” who couldn't “write an inter-office memo without it sounding like the Preamble to the Constitution.”
What's worse he was colorizing his story by “adding some dubious credentials to his curriculum vitae” (there are some examples given in the book, but I won't delve into this). His wife (who got to know him only when he was 31) kept repeating his tales after his death, which made it even harder to learn his true story.
What is consistent is the fact the Hubble was actually overly cautious and he tried to avoid making a mistake at all costs. He was so insecure that he hadn't published his findings on the distance to M31 for a very long time, but instead he kept giving some info in his letters to other astronomers. These “leaks” were such a hot topic that the general news got published in the New York Times on 23 November 1924, while there was still no official paper from Hubble. Other astronomers had to almost force Hubble to send his paper to the meeting in Washington, but he didn't come himself! His paper was presented by Henry Russell (on 1 January 1925).
As I already mentioned in the point III.3. when Hubble used Slipher's velocities (in his second big discovery – redshift increase with distance) he didn't credit Slipher at all in 1929 or didn't credit Slipher properly in 1931. Only after 2 DECADES, in 1953, Hubble gave Slipher proper credit, admitting that Slipher contributed 42 out of 46 nebular velocities then available.
“Hubble's redshift increase with distance” was a discovery that was “only” a proof of what some other people predicted earlier by solving Albert Einstein's equations of the general relativity: Willem de Sitter in 1917 (with the assumption of an empty space), Alexander Friedmann in 1922 and Georges Lemaître (a Catholic priest!) in 1927.
Not to mention that Hubble relied heavily on the work of his aide Milton Humason who is hardly ever credited at all.
[On a side note – my own conclusion: Hubble was indeed a great astronomer, but he is extremely overrated nevertheless. Nowadays some people compare him to Isaac Newton or Albert Einstein, but to me such comparisons are simply laughable. Carrying out some observations with the biggest available telescope and seeing a regularity in the results (by Hubble) that confirmed some theories proposed by other people doesn't compare to coming up with great scientific theories (by Newton and Einstein) that were later confirmed by real-life observations. Yes, detailed observations are important, but never on their own. In other words: the one who came up with a great theory seems to be more important than the one who found a great proof of that theory.]
V. Examples of irony of life.
As I already mentioned, the history could have been completely different if Keeler hadn't died unexpectedly at the age of only 42 or if Curtis had stayed at the Lick Observatory much longer.
Now I'd like to describe in a little more detail two of the most ironic moments concerning the very first step in this story (Keeler extensively using astrophotography combined with a reflecting telescope) – it wouldn't be possible without two unlikely “heroes”:
– the controversial first director of the Lick Observatory – Edward Holden,
– bad observing conditions around the Allegheny Observatory in Pittsburgh.
Edward Holden wasn't beloved (to say the least) by the staff members of the Lick Observatory at all: “Holden took his final ride down “Lick Avenue”, the mountain's dusty road, on September 18, 1897. Only one person, a young assistant, went out to say good-bye.” But it was Holden who had hired Keeler to the observatory in 1888 (a very good decision) and it was Holden who brought the Crossley telescope to the observatory in 1895 (another very good decision). In the meantime, in 1891, Keeler left the observatory, partly because he was fed up with Holden (not a conscious decision by Holden, but it worked out very well in the end).
From 1891 to 1897 Keeler was the director of the Allegheny Observatory in Pittsburgh – a much worse location for astronomical observations. “He doggedly tracked down every new advance in spectroscopic and photographic equipment in hope of offsetting Lick Observatory's advantages. The experience, though exhausting, only enhanced his astronomical abilities.”
Keeler, a master of spectroscopy, had known that a reflecting telescope would be clearly better in this regard than a refractor (that absorbed some certain wavelengths selectively, depending on the glass and the lens construction), but in 1896 he “had seen the power of reflectors firsthand while visiting England” – there he met with Isaac Roberts who “displayed the eye-catching photographs taken with his 20-inch reflector. Roberts had pioneered many of the techniques for taking long-term exposures and was the first to reveal that the Andromeda nebula was a spiral”.
These things explain why Keeler, when he became the director of the Lick Observatory in 1898, did everything that was needed to make the Crossley telescope properly functional (it took 4 months) AND used it with a photo camera. What a shame he died so soon after that!
Here's a link to another good review of the book:
https://knopfdoubleday.com/2009/05/20/some-surprising-facts-from-the-day-we-found-the-universe/
This book (The Day We Found the Universe by Marcia Bartusiak) is so good that it should be in print forever!
This is a screenshot from the official Pfizer site (https://www.pfizer.com/news/press-release/press-release-detail/pfizer-and-biontech-receive-us-fda-approval-2023-2024-covid):
When some people (even doctors!) were saying such things during the pandemic then some pro-vaccine fanatics were threatening to jail them. Now it's officially confirmed. Fake news turned out to be true!
PS.
