book-reviews news

Watching The Pacific? Read The Pacific Too!

2010-03-21T20:32:00.000+02:00

If you are enjoying the HBO series The Pacific, the story of 5 men whose lives intersect in the Pacific theater during World War II, there are several books that might interest you.

The first book is The Pacific by Hugh Ambrose ($26.95) (Yup, Ambrose…Hugh is Stephen Ambrose’s son). A companion to the TV series, this fascinating and inspiring book tells the stories of four US Marines and one US Navy carrier pilot whose lives intersect in the Pacific theater during WWII.

For more information about the individual men involved, here are some books you might want to consider:

A Helmet For My Pillow: From Parris Island To The Pacific by Robert Leckie ($16.00) Robert Leckie, one of America’s greatest military historians, recalls his own story from boot camp in Parris Island to the bloody war in the Pacific. Leckie experienced it all–the booze, the brawling, the loving on sixty-two-hour liberty; the courageous fighting and dying in combat as the U.S. Marines slugged it out, inch by inch, island by island across the Pacific to the shores of Japan.

I’m Staying With My Boys: The Heroic Life of Sgt. John Basilone, USMC by Jim Proser ($14.99) Sgt. John Basilone held off 3,000 Japanese troops at Guadalcanal after his 15-member unit was reduced to three men. Killed during the war, he was the only Marine in World War II to have received the Medal of Honor, the Navy Cross, and a Purple Heart and is arguably the most famous Marine of all time. I’m Staying with My Boys is the only family-authorized biography of Basilone, and it features photographs never before published. Distinctive among military biographies, the story is told in the first person, allowing readers to experience his transformation, forged in the horrors of battle, from aimless youth to war hero known as “Manila John.”

With The Old Breed: At Peleliu and Okinawa by E.B. Sledge ($16.00) In The Wall Street Journal, Victor Davis Hanson named With the Old Breed one of the top five books on epic twentieth-century battles. Studs Terkel interviewed the author for his definitive oral history, The Good War. Now E. B. Sledge’s acclaimed first-person account of fighting at Peleliu and Okinawa returns to thrill, edify, and inspire a new generation.

An Alabama boy steeped in American history and enamored of such heroes as George Washington and Daniel Boone, Eugene B. Sledge became part of the war’s famous 1st Marine Division-3d Battalion, 5th Marines. Even after intense training, he was shocked to be thrown into the battle of Peleliu, where “the world was a nightmare of flashes, explosions, and snapping bullets.” By the time Sledge hit the hell of Okinawa, he was a combat vet, still filled with fear but no longer with panic.Based on notes Sledge secretly kept in a copy of the New Testament, With the Old Breed captures with utter simplicity and searing honesty the experience of a soldier in the fierce Pacific Theater.

(If you haven’t started watching the series because you don’t get HBO…good news! They have the whole first episode available online!) http://www.hbo.com/the-pacific/index.html#)

[Via http://titcombsbookshop.wordpress.com]

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In Hovering Flight

2010-03-21T20:29:00.000+02:00

In Hovering Flight is Joyce Hinnefeld’s first novel, and of particular interest to me because Dr. Hinnefeld is a writing professor at the school I attend, Moravian College. I’ve had her for a poetry writing class and she runs the school writing center where I work, so I was very excited to experience her first novel.

The main character is named Addie, and the book centers around her, her husband Tom, her daughter Scarlet, and Addie’s best friends Cora and Lou. In the very beginning we find out Addie has just died of cancer, and the novel that follows is a series of flashbacks from the perspectives of various characters. We get to know their personalities, hardships, and relationships in bits and pieces as the story progresses.

Addie is a bird lover and an artist, who later becomes an activist. She meets her husband Tom when he teaches a “Biology of the Birds” class at her college, and their love of birds and nature brings them together. At times it is difficult to relate to the strong feelings the characters have towards these birds, but the lengths that they go to in order to fight for what they love is both moving and somewhat frustrating. The character of Addie is certainly a frustrating one. We want to like her but her actions are sometimes so extreme that is difficult to do so, especially when we see how these actions affect her family.

One thing that is really apparent in this novel is that Hinnefeld certainly has a way with words. Her writing is beautiful and descriptive, making her prose seem almost poetic. She manages to create a delightful atmosphere of mystery, constantly leaving you wondering what the next piece of the puzzle is going to be.

However, the novel is very slow to start and difficult to get into until around page 50. The biggest flaw is the way that the flashbacks are handled. They happen sporadically, with little or not introduction to the fact that it is a flashback, and they don’t happen in any particular order. Without some sort of time line or more definitive way to keep track of time, the reader is left with some confusion about the events. While Hinnefeld has some wonderful characters here, their growth and our appreciation of them is somewhat stunted by the fact that we mostly see them through inconsistent flashbacks. Addie in particular is introduced as a rather quiet, innocent, sweet young girl, who we see later camping out in protest for weeks or running from the law. Though we see a little bit of her change through her pregnancy and Scarlet, it is still not enough to completely understand her character.

Despite the flaws, if you can get past the slow beginning the book becomes engaging and is a fairly quick read. If you’re a bird lover, nature lover, or artist, I would especially recommend this novel. Though it might not be a life changing read, it is well written and is at times emotionally touching.

[Via http://bythbook.wordpress.com]

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Muslim American Girls Magazine [Magazine Review]

2010-03-20T20:10:00.000+02:00

Very recently I came across the Muslim American Girls Magazine and I was quite impressed with the content and layout of it. It is an online magazine geared toward girls and young women up to age 16. The website contains excerpts from articles in the magazine and information about how the magazine began. To read the magazine you have to subscribe to it by sending an email to the editor (subscription is free).

The magazine’s founder and editor is a young woman in the United States who started the writing articles when she was only ten years of age. For several years she published monthly issues online but this is the first “magazines format” being issued. According to the editor, “the goal of the magazine is to promote reading and writing among Muslim girls.” In addition, she writes that “Muslim girls have a fun, informative and halal magazine to read.”

The March/April issue is filled with everything that would appeal to a preteen and teenage girl (maybe because many of the contributors are themselves preteens and teens). The features and columns range from recipes and crafts to book reviews and a page for fashions. Readers are shown how to live an Islamic life by being conscious of those less well off than themselves, by learning the fears and hopes of someone adopting the hijab for the first time and through various inspirational Islamic quotes. Also included are a beauty/health column, a fun corner (with riddles and challenges) and information on adopting a hobby. These are all interspersed with beautiful photography and poetry. This magazine is not only professionally done but it is relevant and eye-catching.

Talking Points: Young girls may find reassurance in reading about the views and experiences of others like themselves in this magazine. Schools can benefit from a subscription to this magazine in the classroom or library and use the ideas as a starting point for discussions and to encourage writing projects among their students (which could then be submitted to the magazine for publication).

Now what I would like to see is a magazine for Muslim boys and teens! Anyone up to the challenge? Anyone knows of such a magazine?

[Via http://muslimkidsbooks.wordpress.com]

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Book Review - #1 - "Master's of Rome" 5 stars out of 5

2010-03-20T20:03:00.000+02:00

It seems appropriate for the first book review be of the greatest series of novels that I’ve ever read. As the family story goes, the Master’s of Rome series started with Uncle KC maybe 10 years ago. He read it through and passed it along to Granny, who never quite finished as it got too bloody. Uncle Jon was next, reading all 6 (#7 released in 2007) books straight through, often calling into work sick so he could read at home. Last summer, Jon told me it was my time.

