It’s the last Friday of the month which means it’s another What Are We Reading. And while the autographed and (concerningly) waterproof print copies of H&H Vol 1: It’s Probably Just a Fart… No, No, It Was Definitely A Trump Election count, keeping up on the latest H&H blog post does not–but it is VERY slimming.
OMWC
Of all the Founding Fathers, the least known was the most interesting. Gouverneur Morris had a withered arm from a childhood burn and a wooden leg from a carriage accident, yet still managed to penetrate every vagina that came within reach. He was a brilliant intellectual, a witty conversationalist in several languages, a deep thinker, and wildly undisciplined. Though James Madison generally gets the credit for the Constitution, the actual writing of it was mostly in Morris’s hands. “We The People of the United States…” is pure Morris. Gentleman Revolutionary is Richard Brookheiser’s somewhat brief but eminently readable biography. Morris’s death is somewhat truncated at the end, but I’ll do the spoiler and tell you about it anyway- he dies of an infection caused by his own attempts to remove a urinary blockage by means of reaming his peehole with a whalebone. With no anesthesia, of course. I hope you’re wincing as much as I am.
Robert Park is a physicist who taught at University of Maryland for many years before becoming Director of Public Information for the American Physical Society. His weekly What’s New columns were “don’t miss” reading for me, and were entertaining, educational, and often infuriating to their targets. Voodoo Science: The Road from Foolishness to Fraud was the first (and better) of his two books summarizing case studies in pseudoscience and junk science for fun and profit. One useful distinction Park wrote about was the difference between pseudoscience and junk science, and of course, Langmuir’s genius essays on pathological science make frequent appearances. Park covers various “free energy” scammers, the idiocy and uselessness of manned spaceflight, TV and news media’s roles in the propagation of ignorance, the use of junk epidemiology by lawyers and NGOs, “quantum healing” health frauds, and even the UFO crazes. Delightful reading.
SugarFree
I read Patricia Highsmith‘s delightfully acidic Little Tales of Misogyny, a book of very short short stories about all the different ways women are awful. A lesbian misogynist is not as odd as it may seem. I’ve met a couple here and there. To hate something you desire… one will probably shoot up a Shapes in a few years.
And I’ve been drawn back into The Devil’s Dictionary for probably dozenth time since reading it in high school. If you are ever sick of feeling good about your fellow humans, Ambrose Bierce will set you straight.
HANDKERCHIEF, n. A small square of silk or linen, used in various ignoble offices about the face and especially serviceable at funerals to conceal the lack of tears. The handkerchief is of recent invention; our ancestors knew nothing of it and entrusted its duties to the sleeve. Shakspeare’s introducing it into the play of “Othello” is an anachronism: Desdemona dried her nose with her skirt, as Dr. Mary Walker and other reformers have done with their coat-tails in our own day — an evidence that revolutions sometimes go backward.
THEOSOPHY, n. An ancient faith having all the certitude of religion and all the mystery of science. The modern Theosophist holds, with the Buddhists, that we live an incalculable number of times on this earth, in as many several bodies, because one life is not long enough for our complete spiritual development; that is, a single lifetime does not suffice for us to become as wise and good as we choose to wish to become. To be absolutely wise and good — that is perfection; and the Theosophist is so keen-sighted as to have observed that everything desirous of improvement eventually attains perfection. Less competent observers are disposed to except cats, which seem neither wiser nor better than they were last year. The greatest and fattest of recent Theosophists was the late Madame Blavatsky, who had no cat.
DEMAGOGUE, n. A political opponent.
mexicansharpshooter
I read more than children’s books this month. Today’s entry is An Economist Walks Into A Brothel, by Allison Schrager, Ph.D. This is one of those books people read at the airport in front of their boss while traveling because it has a vague relation to work. The title aside, it is pretty interesting. The first chapter focuses on The Moonlight Bunny Ranch outside of Carson City, NV. She business model of the brothel is not necessarily selling services but in selling and delivering them in a manner with the least amount of risk. For example, as ENB pointed out numerous times, sex workers often experience violence due to their existence in a black market. As a result, the workers pay an insane fee to the brothel, but why?
The legal brothel removes nearly all of the risk. The risk to the worker, in the form of violence, being stiffed by their customer (or a dirty cop), and financially. The workers are tested weekly, reducing the likelihood of disease, which manages the risk for the customer. Schrager goes on to explain how risk is managed in other industries as well.
SP
I’ve had slightly more recreational reading time this month than I have since the relocation. So, I’ve been diving into two mystery series that are set in and around my new hometown.
Scottsdale is home to The Poisoned Pen bookstore, from which I used to order. It’s fun that it’s just a short hop away (depending on traffic). The store hosts many, many author events, and I’m hoping to get up there to see Brad Thor in late June.
First up, the Lena Jones mysteries by local author Betty Webb. I am really enjoying this well-written series. The protagonist is not a cookie cutter PI and the cases are interesting. Jones is based in Scottsdale, a place I have only rarely ventured (see above), but the cases take her beyond the borders of her city. I’m on book 6.
I’ve also started Jon Talton’s David Mapstone series. I’m on book 3, Dry Heat, written in 2004. My favorite passage so far: “All these SWAT cops in their paramilitary attire, what did this mean for the health of American civil society? Like surveillance cameras everywhere, pre-employment drug tests, and other subtle assaults on the Constitution.”
The Mapstone books are set in Phoenix proper, with the native Phoenician protagonist having just moved back to his family’s home in the Willo Historic District at the start of the first volume. Mapstone is a PhD historian, formerly a Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office deputy, who is now working as a cold case investigator for MCSO. A nice glimpse of this fast-changing city from a different perspective.
The library system in Maricopa County is great, with some really terrific resources. I’ve been able to do my casual reading via ebooks from OverDrive. Sorry AMZ.
jesse.in.mb
Soooooo, I accidentally bought the second book in a series that I wasn’t reading because it was on sale because the plot summary was very similar to the other series by the same author. A.G. Riddle likes his grand genetic conspiracies about human origins. I put away the first two books in the Atlantis Trilogy this month because of some serious sunk-cost fallacy. The books aren’t as bad as some of Brett’s book-club choices, but they aren’t something I’d generally recommend unless you were going to spend time sitting on a very expensive beach and pretend to read while you really watch beautiful people who are having more fun than you walk around in next to nothing, or on an airplane. Currently audio-booking Hiddensee by Gregory Macguire (of Wicked fame), and reading The Last Policeman by Ben H. Winters, which has been more charming than I anticipated. I’ll let you know next time (or not).
Brett L
Since last I posted here, which I can’t remember how long it has been, I read all of the novels (but not short fiction) in the Expanse series by James SA Corey. The first four or five were great. The sudden appearance of Admiral Thrawn with a super-fleet of alien Star Destroyers I mean, the Martian guy, same plot. Anyhow, good plot. Cool that it took about three books just to set up the main plot. I kind of wish they hadn’t unleashed partial/potential immortality on their universe (Corey is the pen name of a duo), but there is some great space opera along the way. I also read the first two installments of Mark Lawrence’s Impossible Times series. I really loved the Jorg/Red Queen universe. I’ve been so-so on his Nona Grey books. Impossible Times is set in 1986 England where a teenager who’s just finishing leukemia chemotherapy meets his future self, who tells him they invent time travel to save a girl young he just met from brain damage. This young man (Nick) happens to be the son of a math prodigy who strolled in front of a bus. His only resources are his D&D group that happens to include the popular scion of a Motorola VP and a different young athlete. The plot of the first book is entertaining, but the way time travel is set up, it is a foregone conclusion that everything had to happen that way. Also, there’s a random young psychopath who exists only to add constraint and difficulty to the mission. The second book is more of a mess. Both are eminently readable, but feel lots of shortcuts are taken.
