Richard V. Rupp

November 22, 2022

Good Tuesday morning.

 

Welcome to RUPP'S NOTES/FBI SPECIAL AGENT HARTMANN SERIES post on November 22, 2022. I'm novelist Richard V. Rupp, writing from Burbank, California.

 

For those who have been following me, yes, I did miss last week's post. I developed a minor health problem initially detected through a urine sample. This led to a Cystoscopy (A procedure that uses a tube to examine the bladder and the urethra). Not a pleasant procedure that wore me down for a bit. I suspect a significant part of the wear down was psychological. The results indicated I have a small growth in my bladder that will be removed on December 1. Here's what I learned about the procedure. No incisions! That's the good part. The procedure is done under general anesthesia via the urethra (penis). I'm told the Doc will use state-of-the-art high-definition cameras to visualize the bladder and then use plasma-vaporization devices to remove the bladder tumor. As you can guess, I'm not looking forward to this.

 

Because of the above and with the holiday season upon us, I'm going to take a break from making posts until next year (01.10.2023).

 

As 2022 ends, it is apparent times are changing. One indication of this is this comment by Nancy Pelosi as she stepped down as leader of the Democratic Party in the House of Representatives, "For me, the hour's come for a new generation to lead . . ."  That generation is faced with the potential downfall of cryptocurrency (Collapsed cryptocurrency exchange FTX owes its top 50 creditors at least $3 billion); the Musk fiasco with Twitter; tech companies reducing staffs by the thousands; controlling a thing called the metaverse; a Fed that seems to be out of sync with what's happening in a changing financial world; a Russia bully not fighting a war, but instead trying to destroy a country with guided missiles, and world leaders unable to stop him as it may lead to a nuclear holocaust. And, as we saw this weekend, the continuation of mass shootings. I'm sure you can think of a few other things to add.

 

Burbank, Headquartered Walt Disney Co., is going in the opposite direction from Pelosi. That is the older generation to the younger, with the return of seventy-one-year-old Bob Iger to the helm. He has indicated plans for a major overhaul of Disney. "Over the coming weeks, we will begin implementing organizational and operating changes within the company," Iger said. "It is my intention to restructure things in a way that honors and respects creativity as the heart and soul of who we are."

 

Our seventy-two-year-old Burbank auto restorer Jay Leno was released from the hospital yesterday. He spent ten days there being treated for burns to his face, chest, and hands caused by a car fire in his private Burbank garage. It was good to see his smiling face back on the road again.

 

Last Tuesday, the United Nations announced that the world population had hit 8 billion. The UN goes on to project that the world's population will reach about 8.5 billion in 2030, 9.7 billion in 2050, and 10.4 billion in 2100. The fastest growing populations are Egypt, Pakistan, the Philippines, and India, which is set to overtake China as the world's most populous nation next year. Our Earth was not designed to house this many people. This continued growth means more people vying for scarce water resources and leaves more families facing hunger as climate change increasingly affects crop production. This is one of the reasons I am writing SKYWARD.

 

The above is occurring while, according to recent studies, male sperm counts are plummeting. One expert indicates, "We may cross a tipping point when most men will be sub-fertile." This male infertility problem arises from the direction of our lifestyle. Medical studies indicate that causes of a lower sperm count include obesity, taking multiple medications (particularly body-building medications or androgens), substance abuse, including smoking tobacco, using other tobacco products, marijuana use, heavy drinking, and using illegal drugs such as heroin and cocaine. Depression and anxiety also cause sperm density to decrease. Reading between the lines means that more advanced-educated societies are declining while less advanced societies are increasing. Not exactly the way you want to take the world.

 

This leads me to another reason I am writing SKYWARD. I want to delve into a subject that seemed to be of interest to Agatha Christie, whose novels I love. I have been watching the PBS MISS MARPLE and POIROT series. The last of the Poirot series was based on Christie's novel titled CURTAIN, in which he dies, and she questions the value of life. I was unfamiliar with this novel and ordered the book because of what the TV show depicted. I needed to know if the TV writers enhanced her ideas about euthanasia and wanted to get a better understanding of Poirot's justification for taking a life to protect society from a terrible criminal mind. She seems to hint at the idea that the sick, injured, those in pain, old, or disabled in some way ("the weak") are not really worthy of life. One of her characters in the novel says, "Unfit lives, useless lives — they should be got out of the way."

 

Christie seems to wonder about the idea of euthanasia. She questions whether it is a needed tool of society. One of her characters commented, "Only people who can make a decent contribution to the community ought to be allowed to live."

 

My novel SKYWARD is about a STEM education society living in colonies on the Moon and Mars and eventually traveling hundreds of years through space on a self-contained settlement (space colony) to find a new Earth. As they seek the new Earth, they have limited resources and livable space. Their religion is logic. They end up asking the same question as Christie's characters. You will have to read my novel to find out what they decide.

 

I hope and pray that 2023 is a better year than the one we are going through. Sorry, this is such a negative post. I know our society at the moment is going through a mental depression.

 

Hopefully, we will avoid a significant economic depression that will only make the mental depression worse.

 

I wish all of you Happy Holidays and a great New Year.

 

Be back with you next year in my quest to get you to look SKYWARD.

 

Cheers,

 

Richard V. Rupp, Author

Website – www.richardvrupp.com

Email – rupprisk@gmail.com

Copyright©2022 by Richard V. Rupp