The works are Historical Fiction – detailed research of historical facts woven into a story.

From Wikipedia:

Masters of Rome is a series of historical fiction novels by author Colleen McCullough (b. 1937) set in ancient Rome during the last days of the old Roman Republic; it primarily chronicles the lives and careers of Gaius Marius, Lucius Cornelius Sulla, Pompey the Great, Julius Caesar, and the early career of Caesar Augustus. It spans from January 1, 110 BC through to January 16, 27 BC.

I love the stories of ancient Rome. I loved this series. Obviously, most of the main characters were male, and the author, Colleen McCullough, did such an incredible job or writing from the male perspective you’re forced to wonder where she got her insight.

Each book is thick – 700 to 1,000 pages – so plan to avoid all other books for at least 8 months…and trust me, that won’t be a problem. It took me roughly 7 months to finish, a month of which was while I was in Thailand.

Tips: Try used book stores to piece the series together, and READ THEM IN ORDER, don’t skip.

I never read a book more than once (feel the same way about most movies), but I do plan to revisit this series at some point in the future.

Rating: Easy….5 stars out of 5

[Via http://jessefowler.wordpress.com]

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Wines of the World. Your Essential Wine Handook

2010-03-18T20:53:00.000+02:00

Wines of the World

Susan Keevin et al.

Eyewitness Companions

DK Publishing, New York

2004

If you are at all like me –and I think I am an average Vancouver denizen- you probably own a lot more books that you have never read than the ones you have. It is a bit embarrassing to confess this, coming from me, and I am supposed to be a writer. Writers are supposed to read or to have read a lot. When I became more interested in wine I started to collect wine books, thinking “now, I have a real passion here, so I will read all these books.”

Of course I was fooling myself. We are animals of habit and now, looking back, I should have known that, just as with my other books, I would only read a fraction of them. I must also say, however, that although I have not read most books front to back, I have definitely used them for reference, both for my fiction and wine writing. Just in case you started thinking “why should I read this blog? This guy is cranking wine stuff out of his head.”

In any case, what I wanted to say on this one is, if I had to choose one book, I have had the money and space on my shelf for only one wine book I would pick the one that gives name to this posting. Wines of the World provides all the basic information you need in a mere 672 pages. It is compact, it has beautiful photographs, it’s made with nice, thick paper. Plus, it packs condensed, quality information on the world wine regions, grapes, wine people, top producers, history. If that were not enough, you will find handy maps too.

I don’t know how they managed to pack so much into such limited space but that shows craftsmanship. (Should I write craftswomanship to be gender correct here? Just kidding). These guys knew what they were doing. I also find the language simple, accessible to all, avoiding the excessive industry jargon that drives the wine curious back to beer and rye. Nothing wrong with those two, don’t take me wrong. If you just read the first chapter “Introducing Wines of the World” (it’s ok if you skip the old stuff and go straight to the 20th century) you will have already a pretty good grasp on the wine areas, who is making what, more (or less) and who is drinking it. For instance, on page 13 there is a neat table of production and consumption. For the year 2001, the consumption in liters per capita put Canada on place 15th, after France, Portugal, a long list of etceteras and even tiny Switzerland and beer oriented Germany. What they don’t say is that Vancouver drives the Canadian consumption up, with West Vancouverites downing a staggering 90 liters per head a year. That is a whole lot, and yes, this is fresh info that is not in the book. But that is why you come to this blog, see? Now, seriously, I have the 2004 edition, so expect updated info on the current one. You still need to come to Winecouver though.

Pages 24 to 35 will make you a quasi-expert in terroir, vineyard soil and grape varieties. Knowing red from white and having Cabernet Sauvignon, Merlot and Chardonnay only in your wine knowledge arsenal doesn’t cut it any more, bud. The terroir explanation text is wittingly accompanied by cool illustrations that will cut through that looming boredom. Then you have the main grapes, both black (Cabernet Sauvignon, Merlot, Syrah and Pinot Noir) and white (Chardonnay, Riesling, Sauvignon Blanc and Semillon) explained in detail, as it should be. Most wine drank today still comes from those main driving grapes. Then you have shorter descriptions for other grapes that are becoming more popular. Cabernet Franc, Malbec, Sangiovese, for the dark ones and Viognier, Pinot Gris and Gewurztraminer among many other whites. Stuff you should know to help you understand and appreciate better your new choices.

The continuing pages until the end of the introduction chapter give some insight on vineyard management and vinification. I find this latter one is quite relevant, as it relates directly to the stuff you are putting in your mouth. Oaked vs unoaked, blending, bottle aging, malolactic fermentation, these are all areas in which you want to have a working knowledge, for your drinking’s sake. Huh! Talking about sake, this book doesn’t include a Sake chapter, which makes complete sense. I still don’t get why wine people have got into the idea that Sake should be included in wine books, wine courses, wine tastings and wine shelves on stores. Even the Playhouse International Wine Festival has a Sake section! C’mon. Sake may be very tasty but is not grape wine.

Pages 42 to 45 complete the introduction and are essential. They are about wine styles, meaning sparkling or still, light, medium or full bodied, red vs white. Here, as you go through the styles, you learn the basic wine lexicon associated to each style, plus a few aromas and flavors you may typically expect. To close this smartly put together chapter, pages 43, 44 and 45 have an inset each, telling you about stuff you definitely want to know: Tannin, old vs young wine and the building blocks of wine. I am talking about sweetness, acidity, tannin and alcohol, the properties you assess when answering two essential questions: do I like the wine? Is this quality wine? I must really like this book Have you noticed how many times I used the word “essential”?

By the time you finish reading through the first 40 pages you will feel a lot more confident. You only have 630 more to go! ; ) You have now all these sections to explore on the wine regions, from Burgundy in France to the top producers in Lebanon. Yes, they do make wine in Lebanon, as they do in Israel. This a really good section for reference, both for when you want to take a quick look or when you find a wine you like and want to know more about the region. It is also fun to look for the “top producers” segment at the end of each wine region. Chances are that you will recognize some of the wines you have seen at your local store.

The last bit of the book has some wine tasting technique tips, basic wine and food matching and main aromas and flavors you will easily identify in your wines. There is a very solid index, which I deem truly essential in any good wine book. And, huh, there is a glossary near the end too. You should look at it. In case someone asked you what Qualitatswein mit Pradikat is. No. Seriously. I totally recommend this book.

Cheers

Ivan Alfonso

[Via http://winecouver.wordpress.com]

Former news editor files lawsuit against the University, Daily ...

Middle-of-the-night reflections…

2010-03-18T08:36:00.001+02:00

I haven’t been riding… or writing… much this week due to having the cough/cold/crud yet again. I’ve come to the conclusion that it must be stress-related: I’m simply not getting enough time or good weather in which to ride! That’s it!

Of course today I felt almost a hundred percent whole and functional again, yet now I can’t sleep. This will not help the healing that my body is craving. I’ve been awake since 6:00 a.m. — yesterday — and it’s now almost one a.m. — today (although my body thinks it’s not quite midnight). Ravenously hungry, I’m eating tortellini with peas, butter, and freshly grated parmesan.