JW
All I been readin’ is the Bible. But not that fake Bible all the rest of you have been fooled by. I only read my Grandpappy’s Bible. He went thru and cut out all the parts about forgiveness. Grandpappy’s God is a vengeful God and you will all pay in blood for your wickedness.
Riven
One of these days, I’m going to finish Crucial Conversations. As I said last month, it’s been pretty helpful for me, professionally. It’s a short book and it should not be taking me so long, but I guess I just haven’t had time. I do, at least, have my next book lined up: Great Minds Speak to You. This was a gift from my sister for my birthday last month. It’s not something I would have picked out for myself, but it takes all kinds, doesn’t it? The version she got me comes with an audio CD, as well… just in case you really want them to speak to you, I suppose. I’m not really sure what to think of it, but I’ll give it a shot when I have some time. I notice that “A Course in Miracles” is a purchase suggestion, based on my interest in Great Minds Speak to You. Maybe you’re not familiar with that book, but it was a favorite of my father’s in the last decade or so. Hm. Seems the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree at all, does it?
Genghis Khan and the Making of the Mongol Empire by Jack Weatherford – This is a very interesting book. For one, Genghis only lives to like the half way mark, and it is more about the Empire as a whole than just him. For another, it treats the history Genghis as though he did not have this legacy as being one of the great villians in history (cue John Kerry’s crazy-ass testimony.) Then at the end, they walk through the history of the popular perception of Genghis. Highly Recomended.
The Gloryous Cause: Robert Middlekauff – This is the last great example of unabashidly pro-Revolution stories of the Revolution told through the Great Man lens of history. Very little trends and forces. Very little of the ‘put them in context AKA BUT SLAVERY’ trend. Very little analysis of the common man. Its all Commander X Lead a Battle At ColonialTown against The British Special Consular of the Exchequer on Report. As that kind of book, it is very good (it managed to make my read-it-twice list, which is very short). As an overall history book, it is very dated. But sometimes the course of human history really is driven, at least in part, by Great Men. And the trends and forces alone probably would not have lead to the US in the shape it took. Not to mention the fact that trends-and-forces may be accurate, but Great Men analysis is more actionable in daily life. Highly Recomended.
Nine Princes in Amber by Roger Zelazney. Another re-read. I really enjoyed it the first time, but not enought to justify a reread on its own. However, I wanted to actually make headway on this series and I forgot most or all of the first book because I read it a decade ago. So I re-read it and was glad I did. I plan on pickig up the next one once my current library load is finished. Recomended
Black Powder War by Naomi Novik. More RAF+AgeofSail+Dragons+Globetrotting. Start at the beginning. Recomended
Genius of Desperation: The Schematic Innovations that made the Modern NFL by Doug Farrar. Great book. It is a look at the various major innovations and innovators in football. I’ve been a reader of Farrar’s since his days at Football Outsider, so I was pretty sure what to expect. And it’s lived up to expectations. If you are really looking for coaching-specific nitty gritty, you won’t find much here. There are a few play diagramd, but not many. There’s a little hagiography, but not much. The author manages to make a very readable narrative from sports most strategically-dense game while still calling out the people who made it happen with enough detail to provide the flavor of the environment in which the evolution took place. Recomended
Guns of Avalon by Zelazney. This is the second Amber book. I’ve been listening to the audiobook recorded by the author, and something about it is really difficut. I like it, the story is good, the style is right up my ally. When I asked my Amber-loving friend about it, he said “Oh yeah, that’s a thing. Zelazney is great, but there is something weird about the way he writes that make it hard. Same thing with Brust.” So on his recomendation I stopped half way through and I’m going to try picking up the dead-tree version and see how that goes. Incomplete
Currently Reading: Full Fathom Five by Max Gladstone This is the 3rd in the “Craft” series. If you liked the first one, you’ll like this. I guess you’d call it ‘magical realism.’ Like, as in, if magic was real, what would it look like? Not like Dresdin Files. In the first book, the protagonist is a first year associate in a white shoe law firm and oh BTW you probably want your lawyer to write your contract with supernatural spirits. This one is “if souls are valuable, there would be a finaincial industry around them” and this story is about a young quant in that world. Oh and the third book is basically Deresden Files. So given all that, these books are good. The characterization is good. The setting is well thought out, it reads like someone who’s spent time in this sort of corporate world (which is diffent from the standard corporate world in hard-to-pin-down-but-easy-to-see ways.)
I have a dead-tree compleat Amber volume sitting on my shelf. I read the first batch as they came out ages ago, but lost the thread for the second batch. Oddly, I was thinking just yesterday that I might pick it up.
I’ve never noticed anything difficult about Zelazny’s writing – he was one of my faves. Some of Brust’s writing can be a little more convoluted, but I think that’s intentional – his Draegarans are written to be long-winded and convoluted nobility.
I just finished Christopher Ruocchio’s Empire of Silence (TW: first in an unfinished series). Good stuff – space opera, with a very Roman feel to the society.
I’ve been in a popcorn mood, so I’m going through the Omega Wars books.
Well, I should mention that 1) I’m dyslexic and 2) I read for a living 8+ hours a day, which completely depletes my ego (is ego depletion still a thing? It feels like it). There are things that I really struggle with. I could’t read Dr Seuss out loud to my kids when they were little.
The first five Amber books are much better than the second five.
You might also try Zelazny’s A Night In The Lonesome October, which is overall pretty good. And Brust’s
To Reign In Hell, which (I think) is great.Pretty sure I’ve read everything he wrote except the Courts of Chaos books.
“still managed to penetrate every vagina that came within reach”
A withered arm probably reduced his reach. Still, impressive.
As long as his pimp hand was strong, I think the withered arm was probably not an issue.
But he might have put the withered arm to other uses, IYKWIM.
I read wooden books Trivium, Quadrivium, Designa, and Scienca. Probably too basic for most people here, but I didn’t feel like I got a good primary education, so I thought they were worth a read. I just finished time enough for love recently and although I enjoyed it, I don’t think it is one of RAH’s best works. I’m currently reading crime and punishment. It is not bad, but it isn’t exactly a page turner for me. Maybe I’ll have a higher opinion after I finish.
C&P blew me away. If you’re not getting into it, The Brothers Karamazov is more accessible.
Did you rust call me a redneck? I mean it’s true, but you don’t have to be a bully.
City of Echos by Robert Ellis. Free on Prime. Good thing, too. Decent enough writer, but the story alternately bored me, confused me or made me shake my head in disbelief. And not in a good way. Pass on this one.
The Eighth Sister by Robert Dugoni. A decent story about an ex CIA dude sent back into Russia to help foil the assassinations of American sleeper agents. Plot had some sizeably holes, but still a good read.