This is a perfect example that taking or not taking such a vaccine should be a personal decision, never obligatory. And that some other doctors (who were claiming that vaccines are 100% safe) were wrong, so nobody should decide what is true and what is fake.
PS #2
How many people died because they didn't seek medical attention right away?
For some time now I have been noticing that more and more Internet articles don't allow any comments, as if whoever wrote a particular article was afraid that people would point out some inconvenient facts.
The most recent infuriating thing is the usual ban on any comments on what is happening in Palestine. When I was young I got deceived many times about who was right and who was wrong, but now I am much older and much wiser and any inconsiderate pro-Israeli propaganda doesn't work on me anymore. On the contrary, any such propaganda looks more and more stupid and/or embarrassing. BOTH sides are are at fault, not only one.
PS.
United Nations (UN) Secretary-General Antonio Guterres summarized the situation very nicely. Please, google it.
(Originally posted on Wednesday, 11 May 2022; updated on 8 June 2022)
I respect all the brave people who say or do what they think is correct. They can be from a minority, like the old-time scientists who realised that Earth is not in the middle of the Solar System. Or they can be from a majority, like people who are not salves – like people who live in a democratic country and who can make their own decisions and have their own opinions. Unfortunately we live in a totally fucked-up times when people from a majority are often afraid to say what they really think! Even in democratic countries!
Respect for all these people:
To be precise:
Respect for the kneeling footballers for not being afraid to kneel.
Respect for the standing footballers for not being afraid to stand.
Respect for the people who prepared the poster for not being afraid to point out (in a hilarious way) that (any) sport shouldn't be mixed with politics.
Respect for ALL of them!
And respect for Elon Musk:
I agree with Elon Musk, but in the last 15 years I've actually moved more to the right side and now I stand smiling (exactly like the conservative on the picture), while looking at the madness of the extreme left side (of the “woke progressive”). And at the confusion of people who used to regard themselves as neutral center – their confusion is similar to Elon Musk's confusion.
And respect for Kevin Sorbo.
I agree with Kevin Sorbo, although I must admit that in some cases abortion technically is not a murder because it's legal. But I agree with him 100% when looking at it from a different perspective – thinking about what is done to a human being who is totally innocent. It's exactly like a murder. And it's pathetic that so many people in the 21st century don't understand their sexual drive! Just think about it – the sexual drive doesn't exist before a person becomes able to procreate. It's ALL about spawning new generations, for crying out loud!
In March 2022 I've become a father for the third time and it was one of the best things that happened to me and to my family as a whole. Everybody's happy! My wife, our children, our mothers (grandmothers of our children) and all our more distant relatives. I have to point out that we didn't plan having the third baby because we are relatively old – this year (2022) I will turn 44 and my wife will turn 42. Yet we didn't think about abortion even for a split of a second!
Respect for all the people who disagree with the tweets above.
I don't agree with people who disagree with the tweets above, but I still respect them. Why? Because they are not afraid to publicly speak about things that are totally different from the natural way of life. Because they are not afraid to publicly speak about such things totally ignoring science, like genetics and evolution. They are really brave in their own way.
For example from the point of view of genetics an unborn baby is a unique human being RIGHT FROM THE START of pregnancy! Yet, they claim that abortion is all about woman's wishes as if she were the ONLY person involved. Ridiculous, but I respect them for not being afraid to say ridiculous things. Even rape is not a “good enough” reason for abortion – there are many heterosexual pairs who are infertile and who would be happy to adopt such a baby.
And I can't believe that some people say that homosexual pairs are “normal in every way”. If all the people in the world turned into homosexuals then the human species would die out! From the point of view of a member of a human species such a thing (dying out of human species) couldn't be considered normal, by definition. So, from this point of view (dying out of human species) homosexuals pairs are not normal in this very way! But I respect anybody who is not afraid to speak about it differently.
Summing up:
I agree with Elon Musk and I agree with Kevin Sorbo, but I don’t want to take away the right for other people to say opposite things, no matter how stupid they may seem from the scientific point of view. On the other hand many people who disagree with me, or with Elon Musk, or with Kevin Sorbo, seem to prefer a total censorship, which is simply pathetic.
This line (“I’m sorry, I haven’t gotten used to killing political figures on sight yet.”) just floored me when I was replaying the game Freelancer. It's a very old game and the graphics are dated, but the “choreography” and the dialogues are quite good. And thought provoking.
PS. When I look at what is happening around the world right now, I wonder whether some political figures in our world haven't been “taken over” by aliens who/that are trying to destroy the humankind “from within”. I simply can't believe that so many very important people in our world say (or do) so many stupid/illogical/unnatural things. Sometimes it's like a fucking contest who would say (or do) the most idiotic thing! And the current censorship imposed by some big corporations is on a par with what we experienced in Poland when Poland was still trapped behind the Iron Curtain. I can't believe that the West has gone to hell like this. And the rest of the “civilised” world is being dragged behind the West. What a fucking irony!