I’m probably awake because I fell into bed too early and without my nightly dose of reading. I am traveling with Neil Peart along the healing road in his book, Ghost Rider. Not only are his words recalling to me places I have traveled (albeit before I had a motorcycle), but they are also recalling to me dreams I had when I was a younger person. Dreams that I let inadvertently fade, dreams that got lost in the rush and scramble to simply survive.

My brain is a-buzz with the work that is before me, bringing the old dreams back into focus, and adding them to the new dream, which is to live my motorcycle passion, in both work and for pleasure.

But right now, I really must get some sleep!

[Via http://lilredridingliz.wordpress.com]

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Sex markets and trades

2010-03-18T08:36:00.000+02:00

Sex markets and trades; (Mar. 19, 2010)

Thailand is the prime sex tourist attraction. About 15 millions flood the Capital Bangkok every year. Many girls are connected by internet to their favorite regular tourists who visit yearly for a two-week vacation: one week with the girl (who consider this period as vacation time on beaches, all expense paid) and another week for touring Thailand. It is estimated that over 3 millions in Thailand practice sex business, supposedly with the consent of their folks to feed the remaining members of the family. The government enacted laws proclaiming sex business as illegal; it had completely forgotten this law: this particular tourist appeal generates 14% of GNP.

The American soldiers fighting in Vietnam and Cambodia targeted Bangkok for relaxation breaks and then opened bars and sex businesses. After the war in Vietnam, ex-soldiers resumed their preferred tourist activities to their accustomed destination. Obviously, drug trade was a major catalyst for targeting Bangkok.

The next destination for the northern Europe and England hard working population is the Capital Riga of Latvia. Every weekend, dozens of charter planes at low cost land in Riga for a relaxing time. Morocco is the favorite destination for southern Europe.

As for the sources of the human sex pool it is the new Republics of former Soviet Union and Africa. Romania, Bulgaria, and Moldavia are prime sources for the mafias in that trade. For example, Moldavia insures the availability of 10,000 sex slaves a year; the slaves principally land in the city of Antalia in Turkey and then to Europe; Cyprus used to be the first landing location of these girls, who had secured due legitimate papers for other jobs; but the law in Cyprus required medical check up on contagious diseases; thus the mafias shifted the target location to Turkey; Cyprus has now cancelled this requirement: it cannot afford to lose a large proportion of its 7 millions tourists.

Sex slave business mafias have reformed their techniques in hiring slave sex to circumvent tighter regulations. Currently, the mafias promise a sex slave freedom, after working several years in abject conditions, by luring and expediting fresh replacements. At first, the girl is promised freedom for hiring one replacement and then this number is increased gradually for one reason or another. The replacing girls know that the final job is sex but are never aware of the conditions of the work as slaves; they work non-stop and barely have time to feed and sleep. As the fresh slave girl board the plane then the doors are shut on her freedom; when she reaches destination she is gang raped, beaten and humiliated to give her the proper taste of what to expect.

Nigeria and Cameroon are the main African sources of sex slaves. In Nigeria, mafias organize witch ceremonies for the hired girls called “Djudju” where the girl promises complete secrecy on the bosses and organization. Many mafias set up faked “Queen Beauty contests” and then photos are taken in bikini and brochures are sent to select rich elite customers; first the girls are sent to work in hotels and bars and then are coerced to upgrade into sex business.

There are 400,000 whores in Germany and as many in Spain; 85,000 in England and as many in Italy; 20,000 in Holland and as many in France. Over 80% of the whores are foreigners from Romania, Bulgaria, and Africa. Sex slave charges between 300 and 400 in developed European States while it cost between 30 to 50 in their home States.

Many European States have tried alternative approaches to cut down on sex trades. Holland enacted laws to legalize this business as long as the sex provider applies legally. Unfortunately, only 4% opted to formally legalize their trade. Sweden has proven to have the most efficacious method: apprehending the customers for illegal activities.

[Via http://adonis49.wordpress.com]

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Isaac Newton

2010-03-16T20:54:00.000+02:00

This book, from Christian Encounters by Mitch Stokes, is a biography on Isaac Newton. It gives an inspiring look into a man’s life who considered his faith to be the starting point as he delved into the world of science and mathematics. Though a short book, I found it to be very interesting, sparking my desire to learn more of this amazing man from the past.

Through his God given intellect, obsession for detail, and a penchant for solitude and study, he made amazing discoveries, contributing to our world like none other. The part I was particularly encouraged by was the fact that Isaac Newton saw the scientific world as a way to explain God’s wondrous works in nature. It appears that his desire to understand the intricisies of the world was fueled by his study of theology and desire to know God. His life demonstrated his belief that, “To be constantly engaged in studying and probing into God’s actions was true worship.”

The surprising part of Isaac Newton’s life was his obvious humility. Though he was brilliant and ahead of his peers in his discoveries, he was surprisingly quiet about it. Only after a tremendous amount of prodding from his fellow scientists and philosophers did he agree to publish his work. It is fortunate for us that he did and yet it leads me to wonder what other discoveries, the ones he did not share with the world, he made and what a difference it may have made to the world if he had shared them.

This would be a great book to add to your children’s reading list. We need to introduce our children to real men of faith. Our world is so full of fake, self-absorbed people who are sending the wrong message to our kids. This book will provide them with a view of a man who sought God in every area of his personal and professional life. I recommend this book to both adults and students.

Disclosure of Material Connection: I received this book free from Thomas Nelson Publishers as part of their BookSneeze.com book review bloggers program. I was not required to write a positive review. The opinions I have expressed are my own. I am disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission’s 16 CFR, Part 255.

[Via http://momofmany.wordpress.com]

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JPS Haggadah reactions 1

2010-03-16T20:50:00.000+02:00

All of the Bible’s holy days are unique, filled with meaning and fun in their own way. Passover is no exception, and honestly probably my favorite festival to prepare for and commemorate. The actual Seder is the icing on the cake of the preparations. And the evening is packed with reading and singing, two of my favorite things to do. The Yeshua-emphasis for a Messianic believer obviously adds enormous, gigantic meaning on top of the service and the meal. All in all it is a great lesson for families and individuals, it fulfills certain commandments of God, it allows one to invite guests and serve them a great meal and enjoy conversation. What a great holiday.

The JPS Commentary on the Haggadah has added even more significance to Passover this year already. The book is filled with plenty of history but in a size that is easily digestible. Some of the things the book talks about regarding the history of the Seder itself along with the food and the citations from the Mishnah, etc inspired reactions of “cool!” “wow!” and “this is so neat.” This book helps to explain why in the world the Seder is the way it is today. This is a result of years and decades and centuries and millenia of fitting the service with the times of society and the changes in cultures and location. Other people have explained that better so I’m not trying to re-invent the wheel. Just posting some reactions. Unfortunately I haven’t made it through the whole book yet, but there’s still some time left .

On another note, I received my copies of the VOD Haggadah and Meal of Messiah, and I must say that this Passover looks to be perhaps the most memorable yet in my short history of biblical festivals.

Happy Passover!

[Via http://heavenisnear.wordpress.com]

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"10 Years Thinner" summary

2010-03-14T20:37:00.000+02:00

The Ten Years Thinner dietary elimination/reintroduction schedule proceeds as follows:

1. For the first two weeks of the Ten Years Thinner program,

all legumes, soy-based foods, dairy, grains, and other high glycemic

index carbs (potatoes, dried fruit, fruit juice, alcohol, etc.) are off limits.