The Body in the Dales (A Yorkshire Murder Mystery) by JR Ellis. A fun book set in a small town in Yorkshire (obviously) and features a body found in a cave, homicidal cavers, a chief detective who is, for once, not a fucking ex-SEAL or other such nonsense and a good supporting cast. If you like PD James kind of stuff, you will like this. His writing is rough, but not crazy for a first novel. I’ll be picking up the second in the series.
The Black Echo by Michael Connelley. The first Bosch novel. I’ve not read the series, so a I got the first two to see if I felt like reading them all. Part way through Black Ice now. I fucking hate the narcs in the book so far. I’m not sure Connelley meant for me to cheer when one of them got whacked.
Also ANSI/MSS-SP-58 (Shoot me, please.)
SAAMI Z299.3 or SAAMI Z299.4??
*applause*
Oh, definitely Z299.4!
Not much, ripped out Roy Spencer’s Climate Change Skepticism for Busy People on a trip. Well worth reading for a nuts and bolts explanation of the fundamental problems with climate analysis.
Starting Sapiens.
Sapiens
Abort. Abort. Abort.
Its got a lot of great facts in there, but the author is poison.
I should clarify. I would never say don’t read a book. I would say go in with your eyes open to the fact that the author a horrible human that hates life.
horrible human that hates life.-
So…a glib?
Please. We celebrate peehole reaming, ass-to-mouth, Sasquatch love, and whale fucking here. If those are aren’t a celebration of the vivacity of life, I don’t know what is.
https://youtu.be/hGlkzryn7Zk
Whale fucking?
Wait has John come over from that other site that should not be named?
Noted
” The workers are tested weekly, reducing the likelihood of disease, which manages the risk for the customer.”
You’re going to make me want to watch Deadwood again.
I loved that series. LH and I wrote a “cast” made up of friends we knew in the area. For instance, if we were the casting agent, and had to draw on people we knew as the most likely to play Joanie, etc.
Just started “Bodyguard of Lies” by Anthony Cave Brown. I first read this back in 1986 and decided to read it again. This is BoL covers the entire multi-year, multi-discipline and very very cold blooded efforts behind protecting the Normandy invasion time and place. It is an excellent read and if it had been published in the 1950’s would have caused real issues for the leaders of the Allied cause since the book illustrates what havoc on their own people they supported to achieve victory.
“Big Business: a love letter to an American anti-hero” by Tyler Cowen. Cowen turns recent reporting on business upside down. In 200 pages he lays out the case that American BB has long been a huge benefit to Americans (and the world) , warts and all.
“Downcanyon” by Ann Zwinger. The story of the inner Grand Canyon and floating the Colorado River. Cause sometimes you just need to read about a natural wonderland.
I’m rereading Oedipus Rex. Self fulfilling prophecies have captured my attention lately. MacBeth etc. I’m working on an updated version which I may submit. I’m swiping out the original characters for modern ones. Laius is Gov. Northam, for example. The only problem is that I have to somehow refrain from Winston’s mom jokes. At least I have the title already: Oedipus Fux.
What are you doing up?
Sadly no time for me recently to read much.
I just finished my tenth or so re-read of James Michener’s Hawaii. Michener’s early work was pretty good, and Hawaii may be his best. His later works, not so much; I think they were mostly written by research assistants.
Next I’m thinking of running down a copy of Grits Gresham’s Weatherby – The Man. The Gun. The Legend, for… reasons.
The only book I’ve ever re-read is Catch-22, every five years or so. It tells me new things about myself every time.
I re-read a lot: I’ve read Hitchhiker’s Guide to the galaxy probably 10 times.
The only book I have ever come close to having memorized is Dune. Its probably been 15+ years since I have read it, but I never feel the need, because I still know it so well.
I reread lots of stuff. Hithchiker’s is probably over 10 for me.
I can recite Rumpole stories by heart. Sniff. It’s the golden thread that runs through British Justice.
I always imagined you as Phyllida Erskine-Brown.
John Mortimer brought forth two perfect bodies of work into this world, and I’m grateful for both.
Do yourself a favor and avoid “Closing Time”.
I really loved the Jorg/Red Queen universe.
Same here.
I’ve been so-so on his Nona Grey books.
Not as good as the Jorg/Red Queen books, but plenty good enough for me.
And the Malazan bookiverse continues to grow, with one series tracking the rise of the Emperor (which I am finding quite amusing), and the other the fall of the “elves”.
Esselmont’s backstory series is entertaining. He works a little too hard in the last to tie in all the characters from the main series, but overall I enjoyed reading them all.
I’m reading “Sapiens”. I guess it’s been criticized a lot but it’s still interesting and I like the different perspective.
Leap isn’t a fan.
I have the audio book. Still undecided whether to push play.
Histories by Heroditus. An enjoyable look at drama and its consequences 2500 years ago.
That sounds interesting. For some reason the morality lectures of antiquity come off less preachy than our commercials today.
Its interesting how it interweaves mysticism and morality with rote historical documentation. Clearly, as somebody who doesn’t believe in the Greek pantheon, I find much of it to have a mythological flair, but I really appreciate the editorializing that Heroditus did. There’s a lot of “one group’s story goes this way… the other groups story goes this way… Personally, I think that the second story makes more sense, but with a few caveats”
There’s also a lot of “these are the Egyptians, they mourn the death of a loved one this way. They eat millet during the summer and fashion oars from palm leaves to transfer their grain down the Nile”
Somebody at Amazon has been reading the same books as me. Today their adaptation of Good Omens: The Nice and Accurate Prophecies of Agnes Nutter, Witch premiers. Next month it’s the new season of The Expanse, and in the Fall they are supposed to launch a Wheel of Time series.
Re WoT – I’m keeping my expectations super, super low but I really hope that’s done well.
Will they get the hair flipping right?
If they don’t have a running joke on braid-tugging and dress-smoothing, I will be disappoint.
Hell, I liked the first couple of books, but (unusually for me) just fucking gave up somewhere in the third or fourth ones. Doubt I’ll watch unless it gets really good reviews.
Same here – I got tired of the story never really advancing much.
Ditto. Once the glossary started to approach the length of the story itself and one novel would describe maybe two hours of interactions between every disparate group of characters, I checked out. Just too many balls in the air at once.
they were all the same through most of the middle. The show should skip most of them.
Holy crap, they’re doing WoT? That’s ambitious as hell.
Hopefully they go light on the Wokeness.
I’m reading Twig, by the same guy who wrote Worm and Pact.
He likes to write characters doing very clever things.
Worm is a bout very clever superheroes in modern America.
Pact is about very clever wizards in Modern Canada.
Twigis about very clever… clones? Engineered beings? Flesh golems? In 1921 British Colonies of America wherein the events of Frankenstein and the science behind it actually happened. The protagonist’s super-power is social awareness.
Worm, at least, is on my to-read list.
Worm was pretty great. Long, but great and written in bit-sized chunks.
Long doesn’t scare me as long as its not a slog.
The author does two things I really like: first, he does a good job of whetting your appetite by introducing characters/events in the background or character dialogue without explanation/exposition so that you’re actually curious to find out about them, and he’s really good at taking a typical story passage and tossing in a detail that makes you suddenly wake up. For example:
“Sefira and Other Betrayals”, by John Langan. I’m a big fan of his. He’s one of the “lit horror” authors that seem to be all over the place these days, but I like that he doesn’t lose track of the horror part. For my money, it’s a good collection of themed short stories, but not as good as his earlier collection, “The Wide, Carnivorous Sky”.
