Brontodon

I didn't know what Baldur's Gate was until I clicked the link. I suppose I should know more about video games since both of my boys are into them... I thought of another old TV show we watched -- Dexter. Quite good, but (as so many shows do) it faded near the end.

I have to say, I did like Larry and the Darryls. The show generally kept their appearances frequent but their screen time short. I could swear that I saw somewhere that they were all three originally supposed to have the same name, but I can't find the reference -- I've tried various search engines, and even AI queries.

Mr. Carlin made a "cameo" appearance in season 7, episode 4 of Newhart. Jack Riley plays a patient of the psychologist that Dick and Joanna visit, and the psychologist states that it has taken her years to undo the damage done to him by "a therapist" he used to see in Chicago (obviously a reference to Dick's alter ego Bob Hartley.) It was hysterical if you recognized Mr. Carlin and knew about The Bob Newhart Show!

The parody had me laughing! I didn't watch enough of the show for it to become formulaic, but I can see how it would have headed in that direction. I think I probably liked The Bob Newhart Show better than Newhart, but when we watched the latter a few months ago, I was laughing out loud during every episode. (There's a line from the earlier show that has always stuck with me: when Mr. Carlin says to the therapy group, "You're all out to get me just 'cause I'm paranoid!" I thought that was brilliant.) As far as the other shows, if you liked Monk, you might like Castle, and if you like Castle, you might like Shark!

I guess there are just a lot of shows that we missed over the years and streaming services allow us to catch up on them. Also, there are so many of the newer shows that we have not heard of, and don't know if they are any good. (Also, a lot of the newer stuff just doesn't appeal to us.) Here are some of the shows we've watched over the last few years: Monk Castle Lucifer Firefly (you can tell we're Nathan Filion fans) Shark Buffy the Vampire Slayer The Rookie Newhart Numb3rs Bones Body of Proof The Flash Daredevil (We started watching "Murder, She Wrote," but rapidly lost interest.) And probably a whole bunch of others I can't think of at the moment.

My wife and I tend to watch older TV series. Currently we're watching "Desperate Housewives." In Season 4, episode 10, one of the characters finds an incriminating note, tears it up, and throws it into the fire. In episode 11, another character finds some partly-burned pieces of the note and puts them together to be able to read it. This reminded me of a Sherlock Holmes story, which led to an interesting coincidence: In "The Adventure of Wisteria Lodge," the character Garcia rolls up a disturbing note and throws it into the fire. Inspector Baynes finds part of the note unburned in the fireplace, and it becomes instrumental in solving the case. If you know anything about "Desperate Housewives," you know that it takes place on.. Wisteria Lane! Obviously, Doyle didn't write his story anticipating "Desperate Housewives," but did the writers of "Desperate Housewives" intend this as an homage to the Holmes story?

The name Violet seems to have been a favorite of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, as it was quite popular in Victorian England. There are four characters named "Violet" in the original Sherlock Holmes canon. These characters are: Violet Hunter from "The Copper Beeches" Violet Smith from "The Solitary Cyclist" Violet de Merville from "The Illustrious Client" Violet Westbury from "The Adventure of the Bruce-Partington Plans" .

The way I read it, an "enigma" is an insoluble problem, incapable of being analyzed accurately, but a "mathematical problem" can be addressed using mathematical techniques and an answer found. I haven't found the one you have in mind, but there are a number of instances in which Holmes casigates himself for making an error. Here's an example from The Adventure of the Solitary Cyclist: “Too late, Watson; too late!” cried Holmes, as I ran panting to his side. “Fool that I was not to allow for that earlier train! It’s abduction, Watson—abduction! Murder! Heaven knows what! Block the road! Stop the horse! That’s right. Now, jump in, and let us see if I can repair the consequences of my own blunder.”

The nearest I've been able to come to Holmes's "mathematical certainty" in The Martyrdom of Man is the following: "As a single atom, man is an enigma: as a whole, he is a mathematical problem. As an individual, he is a free agent: as a species, the offspring of necessity." I think Holmes expresses it in clearer language. >> Even Holmes occasionally let his deductions be led astray by his preconceived notions << That may be so, although he assiduously tried to avoid such preconceptions. From A Scandal in Bohemia: “I have no data yet. It is a capital mistake to theorize before one has data. Insensibly one begins to twist facts to suit theories, instead of theories to suit facts."

Okay, here's the connection. If you're familiar with Foundation you know about psychohistory -- the fictional science in the series that allows psychohistorians to predict the future via an intimate understanding and scientific analysis of human behavior. In Foundation, Asimov calls it "a profound statistical science." Predictions of the behaviors of any given individual are not reliable, but become more accurate when applied to larger and larger populations. In the Foundation stories, the population to which psychohistorical analysis is applied are the quadrillions of human beings who inhabit the galaxy as part of the galactic empire. With such a large population, psychohistorical predictions can be quite accurate. In The Sign of the Four, Doyle writes: “Winwood Reade is good upon the subject,” said Holmes. “He remarks that, while the individual man is an insoluble puzzle, in the aggregate he becomes a mathematical certainty. You can, for example, never foretell what any one man will do, but you can say with precision what an average number will be up to. Individuals vary, but percentages remain constant. So says the statistician." When I first read this, it struck me as a very accurate summation of psychohistory! I then wondered whether Doyle had invented psychohistory, or if (probably more likely) Asimov had been influenced by this passage. Then I realized that the idea was not original with Doyle -- he was talking about Winwood Reade's The Martyrdom of Man. I have not read that book, but I've always been fascinated by the similarity of the idea to that of Asimov's psychohistory.

Is anybody here a fan of, or at least familiar with, Isaac Asimov's Foundation series?

I've heard that theory before but I'm not sure I'm buying it! 😊

I think it's a continuity error. Holmes was busy with his fingers or nails or whatever he was doing there, and I don't get the impression that he got up to change jackets and then sat down again. I do love the line (at 9:13), "Only a German is so uncourteous to his verbs," but I'm not sure "uncourteous" is really a word. Shouldn't it have been "discourteous"?

I've got to agree with you there! (Although at one point, Watson's wife called him "James" instead of John.

I think most, if not all of us are glad that Arthur Conan Doyle ended up calling his fictional detective "Sherlock Holmes," rather than "Sherrinford Holmes" as he had originally intended: https://www.arthur-conan-doyle.com/index.php/Sherlock_Holmes I suppose, though, that we prefer "Sherlock" because we're used to it and "Sherrinford" sounds strange. If it had been the other way around, presumably "Sherlock" would sound strange. In either case, I think the name "Mycroft" sounds vaguely fungal...