2. At the beginning of week three, legumes are reintroduced.

3. At the beginning of week four, dairy and soy-based foods are reintroduced.

4. At the beginning of week five, select grains and other high glycemic

index carbs are reintroduced.

5. After week six, you may resume drinking alcohol.

The Lean Essentials:

#1: Eat Frequently

TheTen Years Thinner meal plan calls for the daily consumption of three mandatory meals, two mandatory between-meal snacks, and an optional pre-bedtime snack. You might be worried about how your body will react to so much food. Don’t be! Eating frequently does not make you fat. On the contrary, the more frequently you eat, the faster you’ll build a firm, flab-free physique. There are several reasons for this.

#2: Drink Frequently

The Ten Years Thinner meal plan calls for the consumption of at least 60 ounces (about two liters) of fluid per day, or about 10 to 12 ounces with every meal and snack. This volume should be in addition to whatever fluids you drink when exercising.

#3: Include a Full Serving of

Lean Protein with Every Meal

As you know, adequate protein, consumed frequently throughout the day, is absolutely vital to muscle toning and fat burning. It might interest you to learn that protein has roughly three times the thermic effect of either fat or carbohydrate. That means the more protein your meal contains, the more calories you will burn digesting your food.

#4: Include at Least One Serving of

Fruit and/or Vegetables with Every Meal

The health benefits of high consumption of fresh fruits and vegetables are legion. The Ten Years Thinner meal plan includes a minimum of one serving of fruit and/or vegetables with each of your three meals. To estimate what constitutes a serving, just go straight to the end of your wrist. Use your fist as a gauge: One serving of fruit equals approximately one fist; one serving of vegetables (or salad) equals approximately two fists.

#5: Cook Exclusively with Cold-Pressed

Extra-Virgin Olive Oil

As you know from Chapter 3, fat plays a vital role in signaling your brain that you’re full so you are not tempted to overeat. In addition, fat slows the absorption of carbohydrates and functionally lowers the glycemic index of a meal. For these reasons alone, it is important to include moderate amounts of fat with every meal and snack.

[Via http://sunnystephana.wordpress.com]

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Hello Tessa Dare! Where have you been all my life?

2010-03-14T20:19:00.000+02:00

Ok, so for the last… who knows how many months – I have been walking through my bookstore, selecting my purchases while these beautiful covers by Tessa Dare are staring out from the shelves at me saying “Take me home”. Now, I will admit that I am a cautious reader, not often do I veer away from my usual authors. Hence the reason why I never answered the call put forth by these books and took them home with me. What a mistake that was! When I finally took the plunge, boy was I satisfied. Tessa Dare is a breath of fresh air and a stunning addition to the romance writing world.

I was originally going to review her first three books individually but thought instead to use this short blog to praise Tessa in general and promote this series as a whole. I found all three books to be delightfully witty with no real dull or down moments to distract from the stories. It is rare, in a series, that I actually like both the hero and heroine in each book but with this group I had a little place in my heart for all of them. I have found that with some series the stories are all very similar, albeit with different characters, and the main theme/ conflicts are so blatantly close that you could possibly write the rest of the book having only read a few chapters. With this series, the stories are strikingly different. The main theme, a love hard won, makes for an interesting read and satisfying endings.

These books are sensual and romantic with reasonably descriptive love scenes. I like the way Tessa has written about the intimacy between her characters. I would give these books an 8 out of 10 on my Sexy Scale. (10 being very graphic in sexy content – 1 being so tame there isn’t even a real kiss… ok, well maybe a chaste one)

Overall, I would highly recommend any Tessa Dare book. I don’t even have to read the back covers for her new series to want to read them. I give this series a 9.5 out of 10. Tessa’s next book ‘One Dance with a Duke’ comes out at the end of May… I simply can not wait! Check out Tessa’s website for all her news and book info.

Book 1 – Goddess of the Hunt (Jeremy & Lucy)

Ever the bold adventuress, Lucy Waltham has decided to go hunting for a husband. But first she needs some target practice. So she turns to her brother’s best friend, Jeremy Trescott, the Earl of Kendall, to hone her seductive wiles on him before setting her sights on another man. But her practice kisses spark a smoldering passion-one that could send all her plans up in smoke.

Jeremy has an influential title, a vast fortune, and a painful past full of long-buried secrets. He keeps a safe distance from his own emotions, but to distract Lucy from her reckless scheming, he must give his passions free rein. Their sensual battle of wills is as maddening as it is delicious, but the longer he succeeds in managing the headstrong temptress, the closer Jeremy comes to losing control. When scandal breaks, can he bring himself to abandon Lucy to her ruin? Or will he risk his heart and claim her for his own?

Book 2 - Surrender of a Siren (Gray and Sophia)

Desperate to escape a loveless marriage and society’s constraints, pampered heiress Sophia Hathaway jilts her groom, packs up her paints and sketchbook, and assumes a new identity, posing as a governess to secure passage on the Aphrodite. She wants a life of her own: unsheltered, unconventional, uninhibited. But it’s one thing to sketch her most wanton fantasies, and quite another to face the dangerously handsome libertine who would steal both her virtue and her gold.

To any well-bred lady, Benedict ‘Gray’ Grayson is trouble in snug-fitting boots. A conscienceless scoundrel who sails the seas for pleasure and profit, Gray lives for conquest-until Sophia’s perception and artistry stir his heart. Suddenly he’ll brave sharks, fire, storm, and sea just to keep her at his side. She’s beautiful, refined, and ripe for seduction. Could this counterfeit governess be a rogue’s redemption? Or will the runaway heiress’s secrets destroy their only chance at love?

Book 3 – A Lady of Persuasion (Toby and Isabel)

Only one thing could convince Sir Tobias Aldridge, an incorrigible libertine, to profess undying fidelity to a woman he’s just met. Revenge. What better way to get back at an enemy than by stealing the scoundrel’s sister? Not that Toby finds it a chore, seducing a beguiling, sultry beauty freshly arrived from the West Indies. When the prize is Isabel Grayson, vengeance is doubly rewarding.

Isabel is determined to marry a wealthy, powerful lord and become a lady of influence, using her rank and fortune to fight social injustice. Sir Toby, with his paltry title and infamous reputation, is unsuitable husband material-but he makes her blood race, her heart pound, and her long-buried passions come to the surface. If she can reform the charming devil, she’ll get exactly what she craves: society’s respect. But it’s a dangerous gamble. For if Toby wins this battle of persuasion, Isabel could lose her heart.

(excepts from fantasticfiction.co.uk)

[Via http://danielledubois.wordpress.com]

House Democrat Takes On Party Leaders « The Speakers Lobby

You Are What You Eat: Book Review

2010-03-14T08:17:00.000+02:00

Well, Gillian McKeith was not wrong about the “changing your life” bit. If you were to follow the plan you would find yourself expanding your vocabulary with a world of new and unusual food and drink names. And if you are time depleted or not a type A personality, perhaps you should leave this book on the shelf!

And I’m personally not convinced that drinking the juice of 6 carrots or 5 cucumbers is neither necessary for optimum health nor even “natural” (in the fullest definition of the term).