“Wounds: Six Stories from the Border of Hell”, by Nathan Balingrud. Another favorite of mine. His earlier book, “North American Lake Monsters”, was excellent. One of the stories in this collection, “The Visible Filth”, was made into a movie called “Wounds”. All the stories revolve around the theme of hell as an actual place, albeit of a different metaphysical character, that sometimes reaches into the normal world, generally on request. While the stories aren’t directly tied to each other they seem to occupy the same universe, and at least two share a common element, with one explaining how it came to be found in the other.
“Sharpe’s Gold”, “Sharpe’s Escape”, and “Sharpe’s Fury”, by Bernard Cornwall. What can I say? Good ol’ Sharpe in the Peninsular Campaign. Formulaic adventure/war stories, but a formula that works. Memorable characters and a dedication to get the history as right as possible, even down to the details. Look, it’s literary cotton candy, but I can’t stop reading the stuff.
“The Bible”, by Jesus. Or God. Somebody. Still reading this sucker. I’m into 2 Chronicles, which is apparently just a review of everything prior. I think I could’ve started with 1 Chronicles and not really missed much, but whatever.
What I am reading: Job descriptions mostly.
Had a phone interview this morning…it was short, it was with the hiring manager, if I didn’t screw it up, will have a phone interview with the person who would be my manager next week.
Technically, everything they brought up I have experience with. It sounds like a really good job.
Job would probably be remote, although I could choose from a number of different cities if I wanted to be in one of their offices. Ft Collins is not an option, however.
Good luck!
Fingers crossed, shitlord!
Good luck!
Two of my last three jobs were remote, and I loved the productivity. I abhor the plastic pleasantries and water cooler debates about the local team: I came here to work and will be leaving on time. At home without the distractions, I’d be mentally exhausted by 4 and headed out in shorts for nine.
I had a third interview yesterday for a situation I’m entirely overqualified for; no way they can afford me, and, anyway, I really don’t want anything distracting me right now as my chipping has become unusually hot.
The best two things about working remotely are avoiding the bullshit time sinks that always crop up in the office and killing commute time.
There are plenty of other benefits, but those are the big ones for me.
My current commute is 15-20 mins, so not too bad.
I worked from home for 3 years a decade ago, the 20 step commute is much better.
I have backloaded my work from home days to Thursday and Friday. It makes me a significantly happier person come Friday afternoon.
The fact that companies are still pushing for “office as community” shows how behind the times they are on this.
This job they were like “its remote, if you want to relocate to one of our offices, sure, go ahead.”
Based on the strong recommendations, I went out and got Crucial Converations, and read it. It has come in handy with a series of family crises that blew up over the last four weeks. Strong recommend.
I also picked up the next book in the Crucial series: Crucial Accountability. I’m only a quarter way through it and it’s not quite as systematic as its predecessor, but the lessons have worked when I’ve put them into practice. So far, so good!
I also read one third of Stephenson’s Seveneves. I had to stop reading. It is turgid crap. I can’t believe this turkey won the Prometheus award; He had to be reading Paul Krugman & Robert Reich columns for the economics; the biology/psychology was nonsensical; and the threat the rubble of the moon provided to life on earth (but not to people in low earth orbit) was – to repeat myself – utterly nonsensical. If you’re into that sort of thing, a series of books published in the 30’s, When Worlds Collide & After Worlds Collide did it much better.
I’ve switched to Crichton’s Airframe, which I started this morning at 5AM. I’m only two chapters in, and am enjoying it.
I liked Airframe, but made the mistake of buying it at an airport before a flight.
As a loyal lurker at pprune.org, who has a sense of all the seedy things going on in aviation, and as a survivor of a unionized steel mill, everything I have read so far strikes me as very plausible.
I liked Airframe. A coworker gave it to me at the Arlington Fly in a few years back. Some of it sounded ridiculous at the time, but it’s starting to sound less and less like fiction.
Seveneves is all build up and no payoff. He should have done the first eighth of the book on the crisis and the rest on the resettlement of Earth instead of vice/versa.
He should have killed a couple of those bitches and avoided a lot of trouble.
I read Crucial Accountability first (it was on sale for $2 and the Crucial Conversations had been highly recommended) and appreciated some of the info but was a little lost without the framework I got when I finally got around to CC. I need to go back to CA now that I’m managing more staff. Being able to step away from the cycle of “I’m upset you did X” and escalate it to “We discussed X and you said you’d stop doing it, but here we are again.” has been *very* useful.
I’ve read all three: Crucial Conversations, Crucial Accountability, and Crucial Confrontations. And I went through three parallel leaderships classes at work. Useful information that was mostly in line with how I have been dealing with issues my whole career.
That seems to be the big split with people I know who have read it: It’s obvious/lightly polishes existing skills OR wow, things could’ve been a lot easier for me all these years
Just picked up Crucial Conversations at the library.
Tonight (or maybe tomorrow) I’ll be reading the assembly instructions for my bullet smoker. I mentioned to the gf that it was being delivered today when I was leaving for work this morning. “That’s what you are excited about on a Friday?”, she asked. Yes, that’s what I’m excited about on a Friday.
Its too bad girls can be in touch with their emotions like us boys are. I’m excited for you.
Same. It’s a wonderful day!
My gf assembled our Weber grill.
PUT A RING ON IT
Who wants to marry a Weber grill?
Who doesn’t?
Hawt.
I got a floor model when I got my Weber gas grill.
I would be excited about that too. It will give you years of enjoyment.
Mrs. TOK does not discourage any hobbies that involve her having a tasty dinner.
I’m 2/3 of the way through Zero History. I read Spook Country and Pattern Recognition (in that order) a few years back. But I decided I wanted to read the whole series, in order, in a short amount of time to get the full impact. So, I started PR three weeks ago, blew through it in about 4 days, then got to Spook Country.
I was a little ambivalent after my first reading of SC, but having re-read it I’m developing a deep appreciation for Gibson. In some ways, PR is a kind of Maltese Falcon/McGuffin story, but the way Gibson draws his characters, and the way he deals with technology blows me away and makes the whole story brilliant.* I’ve got Neuromancer on my shelf too.
* I realize I’m probably preaching to the converted here, but, meh.
I have started Neuromancer about 3 times and haven’t been able to finish. There isn’t anything I don’t like about it, I just can’t keep going.
I’m currently on book #2 of the Cthulhu case files – Sherlock Holmes & the Miskatonic Monstrosities by James Lovegrove.
It’s a mashup of Sherlock & Lovecraft stuff. I’m liking it a lot, and book 3 should be delivered today.
Prior to that it was That Which Should Not Be and He Who Walks in Shadow by Brett Talley which were both also set in Lovecraft’s lore. I enjoyed both of these books.
Between novels, I’m reading Lovecraft’s short stories.
Read Arthur Machen’s stuff if you haven’t. One of Lovecraft’s influences. His works specifically were what caused Lovecraft to develop his Chthulu mythos in the first place. A lot of his works read like Lovecraft in London by way of Bram Stoker.
And Robert W. Chambers. The King in Yellow stories are fantastic.
Chambers is already on my list.