This aside, and while the writing style is a little dull, maybe even stuffy, You Are What You Eat is a light easy read, well laid out and useful more as a reference book than a cover to cover immersion. It contains plenty of new food ideas and great recipes for those looking to pursue a lifetime migration towards a whole food regimen. McKeith’s views about making small changes align with my own and she reminds us that perfection in any nutrition plan is not real.

I didn’t buy into everything she has published and had difficulty digesting unreferenced potions about tongue reading and other “body signs” with accompanying nutritional recommendations for everything from pimples to a sore tongue to skid mark stools. This aside, I’m still going to buy a copy to try a few of the recipes and provide prompts for areas I’d like to research further.

McKeith succeeds in keeping a complicated topic simple and if you like soups, broths and juices, this may be “the one” for you.

[Via http://52tweaks.co.nz]

News is a social experience

A Million Miles in a Thousand Years: What I Learned While Editing My Life By Donald Miller

2010-03-13T20:38:00.000+02:00

A Million Miles in a Thousand Years is basically a story about…Story. Stories are a common part of life for most people, but many of us have not stopped to think about what makes a good story. Miller leads the reader through his personal journey of discovering the complexity and practicality of a story. As the reader follows Miller’s cognitive adventures they discover a call to living life instead of dragging through existence.

I personally enjoyed this book and would recommend it to anyone who is reflective of their own life. Miller’s uses his first person writing style, which I love, to break the books chapters into thought blocks. Unlike Blue Like Jazz, A Million Miles in a Thousand Years has more of progress feel to it. Each chapter draws you deeper and deeper into the mystery of what it means to live a meaningful life. In the end, it is left to the read to make the choice, do I make my life into a good story, an epic adventure, or a dime store flop.

[Via http://markman700.wordpress.com]

MetsBlog.com – News: Updated Schedule for Pitchers

Review by Arnold Kling

2010-03-11T20:56:00.000+02:00

Arnold Kling of EconLog, a generally libertarian economics blog, has a flattering review of 13 Bankers. I especially appreciate it because even though we differ from Kling on many of our ideological presuppositions and political preferences, he recognizes the potential bipartisan appeal of at least some parts of the book. For example:

“Johnson and Kwak start by putting the issue of large banks in historical and international context. Although they lean left, they may shock progressives with their sympathetic treatment of Thomas Jefferson and Andrew Jackson in their suspicion of financial concentration.”

This should not be too surprising, really. Progressives and libertarians both tend to be suspicious of concentrated economic power and its ability to sway government policy, though we might differ on solutions. To simplify vastly, progressives want the government to take a harder line on big business, while libertarians want smaller government and hence less ability for big business to twist public policy in its favor. But Simon and I do not share the faith in government regulators that some progressives have, and this is why we support breaking up big banks.

Kling does raise a few quibbles. Without restating them here, I would say that #1 is a fair point (it’s a question of emphasis between ideology and exogenous historical factors. #2 is also a fair point. We weren’t trying to argue that regulation of OTC derivatives would have solved everything; it comes up disproportionately in the book in part because of its symbolic value. As for #3, we weren’t trying to say that BISTRO was the first credit default swap. It was the first synthetic CDO, at least according to Gillian Tett’s book.

[Via http://13bankers.com]

Brad Friedman and Desi Doyen: Green News Report -- March 9, 2010 ...

Book Reflection 6

2010-03-11T20:54:00.000+02:00

Anancy and Mr. Dry Bone

Author & Illustrator: French, Fiona

ISBN #- 0316292982

Summary: Mr. Dry-Bone live on top of a hill and he was very rich, he wanted to marry Miss Louise. Anancy lives in a small house at the foot of a hill and is very poor but, he wants to marry Miss Louise also. Miss Louise lives on the other side of the hill and she is neither rich nor poor. She is clever and beautiful, but she has never laughed. She said the first man that could make her laugh, she would marry. Mr. Dry-Bone came to Miss Louise’s door, he was dressed in his best clothes. He had brought all of his tricks to try and make her laugh. He turned himself into a bat aand then into a cat and a pig! After all of this, all Miss Louise did was smile. Anancy knew that he could do better than this. He went to tiger and asked to lend him his best suit, but all he had was a jogging suit. He also borrowed a hunting hat from dog and shiny black shoes from alligator. When Anancy got to her house, she started laughing! Anancy married Miss Louise and they lived happily ever after.

Response: This book would really get children’s imaginations flowing. I liked this book because it was somewhat different. It is not your traditional read for students. I feel that I would have enjoyed reading a book like this when I was younger.

Classroom Connections: I think that this book would be a great book to read aloud to students. The illustrations in this book are really colorful and would get children’s minds really flowing. If I were using this book in my classroom. I would have my students draw an illustration of what they think Anancy would look like when he went to Miss Louise’s house. I would then hang up the artwork in my classroom.

[Via http://wherrittjl.wordpress.com]

CNET News Daily Podcast: Tuesday's top headlines | CNET News Daily ...

Memoirs of a Nobel Peace Prize on Iran Islamic Revolution

2010-03-11T08:50:00.000+02:00

Memoirs of a Nobel Peace Prize on Iran Islamic Revolution; (Mar. 10, 2010)

Iranian judge, Shereen Abadi, received Nobel Peace Prize in 2003 for defending Iranian civil and human rights. She was a renowned judge during the Shah regime and then supported the nascent Iranian revolution in 1979 before it turned fundamental Islamic. She is banished from Iran and has published in English in 2006 “Iran awakening: memoirs of revolution and hope”. This manuscript was translated into Arabic by Hussam Itani and published by “Dar al Saki” in 2010.

In autumn of 2000, judge Abadi stumbled on a nerve wracking file: An Iranian information minister had previously ordered the assassination of Abadi. Before Khomeini returned to Iran after 14 years of absence in February 1979, Shereen was demonstrating in the streets to ousting the Shah of Iran. As Khomeini stepped out the airplane he was asked “How do you feel today?” He replied “I feel nothing.” That was a bad omen for a start.

Judge Abadi never wore the veil in her life. The newly appointed temporary general secretary to the ministry of justice after the revolution asked Abadi to wear the veil. She refused; he said: “Do it out of faith at least”. This judge, Fateh Allah Bani Sadr, was the brother of the next President of the Islamic Republic Hassan Bani Sadr. Fateh Allah was soon demoted and when his brother was elected President then he offered to Abadi to be the President legal counselor; she declined. The appointed counselor was executed as soon as Hassan Bani Sadr was deposed!

The next day judge Abadi parked her car in front of the Justice Palace she noticed that motorcycles replaced cars; judges and personnel were wearing dirty robes to prove love for poverty; she could not smell cologne or perfume; the staunchest Shah’s supporters turned staunch Islamic revolutionaries. People have been changing outfits for a new role in the play.

It is said that Ayatollah Talkani who was appointed to re-write the Constitution shouted “What are those shameful luxury sofas and couches?” He sat on the ground for a couple of hours and then decided that sofas were far more comfortable. There strong rumors that women would be banished from judgeship: they were not focused, lacked determination, and are generally lazy. Abadi refused the higher post of court investigator because she sensed that the intention was to rob her of her chair as judge. She was finally ordered to the position of assistant to research department!