*Adds Machen’s name*
still managed to penetrate every vagina that came within reach…brilliant intellectual, a witty conversationalist in several languages, a deep thinker, and wildly undisciplined. Though James Madison generally gets the credit for the Constitution, the actual writing of it was mostly in Morris’s hands…he dies of an infection caused by his own attempts to remove a urinary blockage by means of reaming his peehole with a whalebone. With no anesthesia, of course.
That’s how you shitlord.
And on the topic of revolutionary period Americans, I really need to get around to reading The Art of Power.
That’s how you shitlord.
That’s how you shitlord?
Good God. I should reconsider my white-hot hatred of socialism/Communism.
*turns in shitlord card*
I am currently editing a noir thriller and a dissertation. *sigh*
Just finished Zero History. Wasn’t that impressed.
I liked Zero History. I didn’t realize it was the end of a loose trilogy and read it standalone and it still worked.
I’ve read Pattern Recognition and enjoyed it.
I had 40 or 50 pages of Zero History left to read, and the book has been sitting on the end table for a couple of months. This almost never happens to me. I start a book, and I finish a book. This one, I just didn’t care enough about any of the characters to feel compelled to finish the book.
A neighborhood kid is screaming and it sounds like an elk bugle. Why don’t parents teach children are meant to be seen, not heard anymore?
“You know what an inside voice is? And an outside voice? Well, that’s the voice you shouldn’t be using anywhere.”
To be fair, they are outside playing in the pool. I’m sure I was just as annoying as a kid.
there is a joke in there about Florida children but it is not crystallizing in my brain
Are you sure it’s not an elk bugle? Have you checked the elk to make sure they’re okay?
I saw of bunch elk driving to the Grand Canyon. I’m not certain I want anything that big with the potential to wander into traffic in my state.
I saw of bunch elk driving to the Grand Canyon.
What were they driving?
School bus? Or just a caravan of smaller vehicles?
Sleigh
Kids, at least, can be presumed to be still learning appropriate behavior. Last Wednesday night, in Newark airport, Mrs. Animal and I were treated to one of those enormously fat women who had her call phone on speaker, was holding it eighteen inches away from her enormous, gaping trap, and was shouting into it.
She sounds hawt
In New Jersey? Surely not!
I know, right? Who woulda thunkit?
Great Expectations wasn’t everything I had hoped.
*thinks about it for a second*
*golf clap*
What you did there. I see it.
SJWs continue to destroy science:
Why Do So Many Researchers Still Treat Race as a Scientific Concept?
What’s at stake here, scientifically, is that scientists’ focus on genetics to explain racial health disparities may come at the expense of other, much-needed research. If it’s racism that has very real health consequences, and if racism could in fact better explain perceived racial differences than genetics, then we should be investing more in studying health and racism. But addressing how unequal housing, food, education, and wealth lead to poor health is much less attractive—both scientifically and commercially—than inventing a special pill to help black people.
Yeah, sickle cell is purely a social construct.
Damn your quick fingers
So the Greeks and Southern Italians with sickle cell are actually moolies?
“I havent killed anybody since 1984.”
It’s like you’re reading my mind.
So the upshot is racism causes sickle cell?
define race
No one can. There are no genetic marker that are as accurate for race as XX vs XY is for sex.
Race is a social construct.
Yes, but there is high correlation between phenotypes and certain diseases. Certainly enough to warrant consideration in diagnosis and public health endeavors.
Otherwise race is pretty useless.
Yes, I agree. Of course, it doesn’t always work. I am a carrier for Niemann-Pick type C and am not descended from any of the usual suspects.
Wouldn’t surprise me in the least if a genetic test can’t tell the difference between a border collie and a pug. But these breeds exist, have clearly defined characteristics and traits, as well as breed-specific health problems.
Not that much different with homo sapiens.
Okay, then, what race is Tiger Woods?
I guess “mutt” is an acceptable answer.
I guess “mutt” is an acceptable answer.
Yup, if you take a bunch of distinct breeds and mate them indiscriminately for a few generations, you revert to a black and tan that looks a lot like a wolf.
“socially constructed” is not a synonym for “not real.”
Sure, but I still don’t know how to determine the race of random person X.
For one thing, how many are there?
Are we talking 3 or 10 or 100?
The rules don’t make intuitive sense* and are not (completely) discernible from genetic / phenotype information. Neither do Elizabethan table manners, but they were real because real people operated according to them.
In revolutionary Haiti, Antibellum Virgina, and in the Bolivarian era of South America, they were codified into law and you can learn them that way. In the modern US, you need to learn them by observing how people treat each other.
Sometimes they are easy to codify into explicit language, like the paper bag test. Sometimes they are hard to codify into language but they are still real. That’s why everyone knows that Obama and Tiger and Kmele are all black (protestations of Cablinasiansim aside.) That’s why everyone knows that jews are sort-of white now, and some Asians are becoming sort-of-sort-of white.
Sure, but I still don’t know how to determine the race of random person X.
A start might be answering the prior question: Why you need/want to determine their race.
I never said they weren’t real. Elizabethan table manners are very real, but are also a social construct.
I like Kmele: he can’t teach me much, but his instinct to pursue freedom if for no other reason than to resist force is commendable.
And Kmele is correct this far: the main reason anyone uses race is to take credit for accomplishments and victimhood that they themselves did not achieve.
Poppycock! Ask any Thai, they will tell you that Tiger is definitively Thai.
Tiger is a Cablinasian. Just ask him.
Genetic tests can identify dog breeds, BTW. And they can tell you which of the genotypes we call “race” you have in your ancestry. I think we use race to describe a combination of phenotype and culture, myself. Like all such classifications, it is indeed a social construct (a term which I dislike, BTW, as it is often used to pretend that things that exist in reality, only exist in our heads).
(a term which I dislike, BTW, as it is often used to pretend that things that exist in reality, only exist in our heads)
Thank you for putting to words what has been simmering in the back of my mind for a while.
To me, its almost useless.
Words (and, for that matter, numbers) are social constructs. Any description, analysis or communication is made of words, and is thus a social construct. Society, any institution, etc. is a social construct. Exactly how does use of this term add meaning?
These people say “socially constructed” but they want you to think “arbitrary” when you hear it. I’m sure I’ve had that rant here before.
Language misuse is like gun crime: I hate the person, not the basic tool that happened to have been employed.
Exactly how does use of this term add meaning?
The term wouldn’t matter much if we weren’t coming off of a period of intense focus on biological determinism, but we are. Discussing things as social constructs theoretically forces the thinker to step back from “boys like blue because…biology” and think about whether this is a universal trait across cultures or even across time within their own culture (blue used to be recommended for girls because it was soothing and pink for boys because it was energizing). Like any framework that can be used to step outside our normal thinking, it can become a lazy rallying cry and conversational bludgeon by people who only half grok it. I don’t think it’s particularly useful to throw the baby out with the bathwater though.
Interesting point, Don.
There are, however, guns (and words) which are so poorly designed/made that I think it is appropriate to hate them, as well. A gun which routinely misses its target and injures bystanders is a gun to hate.
The term wouldn’t matter much if we weren’t coming off of a period of intense focus on biological determinism, but we are.
By “a period” are you referring to the entirety of human history? Race has been a primary determining factor of social caste and mobility for millennia. The idea that races are equal only gained substantial traction in the 1950s.
Thanks, jesse.
Meaning comes from context.
In the context of whether a given behavior is nature or nurture, I can see a use. I have to say, though, that I see it in other contexts (probably because I don’t see discussions of nature v nurture very often, at all).