In November of 1979, a group of adolescents took over the US Embassy and took captives for 444 days; Khomeini was jubilant but most Iranians felt that the revolution has deteriorated. Actually, the Islamic revolution was losing momentum and support until the US ordered Saddam Hussein of Iraq to invade Iran in 1980. The Iranian people had no choice but to support the existing Islamic regime against the aggressors. During 8 years of this insane war that left over one million dead and several millions injured the Islamic Revolution felt free to execute thousands of intellectuals and liberal minded people. Abadi did a simple calculation and figured out from the monthly toll of executed citizens to the number of the population that her turn will soon come within 8 years.

Thousands of adolescents were sent to the front as living mine sweepers. Every morning, two dozens of martyrs “Shaheed” were prayed upon in front of the Justice Palace. Abadi finally shut off her windows, even during summer, in order not to hear the prayers and laments and find a corner to cry her eyes out.

Note: I was eye witness to the revolutionary zeal of the Iranians at the university campus of Norman (Oklahoma). Almost everyday, half a dozen Iranian political parties crisscrossed the campus in demonstrations, discussion groups, and participating in meetings. An Islamic Republic was not in the agenda of most of the parties: they just wanted the Shah’s regime out and a new regime in.

[Via http://adonis49.wordpress.com]

News Ticker: Tom Morello, Band of Horses, David Chase, Lady Gaga ...

Spiritual Mindedness by John Owen - Book Review

2010-03-09T20:49:00.000+02:00

Today I finished reading Spiritual Mindedness by John Owen, an old Puritan Pastor. It is without question one of the most helpful books I have ever read in my entire life. If someone told you the Puritans were “legalistic” or “superstitious” or just plain “weird” then kick those wrong views out of your mind and dig into some John Owen. I probably underlined the majority of this book. I will definitely be going back to it again and again. This book is revised in simple to read language. Enjoy.

[Via http://grizzin.wordpress.com]

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Pride and Prejudice and Zombies: Dawn of the Dreadfuls Contest and Book Review

2010-03-09T08:42:00.000+02:00

Win one of 50 $100 prize packs – Quirk Classics Giveaway – Pride and Prejudice and Zombies: Dawn of the Dreadfuls!

Photo Courtesy of Quirk Books

Pride and Prejudice and Zombies: Dawn of the Dreadfuls by Steve Hockensmith was a shockingly good read. I say shockingly good because I have grown somewhat tired of zombies in my ripe old age of 39 and was shocked that I even accepted the review offer in the first place, let alone enjoyed reading the book so much I can honestly say I loved this book. Even my husband laughed when he saw the book on our coffee table last night, not only because that cover is hilarious, but because he knows when I see a zombie movie on our tv, I run these days. Reading about zombies is different from seeing all that gore on my big screen tv. Heck, one of the earliest horror movies I ever saw was Night of the Living Dead at age seven. And, I’m a huge fan of Jane Austen and her masterpeice Pride and Prejudice, which this novel is based off of, so I was hoping Dawn of the Dreadfuls wasn’t going to be a terrible book. I have picked up Pride and Prejudice and Zombies at least a hundred times in various bookstores since it was published. I had always wanted to read it, and the publishers were kind enough to include a copy of Pride and Prejudice and Zombies along with the prequel they wanted me to review as well. Wasn’t that fabulous of them?

Dawn of the Dreadfuls starts out lovely enough, and begins this way – Walking out in the middle of a funeral would be, of course, bad form. So attempting to walk out on one’s own was beyond the pale. My god, isn’t that just a delightful way to be introduced to zombies in Meryton, Hartfordshire? The book just keeps getting better, with gross-out moments not always zombie filled. When Elizabeth and her sisters mistake their horney mother for a zombie while trying to gain entrance to their father’s room to sire him a son, I could not stop giggling. Even better, Steve Hockensmith writes of a past romance between Mrs. Bennet and Captain Cannon, a legless and armless man who gets wheeled around by two soldiers in a wheel barrel. Even more delightful, the disgusting Lord Lumpley and his perverse love of young girls and walking around his home in the nude. He is a foul pig who asks for Jane to be his protector so he can seduce her, and I adore him for it. But of course, my favorite character in this book is our heroine Elizabeth Bennet, a teenage zombie slayer who is in the midst of a love triangle between a zombie doctor and a zombie warrior. I won’t tell you who she chooses in the end, but trust me, even if you haven’t read the original Pride and Prejudice or you aren’t a zombie freak, you will still like this book very much. How could you not love teenagers learning martial arts in the early part of the nineteenth century England? How scandalous!

Pride and Prejudice and Zombies: Dawn of the Dreadfuls is Pride and Prejudice meets Buffy The Vampire Slayer with a little Shaun of the Dead thrown in for good measure. I hope you enjoy it as much as I have.

CONTEST!!!

For a chance to win one of 50 Quirk Classics Prize Packs, go here.

You will be prompted to mention my blog, The Girl from the Ghetto. Make sure you post the link to this review, because not only do I enjoy a shout-out, but because all participants who post where they heard of this contest will be automatically entered to win one a Prize Pack, with a retail value of more than $100, will include:

An advance copy of Pride and Prejudice and Zombies: Dawn of the Dreadfuls
Audio Books of Pride and Prejudice and Zombies and Sense and Sensibility and Sea Monsters
A password redeemable online for sample audio chapters of Dawn of the Dreadfuls
An awesome Dawn of the Dreadfuls Poster
A Pride and Prejudice and Zombies Journal
A box set of Pride and Prejudice and Zombies Postcards

So it’s easy -

1.) Visit Quirk Classics.

2.) Fill out the quick registration, that is if you aren’t registered already.

3.) Post a comment telling them that you learned of the GIVEAWAY here @ The Girl from the Ghetto

You can be one of 50 winners, so good luck!

My god, how I want those Pride and Prejudice and Zombies postcards. If you win, feel free to send me one, as I collect postcards.

Photo Courtesy of Quirk Books

With more than one million copies in print, Pride and Prejudice and Zombies was the surprise publishing phenomenon of 2009. A best seller on three continents, Pride and Prejudice and Zombies has been translated into 21 languages and been optioned to become a major motion picture. I can imagine the crowds in the theatre now.

To read more about Dawn of the Dreadfuls, go to Quirkclassics.com here.

Release date: March 23, 2010. Pre-order your copy of Pride and Prejudice and Zombies: Dawn of the Dreadfuls here.

[Via http://thegirlfromtheghetto.wordpress.com]

O Japan - Japanese travel news, culture, cuisine, language, and ...

Brief: God Transcendent - by J. Gresham Machen

2010-03-09T08:00:00.000+02:00

This collection of twenty sermons and homilies from J. Gresham Machen, edited by Ned Stonehouse, is a small window into the heart and soul of a theologian-pastor who proclaimed the Gospel forthrightly, unapologetically, and powerfully in his generation. Those who have read Machen’s Christianity and Liberalism (see my review) will recognize the same clarity, conciseness, and authority with which Machen exercises his pen. Seminary students will especially appreciate the honest homilies directed to seminarians in which Machen encourages his students neither to ignore their doubts nor their sins (of which the sacred halls of seminaries are no doubt filled), but to bring them to Christ and to his cross. Orthodox Presbyterians will appreciate the opportunity to sense the pulse and passion of one of our fathers in the faith who stood firm when others gave way. All those who love the Gospel of Jesus Christ will be encouraged and enriched by Machen’s cogent reflections upon the Christian life as it is founded upon Christian doctrine.

[Via http://inthylight.wordpress.com]

Staged footage in ABC News Toyota “test”

Why don't students like school?

2010-03-07T20:33:00.000+02:00

Cognitive scientist and educator Daniel Willingham has written a fantastic book outlining what cognitive science research can contribute to designing effective instruction. Although the book is relatively short, the key insights are rich and suggestive for further thinking, and will probably teach you more about student learning and effective instruction than any other 10 books. What’s especially remarkable is that the author practices what he preaches: the book is organized around a series of questions that teachers are likely to have, rather than the sequential development of content more typical of a textbook. This approach holds the reader’s attention and makes for better comprehension. The book is also very well-written.

The first question Willingham tackles is why it is so hard to make students like school. Aren’t we homo sapiens, the thinking animal, distinguished from the rest of creation by our curiosity and intellectual ability? Don’t people naturally like to think? Surprisingly, Willingham’s answer is no, at least in most situations. Although we are naturally curious and as a species we have developed formidable linguistic and cognitive capabilities, in general thinking is hard and we try to avoid it if possible.

To motivate this apparently counter-intuitive insight, Willingham notes that thinking is not what the brain does best: human beings are far better at things like face recognition and moving our bodies purposefully than at thinking. The visual system, for example, is lightning fast: when we train our eyes to a scene we instantly take it in, we don’t have to think about it or wait for the details to resolve themselves. In contrast to most other brain functions which are fast, automatic and (generally) successful, reasoning is slow, effortful and quite error-prone.

Despite these drawbacks to thinking, however, people do engage in it and do learn many things over the course of their lifetimes. What’s more, almost every situation we might face in everyday life, whether paying a bill, engaging in a conversation, doing the shopping or God forbid, teaching, involves serious thinking. If people find thinking hard and try to avoid it, how can anyone be successful at anything? What’s going on here?

The missing piece of this puzzle is memory. As Willingham explains in a later chapter, we can think of memory as the trace of thought: we remember what we think about. Once we have learned how to solve a particular problem, negotiate a social situation or complete a certain activity (such as tying our shoelaces), the necessary facts and procedures are stored in memory and can be called upon quickly and easily when we face a new situation that reminds us of those we have previously encountered. Willingham notes that in many situations that seem to require thinking, such as solving a logic puzzle, we are actually relying upon our memory of similar situations to produce the solution. Even chess players rely largely on their memory of past games and configurations in order to plot their next move. So we might say that memory is the strategy our brain uses to help us avoid thinking whenever possible.

But we have still not answered the question of why people are motivated to think in the first place, if it is so slow, hard and messy. The answer is that people do like to think and find it rewarding, but only under very specific circumstances: people will think when they are presented with a problem of just the right difficulty. If a problem is too easy and too similar to ones we have solved many times before, people will get bored and lose interest (think how you would respond to an invitation to spend an hour tying your shoes over and over again). If the problem is too hard and/or inscrutable, people will give up as they get frustrated and sense that the mental effort is not worthwhile. But a problem of moderate difficulty-one that is puzzling but seems ‘doable’-will capture a person’s attention and encourage critical thinking. The reason is that solving a problem produces a pleasurable feeling, that “Eureka” or “Aha” moment when everything ‘clicks’. We crave this feeling, just as we crave attention from others or that rush from a roller coaster: all of these are reward feelings produced by the brain.

Interestingly, the content of the problem does not seem to make much difference, and neither does relevance to ‘everyday life’. It would be wrong to say that most people don’t enjoy solving math problems, for example, because clearly they do: sudoku is one of the most popular mental games on the planet, even though it is math and is a skill that most people do not need in their everyday life. The common thread that connects mental activities people find pleasurable is the level of difficulty. To repeat: people will engage in thinking if they are presented with a problem that is puzzling but that also seems like it will lead to that pleasurable feeling of success. That is, people will engage in thinking when they believe the mental work they put out will pay off.

What are the implications of this insight for the classroom? Teachers must design lesson plans that include many opportunities for the students to tackle problems or tasks of just the right difficulty to arouse their curiosity as well as their anticipation of success. I have seen many times in my own classroom that when the students see one of their classmates solve a problem successfully in front of the class, the rest then want to have a chance as well. Students will be motivated to contribute to the classroom discussion if they believe they will be successful in answering a question, proposing a good solution strategy or suggesting a fruitful avenue of approach.

Willingham also cautions that, before teachers pose a problem or question to the students, they should make sure that the students have the required background knowledge to tackle it with a reasonable chance of success. How often have we as teachers asked a big question that we thought would arouse the students’ interest (“What does history mean to you?”), but that produced a sea of blank stares instead? It was probably because the students did not have the background knowledge to tackle the problem successfully. It is important to remember that the goal is not to produce mere bafflement in the students, but puzzlement that leads to the pleasure of actually solving the problem. An important corollary of this insight is that teachers need to spend enough time setting up the question, to which the material you want the students to learn is the answer. Being force-fed answers to questions we barely understand and don’t appreciate makes for a very unsatisfying educational experience.

So how to come up with problems and activities of just the right level of difficulty? There is no formula for this, each teacher must make his or her own decisions based upon knowledge of the individual students, their background knowledge and the unit at hand. Willingham suggests that all teachers keep a diary of what works and what doesn’t. Designing good problems is an art that develops with experience.

The next chapter focuses on the importance of background knowledge in developing students’ critical thinking, and how to make sure the students get this knowledge.

[Via http://sqcircle.wordpress.com]

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The Men Who Stare at Goats- Book review

2010-03-07T20:27:00.000+02:00

Its been taking me forever to get this book review out. Its been on my mind for days but for some reason writing something is always quite a bit more difficult for me than drawing something. You would figure that after getting a degree in political science that it would come easier to me but you’d be wrong. Maybe my next book review should come in the form of a doodle.

Anyways, today class, we will be discussing The Men Who Stare at Goats by Jon Ronson. I actually had no idea that it was a book until I heard the author being interviewed when the movie came out. He was being interviewed on my favourite podcast ever, The Skeptics Guide to the Universe and since they were so taken by the book (and less so by the movie), I figured I should probably read this thing.

So lets begin. The book is sold as an entertaining look at the crazy US government’s secret attempts to integrate psychics and other aspects of paranormal new age crap into modern warfare. And that’s basically how the book started off, somewhat light-hearted, describing the attempts of one general to walk through walls and various soldiers attempting to kill goats with their minds. Funny and weird for sure. But as I read on, I felt more and more disturbed by what I was reading.

In Ronson’s journey to uncover these strange projects of the US military, he begins to unwind the not so funny current military practices. It becomes clear that ideas that arose from the psyops division in the 1980s become contorted and fucked up with the passage of time and some unholy version of it was then put into practice in the present-day war on terror in Iraq. I mean, for all the crap that the whole new age mentality brought to ideas on how to fight a war, it also brought in the idea of non lethal weapons, and non violent warfare. These men may have been diluted to think that they could kill people with their minds but the mind frame that lead them to believe they could do that also created a philosophy which spoke of understanding the culture and the people of the land in which they were fighting. Essentially, winning the war by only winning the hearts and minds of the civilians and creating a world where politics would be in harmony with the earth. Yet, what came out of it was bizarre interrogation techniques which can only be described as psychological torture coupled with massive human rights violations by the most powerful military on earth. It was the horrible mutant child of the military’s hippy new age psyops division.