Oh, Don, I was not saying “interesting point” sarcastically. I liked your analogy.
Because an atom with an atomic number of 15 will always be an atom of phosphorus, regardless of whether there are any humans in the universe or not. The same cannot be said of chains of nucleic acids categorized under “Caucasoid”.
By “a period” are you referring to the entirety of human history? Race has been a primary determining factor of social caste and mobility for millennia. The idea that races are equal only gained substantial traction in the 1950s.
I think you’re misreading what I’m addressing. I’m not talking about race per se, I’m talking about socially constructed traits vs biologically defined ones. The period of “intense focus on biological determinism” includes the scientific racism of the 19th and 20th centuries and the attempt to codify things like blacks are unable to think as well as whites because of cranial capacity, and more contemporarily things like the hunt for a gay gene.
Because an atom with an atomic number of 15 will always be an atom
of phosphoruswith an atomic number of 15, regardless of whether there are any humans in the universe or not.If no one is around to call it “phosphorus”, is it really “phosphorous”, or is just what it is, an atom with certain characteristics?
The atomic table is a social construct, is it not?
The atomic table is a social construct, but it is not a nebulous description.
No. It is a fundamental law of the universe that can be derived from empirical observation. There is only one “correct” way to construct the table of elements by atomic number, which can be represented mathematically in a culturally-neutral way. The same cannot be said for dog breeds, color naming, or racial classifications. Just like phosphorous, dog breeds, color names, and races exist – but unlike phosphorous, they are not describing fundamental physical properties.
The atomic chart is a useful way to lay out the facts of the universe. FWIW, there are several such atomic charts, and Martians would have their own version which we could respect
but they might call aluminum aluminium or something stupid like that.
This. We could discover another, more useful way to do it tomorrow and completely upend how we describe the unalterable facts of the universe. The universe, however, remains the same. Reality does not follow thought.
Yes, and I brought that up in a discussion with OMWC in a similar argument. However, for an atomic chart to be valid, it needs to base its organizing principle on a fundamental physical property (e.g., atomic number, weight, orbitals, etc.). If they are just organized by an arbitrarily chosen property, then it would be socially constructed.
If they are just organized by an arbitrarily chosen property, then it would be socially constructed.
This is where my head starts spinning. “arbitrary” in and of itself is contextual. Thus, one man’s social construct is another man’s valid construct.
It reinforces my cynical inclination the believe that “social construct” is useful as an epithet and not much more. All it seems to convey is “I don’t agree with the basis for your categorization of these things”
the believeI think why we seized on the periodic table was that it reconciles two facts of nature on two axes; so my Martians would recognize the same thing, and their presentation would be valid if it represented those relationships; that’s all I meant: there are many valid and meaningful ways to diagram the elements.
I could create a valid chart that was mostly useless, like a one-axis (viz, “list”) chart of the elements in ascending ionic character. Useless but objective in a way that a chart of “pretty” is useless.
I’m using the term “arbitrary” in a very strict sense here. In linguistics and philosophy, “arbitrary” can mean that there is no necessary connection between a sign and what it signifies. That is, there is no reason other than social convention that we call a cat a cat. However, for something like the periodic table, the elements are not organized by social convention but by empirically observable trends in their physical properties. If we organized all the Glibs alphabetically, by our forum handles, that would be a socially constructed pattern of organization. If we organized them by mass, it would not.
I’m thinking the map isn’t the territory, no matter how accurate the map is.
Sure, underlying physical reality doesn’t change, but our descriptions of it do, over time and across cultures. Modern periodic tables have elements on them that older ones did not. for example. A periodic table has numbers and letters on it which may vary based on what numbering and lettering system you use. While the Platonic ideal of the table may not be a social construct, any given table would, itself, be a “social construct”, would it not? Can you show me one which is not built on things that can (and do) vary across cultures?
If we organized all the Glibs alphabetically, by our forum handles, that would be a socially constructed pattern of organization. If we organized them by mass, it would not.
Isn’t the choice of how to organize them arbitrary? Wouldn’t the Glibs mass table be “socially constructed” because of the decision to use mass rather than something else?
In linguistics and philosophy, “arbitrary” can mean that there is no necessary connection between a sign and what it signifies.
i’m struggling with this. Sure, “three” necessarily describes a certain number, but the sign itself is arbitrary. Can you have a non-arbitrary connection between something arbitrary and anything else? Not sure.
A similar phenomenon exists in color naming terms across languages. It is incontrovertible scientific fact that the spectrum for visible light spans 380 to 740 nm, however, how that spectrum is divided is different from language to language and culture to culture. Being raised as an English speaker it seems like scientific fact that the colors are red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, and violet…I mean you see all of them when you use a prism. But a speaker of Thai or Russian will see, intuitively, two blues where you and I see one. No one claims that “color” doesn’t exist, but it is clear that just how a language divides and categorizes the spectrum of visible light is socially constructed.
Similarly, no one claims that phenotypic differences between human beings do not exist. The central question is: Is race a fundamental physical property that is independent, like mass or length? The answer is, of course not. Race is how a particular society categorizes aggregates of phenotypic differences into groups. If race were a fundamental physical property, then different civilizations would have all come up with the same divisions through empirical observation, but they didn’t. The Japanese basically divided the world into the categories “Japanese” and “gaijin“. Who are you to tell them they are wrong? Can you prove definitively that the dividing line between a particular race is “x” gene or “y” percent of phenotype without any sort of a priori assumptions? I think not. Again, no one denies that a spectrum of human difference exists, but how a culture divides and categorizes that spectrum is socially constructed.
^^THIS^^
And you can see the difference with sex, as outside of the tiny number of oddball XXY cases and the like, you CAN divide people exactly into Male and Female, and I think basically all civilizations have the same dividing line (even if they didn’t have the genetic tests to determine it).
I think this bothers me because of the people who are trying to turn sex into gender and treat it like a social construct.
I think basically all civilizations have the same dividing line
This is where sex and gender start to drift apart. Some civilizations had separate social roles for effeminate men and/or eunuchs. I’m not sure if women had similar splits or not.
Check your color-sighted privilege shitlord. (I honestly can’t discriminate blue socks from black socks)
I’ve heard this exact explanation before. Did I learn if from you here, or from somewhere else?
*shrugs*
Maybe, I have written such before here.
It was a mind blow getting into discussions with Thai speakers who could just see the difference between sii faa (closest is sky blue) and sii naam ngern (literally ‘silver water’ but we’d call it “dark blue”), where I could understand it in broad categorizes, but the dividing line was just obvious to them, just like the dividing line between yellow and orange is obvious to us, so obvious that it would be difficult to explain just exactly when a shade of yellow becomes orange…you just know.
So, like donkey pron?
Yes.
A friend of mine found out he was color blind when he went back to his classroom in middle school because he’d forgotten his blue sweatshirt. It wasn’t at his desk and he asked the teacher who said “of course you’d have a purple sweatshirt.” The friend was scandalized at the suggestion that he’d wear a purple sweatshirt. Blue was his favorite color. He went home and talked with his parents about it and they were all “Oh we just thought you really liked the color purple and it seems cool right now so we let you wear it.”
I question the need for “Indigo” as a separate color in the rainbow.
I think it is only there to make Roy G Biv work.
Newton invented indigo as a color, and did it basically to squeeze in color theory to a musical scale.
Because Renaissance.
Richard of York gave battle in vain.
Don’t forget about the tetrachromats.
But otherwise I agree.
Thanks for the link!
Japanese has a blurring of blue and green. For example traffic lights of the same color green we have in the US are referred to by the color “blue”. It’s interesting to learn it isn’t unique.
Yep.
I’m trying to find an article I read years ago about WTF Homer was using various color names for, but this will have to dot.
In Europe, people didn’t classify yellow-red as a separate color until there were profitable Eastern luxuries available from the Silk Road (first “saffron”, then “oranges”).
It is obvious to me that none of you knuckleheads have been with a woman to pick out a paint color at the hardware store.
Utter and complete tripe. Sickle cell anemia is highly race specific. Socio-economic conditions outside of ionizing radiation do not alter genetic factors.
Well I’m late to the party it seems.
What do you think of epigenetic triggers and their heritability, then?
I thought their first album was trite and derivative.
In which case, we are talking about the expression of pre-existing genetic traits based on exposure (or lack thereof). The genome is not altered, but the implementation is.
It is a fair criticism of my comment regardless. I’m probably thinner than I would otherwise be because my grandfather was typically hungry, and my mother’s use of formula probably altered my immune reactions.
Regardless, my genome is the same. I inherited Ehlers-Danlos, my son inherited the MHTFR defect from his mother and either from me or a mutation along the way. But neither condition is affected by exposure, both are pre-determined at birth, just like sickle-cell.
Crap. I’m late to pick up the kids.
I enjoy these discussions. Much better than the ones on DU.
I learned about this concept recently and it really supercharged evolution. Instead of random combinations over millions of years, beneficial traits could be passed more quickly.
Shit are we all Lamarckists now? *kicks pebble*
I wasn’t familiar with him. Sounds like he should be a household name like Darwin.
It’ll be interesting to see how far epigenetics actually takes us…if it’s far enough he might just get recognition for having picked up the other part of the puzzle while Darwin was laying out the mechanics of straight Mendelian inheritance.
How the hell does anyone have time to read? The last novel I read was Artemis by Andy Weir, and before that The Martian (at least 2x).
But I am hard at work writing some fiction for publication here.
Audiobooks bois (and also podcasts)
Commute to work: 45 minutes, 5x a week
LISS at the gym 2x a week: 40 minutes, 2x a week
Lunch break: 55 minutes, 5x a week
Commute home: 45 minutes, 5x a week
Evening reading before bed: 60-90 minutes, 4ishx a week
I don’t like headphones and listening to things while walking
I like spacing out at the gym so I don’t listen to things then
Lunch break is not 55 minutes and there is stuff to do like eat
LISS ? why?
Cardiac hypertrophy improves ability to recover from a very high heart rate after stopping exertion. LISS drives cardiac hypertrophy.
This has two particular benefits for me.
1) This allows me to recover from a high-intensity exertions. That means I can spend less time sucking air after a heavy lifting set. Also, I am gigantic so normal things will always introduce higher heart rate for me compared to normal people because my heart is smaller than the rest of my body by comparison.
2) The medical measure of this is Heart Rate Variability (or HRV). Higher HRV is good for long-term cardiac health, and as a formerly-incredibly-fat-and-now-only-rather-fat guy, that’s an issue.
I spend more time on resistance training and HIIT, but I don’t exclude LISS.
mkay. never touch the stuff myself. I should do some hiit but don’t. Just resistance training
i try do do the whole in and out of the gym in 45 min or less
If you do weight training and you try to get in and out of the gym in 45 minutes, you may very well be doing HIIT already without knowing it.
Neah I do few exercises in a given day. All my life when going to the gym I had insane DOMS and now I do little or I can barely walk a few days. Today I did warmup, 3 sets of 6 deadlifts (not really deadlifts i do a sort of romanian touch and go dead with 3 minute break 135 kg which is heavy for me) followed by 3 sets of biceps isolation cable curls superset with some straight arm pulldowns and 3 sets of lat pulldown superset with lower back extensions.
Other days 4 ses of squats with 4 sets of bench and some cable flys
5x 45 minutes per week is ok gym time for me
If your pulse is going up when you are doing them, and if you start your next set before it is fully recovered to normal, you may be doing HIIT. From what you describe, I’m not sure.
well menno henselmans says linking interset recovery to heart rate is not efficient. That being said when I was wearing my garmin fitness bracelet at the gym my heart rate did go down in my 3 minute break
Of course Pie does Romanian deadlifts.
BIF review #2: Jack’s Abbey – Maibock Hurts Like Helles Kellerbier
First the name, come on, make up your mind. It is all technically accurate, I guess, as is is bock strength at 6.5%, clear enough to be a Helles bock, and time of year makes it a Maibock. And its unfiltered as part of their Keller series, hence the…nope, not giving them that one.
beeradvocate has it at 3.87. I score it a 3.5/5, it is good, probably would have been even better outside in a beer garden on a hot day, instead of inside with my dinner last night. No points deducted for the name, which is trying too hard.
Romanian craft brewing gone insane there are like 30 producers. Your loss for not including me in your bif
what I read is too complex for you simple lot so I won’t even try
is it Men Explain Things to Me?
I am happy I have no idea what that is
Its a great book. If you are a 19 year old woman who’s worried that that she’ll never fit in because she knows how to properly apply makeup, owns a pencil skirt, wears underwear that perpetuates gender myths, and laughs at the punchlines of jokes, it will help cure you of all those things.
IOW, it turns you into a modern feminist?
your kind are first against the wall when the feminist revolution comes
I’d suggest that when the feminist revolution comes, I think I want to be the first against the wall.
I am with Bill.
It is basically the bible of modern feminism. You know, if such a thing was to demonstrate religious features.
WHICH IT OBVIOUSLY DOES NOT!!
It just tells its adherents what to wear, how to speak, who is clean and who is contaminated, and how to purify yourself when you get contaminated by the unclean.
Ditto!
Love me some Ambrose Bierce.
Some light summer reading – Edward Jay Epstein’s The Annals of Unsolved Crime and Full Count: The Education of a Pitcher by one of my all time favorites and the most underrated pitcher of his time, David Cone.
Speaking of the BIF, are we writing reviews this time around?
I didnt last time, I am this time, albeit one at a time scattered thru posts hither and yon.
I just finished How to Read a Book by Mortimer Adler. I took some notes so I can test out the methods on the next book I read.
Also just finished Dark Intelligence, book 1 of Neil Asher’s Transformation series. Good, but I feel like I need to go back and read The Gabble and The Technician to catch up on some background info before I move on to the next book in the series.
I also stumbled across some Dragonlance books and re-read them for nostalgia’s sake. Holy crap, what a pile of hot garbage. Half of it is like sitting in on someone’s D&D game where everyone’s roleplaying really hard but nobody (including the DM) knows how to play an evil character, the other half is like someone telling you about some awesome D&D module that you should go buy. Anyways, I’m 2-1/2 books through rage-finishing the trilogy, then I’m out.
Killing Commendatore.
The poutine fires to the North must be pretty bad. I can’t even see the mountains that are a mile outside our kitchen window the smoke is so bad here.
A couple people have mentioned passing through Indy in the near future. If anyone wants a Meetup or just recommendations you can email me at my username at the evil search engine company.
Indy sounds dodgy. Or is it doggy?
The Storm Before the Storm – a look at the Republic politics before the more famous coup of Caesar. It’s an interesting counterpoint to the fictional book Claudius, where he pines for the old days of the Republic.
Yeesh – if you think things are bad now, politically speaking, we have nothing on Rome. Assassinations, exiles, prisoners executed by the mob, and plenty of Senate and Assembly shenanigans. The old Rich vs the Poor, and the New vs the Conservative play out a lot.
—-
And for me a new action/detective character – Bulldog Drummond. Reading the first s/t book, published in 1920. It’s exciting and great fun; main character is an WW1 ex-infantry officer and ex-boxer who is bored with his life as a gentleman. So he puts an ad in the newspaper:
And what rollicking fun it is, reads much better than I ever expected. Can’t wait to read some more.
—
And more Dick Francis novels, making an effort to start at the very beginning and get through them all – at least until his wife died and the books took a turn for the worst.
So far I’ve read:
Dead Cert
Nerve
For Kicks
Odds Against
First Sid Halley
Flying Finish
Blood Sport
Rat Race
and have enjoyed every one.
I read a lot of Dick Francis years (and years) ago. Never failed to deliver.
I really need to pick up The Storm Before the Storm, since I thoroughly enjoyed both History of Rome and Revolutions podcasts.
Did the book have the epilogue he posted as a podcast? I vaguely remember him saying it didn’t make it into first edition of the book due to space issues.
I’m only half-way through!
There was a whole series of Bulldog Drummond movies in the 30s and 40s.
TCM shows some of the Bulldog Drummond movies from time to time.
“A-no matter where she’s a-hiding, she’s gonna hear me a comin’
Gonna walk right down that street Like Bulldog Drummond”
https://youtu.be/PN307ssGLuc
I’ve just started Cells Are the New Cure. I picked it up at a lecture and author book signing. It’s basically a book explaining to laymen (like me) the evolving cellular therapies and CRISPR technologies.
Are you sure that Cells Are the New Cure isn’t the history of how Biden and the Clintons saved us from super predators by passing the tough anti-crime bill?
o/t: one can never have too many reminders of how >stupid and ignorant most journalists are.
He isn’t even embarrassed by it. Some of his other tweets he blames it on living in 6 different districts since 2005.
That doesn’t explain his HS civics class.
I was hoping he was British and had an excuse.
That cannot be real, can it? How did you make it all the way through K-12 and then college to not even understand something so basic about your country?
I need more beer.
Just remember, my daughter got an A on her US History test on the Constitution in part for ‘correctly’ identifying something Trump did that was an example of his exercising his power as the ‘Chief Legislator’.
*falls out of chair*
You don’t want to know the action he took which was associated with the presidential role of ‘Chief of the Economy’
The role of wha????
Never mind, don’t tell me.
I weep
Christ on a stick. I’m a Canuck and even *I* knew that Congresscritters were up for re-election every two years.
I hope he’s joking.
Learn to Constitution
ahhahhaaha
For God and Kaiser: History of Austrian Army 1619-1918.
I made a mistake of checking out some Napoleonic miniature rules* and ran into a solid wall of Britwank (tug forward-Peninsula, tug backward-Waterloo, Peninsula-Waterloo-Peninsula-Waterloo until you erupt a Thin Red Line all over your minis), so I needed an antidote. So far it’s good. The author has a pro-Austrian bias and paints a bit rosier picture regarding, say, merit-based promotion and service of non-German speakers, but he got me on his side by both unabashedly fanboying over Empress Maria Therese, and shitting on Frederic II at every opportunity he gets (a running joke is Frederick absconding from the field as soon as a battle looks ugly for Prussians, even if they win in the end). Looks very promising for when early 19th century rolls around.
*Honorable exception: Lasalle by Sam Mustafa, an American of Turkish origin. Austrian and Russian army are given the same treatment as French and British, and none are portrayed as unbeatable supermen or bumbling morons.
A Triumphal Procession, a historical novel describing how Emperor Nicephorus Phocas came to power. Pretty cool look at the 10th Century Eastern Rome, using mostly fictional low-level characters to tell the story. Includes a point of view of Arab Christians living in the lands of the (former) Caliphate. I hope there will be a sequel depicting Phocas’s reign and his overthrow.
I don’t remember all the details of the period but did Austria ever win a battle against Fredrick? Seemed like one long thrashing. Maybe I should read it because I was never sure why Maria Therese was highly regarded.
I am glad you asked, I just finished Battle of Kolin. A fine thrashing on the heels of technically a Prussian victory, but a damn bloody one at Prague, and leading into multi-sided invasion of Prussia.
Jinx.
You might want to read up on the Battle of Kolin.
Reading a biography on W.E. Gladstone, because allegedly he’s family.
Read the Mueller report, because I don’t want to rely on what the media says about it.
Read The Good Earth, because I feel like I should read more fiction, besides what I get from the media.
reading FUBAR: American History Z.
it’s a graphic novel that i’m screening before giving it to my almost 10y.o. who loves military history. it’s about 20 short stories taking place from 1000AD viking exploration through modern age covering big historical moments that get fucked up by zombies. it’s sooooooooper violent but fun. probably too derivative for adults. it clocks in at 400+ pages. i’m sure my kid will love it.
Does it have a scene where a dude is raped by zombies in a shower?
Sounds scary…
not yet. shit, really? that may have to be edited out then.
Children of Time is scifi about human space colonists finding a terraformed world that’s been seeded with a virus that accelerates the evolutionary process. except the virus has infected the insects, not the sapiens. hilarity ensues.
OT: Maybe I missed something, but what’s the deal with gif avatars now?
Your comment needs more this.
This came off a recommended link from that one
Am I the only one mildly disturbed by it?
They’re totally a thing.
I thought I was the only one who missed the memo.
Donno, I have gif animations disabled, so I haven’t noticed.
Regarding Robert Park, I seem to remember he is a full-blown believer in AGW, so (as with most people) never accept just anything anything he says blindly.
SECOPS. Still doing the Cisco thing, pass this and pick up CCNA Cyber Ops. Other than here and on a resume (maybe), I cringe when saying that out loud.
Genki I. Up to L8. Work and home have been busier than usual so no real time for studying. As a result, have been sinking in class. At this point I look at it as two hours of practice a week and not really concerned with cramming the material in.
OT: Remember when the left thought Trump was the real dictator when he was dealing with Rocketman? What do you think these tools feel about this revelation?
Jesus H Christ Jimbo.
I’m checking Glibs occasionally during the day and I keep laughing like a 8 year old each time I see the GIF. I know it will get old, but it is highly entertaining for now.
Shit like this makes me miss my homie Harambe even more.
Bitch barely waited a year.
Amsterdam. It had to be Amsterdam.
Silly me. It’s Rotterdam. Amsterdam’s wannabe.
As usual, I miss one of my favorite threads.
Animal: I, too, am re-reading Hawaii (for the nth time). It might be his best but I was looking for The Source, couldn’t find it so grabbed the former. The Source was a wonderful insight to the evolution of religion and I was looking forward to a re-read.
HM: I remember your previous comments about color/culture and I recall spending several hours down a wonderful rabbit hole of research afterwards.
All: I enjoyed the comments on race.