I went into this book thinking that I would read about a failed government initiative whose ideas were long dead but I was horrified to find that I was reading the twisted adventure of the military in Iraq. I left the book feeling somewhat disturbed by what I read and I’m not sure if that was Ronson’s intent. Did I miss his point?

Anyways, the final verdict is that Jon Ronson’s The Men Who Stare at Goats was one damn good book. Definitely a must read. I’ll be sure to post my impressions of the movie once I get around to seeing it.

[Via http://originaldoodles.wordpress.com]

PC Prince of Persia will be late News | PC | Eurogamer

Magic of the Celtic Gods and Goddesses by Carl McColman and Kathryn Hinds

2010-03-07T08:54:00.000+02:00

This is not the first time I’ve read this book. There is a lot of thought that went into the organization of the book. I’m going to start from the back then go to the front and then to the middle.

The book has three appendices. The first recommends books on the retelling of Celtic myth and lore, translations of tales and poems, interpretations of the traditions, and reference titles. Appendix B is recommended listening and Appendix C is all about the Celtic Fire festivals; the information there is to the point and 99% accurate. The bibliography of the book is an extensive and very impressive one. All the books there are well known for their scholarship. And the index is very good.

Now back to the beginning. I found the first chapter to be pleasant if a little flowery. They talk about their sources and how they used them to write the book. I also liked the fact that they say that this is THEIR practice, but that it is based on scholarship in other words UPG. They caution the reader about any book that claims to have all the answer and they answer the question of why anyone should bother studying, let alone honoring or venerating, the old gods and goddesses of the Celtic Tradition. The second chapter starts by defining what the authors mean when they say Celtic, which is always important as the term could mean different things to different people. Then they discuss the exact sources they will be using and why. They also end the chapter with general principles of Celtic mythology, which in my opinion is very helpful and very much true. Chapter three sets out their goals for the book, they have three and they also tell you what this book is NOT. The main one that I think is very commendable of them to mention is that this book is not an “academic” approach to deity. They do promise (and deliver in my opinion) to give just enough “academic” information on each deity to help you to get to know them but also they ask that you do your own search too. Two people after my own heart. This is something that I feel is not stressed enough in books, whether academic or UPG. The chapter ends with deity and the question of belief. They explain the different approaches to deity. The ones they mention are; the Transpersonal approach, the Euhemerist approach, the Monistic approach, the Henotheistic approach, and the Polytheistic approach.

The middle portion of the book I’m going to divide into two parts. The first part is about the different gods and goddesses that the authors have chosen to talk about. They chose the most famous of the Irish, Welsh, and Gaulish deities. This information in the chapters is 97% accurate as far as I can see (bear in mind I’m not an expert), but what I loved the most is the ideas on how to honor these gods and goddesses at the end of each chapter. Simple things that anyone can do . The second part of the middle portion, which consists of the last three chapters, discusses a deeper Celtic spirituality. These chapters discuss mysticism, virtue, what the gods expect from you and how to put everything into practice with meditation, devotion, prayer, ritual, study and virtue. The final chapter discusses the importance of reading myths, and how to do it in a way that gives you the maximum benefit on your path.

I totally enjoyed this book the first times I read it and I have enjoyed it now that I have read it again. It is what UPG should be all about. The foundation is made out of fact and the rest is based on an educated guess. It has the practical side of spirituality explained in a way that even people who are sticklers for detail will love. It does not tell you what to do but makes informative suggestions. This is a book that I plan to return to over and over again.

[Via http://celticscholar.wordpress.com]

Molyneux: Natal improvements are "countless" | News

Misc. Reviews - Five Paranormal Books: Print and Ebooks

2010-03-06T20:07:00.000+02:00

Paranormal romance has been reigning supreme in the romance genre for some time now. Tough as nails heroines are a blessed relief from the barrage of fan wielding beauties on the Ton that populate Regency Romance. Yes, I do read Regency, but after awhile, there’s just so much you can do with men in frock coats. The rage for paranormal has given a lot of talented writers – and an even bigger pool of copycats – a whole new area to explore. As with any genre, tropes get overworked and some writers are far better at world building. No, they might not J.R.R Tolkien, Raymond Feist, or Robert Jordan, but then romance readers want different things from their stories than mainstream fantasy readers. And the best of today’s writers deliver that in spades. Then, thanks to Paperback Swap, I can get many books in print version that I would not otherwise buy. Here are some short reviews of a few books I got thru various swaps for erotic paranormal romance as well as some recently released titles that I’ve bought.

Title: Hunters: The Beginning
Author: Shiloh Walker
Type: Paranormal romance
Genre: Vampire and werewolf enforcers and witches
Sub-genre: menage and sex magic; single author anthology
My Grade: C+ to B- (3.5*)
Rating: XXX
Length and price: Category novel and long novella – about 100,000 words total
Where Available: Publisher’s website as ebook, in print from publisher, some book stores and used book websites
FTC Disclosure: Book from a book swapping site

Shiloh Walker has a pretty loyal following in erotic romance and steamier mainstream. With erotic romance, many readers are less concerned about the story than they are the steam. The two book anthology has one of each. The first story is a category length novel titled Declan and Tori. It’s one of the better erotic romance paranormals. The second, Eli and Sarel is more steam than story.

Declan Reilly is a Hunter, and a werewolf. For some time now he’s been attracted to Tori McAdams, a private investigator, who regards her own attraction to him as something to be avoided. Then the unthinkable happens, a creature out of a horror novel attacks Tori as she searches for the sick bastard playing at being a vampire and terrorizing her client. The vamp deliberately leaves her alone after turning her, thinking she’ll arise in a haze of bloodlust and go insane. It’s what she deserves for trying to shield him from his prey. But Tori has a little voice in her head that reaches thru the fog of pain and exhaustion and helps her control the change sweeping over her.

Three days later, dirty and starving, arrives at Declan’s door. He knows what’s happened by her smell, but oddly, she doesn’t smell completely vamp and eats food. But he can also see her bloodlust – a lust she controlling like no newborn should be able to. Cue the really hot sex and blood donation by Declan. They go see Declan’s friend and fellow Hunter, Elijah Crawford, a master vampire. Eli has trouble believing that Tori can tolerate daylight with minimal damage and eat like a starving wolf. Having Declan as her first meal helped her too, but it seems she also has a natural gift as a witch. Not even Eli is certain what she, though like Declan, he suspects.

Tori is surprised by her intense sexual urges for both Declan and Eli, a person she’s only just met. Neither male seems troubled by them, though Eli immediately realizes that Tori is Declan’s mate, a bond that is severed only by death. Cue menage scenes – well done ones. Then two things happen – the vamp that made Tori comes looking for his ‘child’ and a powerful self taught witch, Sarel, comes looking for Eli thinking he’s the vamp responsible for the awful murder of her sister.

The ending is worth it and this was a definite cut above the typical erotic paranormal romance. The second story is that of Eli and Sarel that takes place years later after Sarel has been trained as a witch. Her attempt to kill a master vampire put her in the Council’s net and she’s going to be working with one of the Hunter’s. The Hunter she’s assigned to is Eli. Eli was furious with her after his recovery. She suspects he hates her, now she has to work with him. Eli has spent years battling the reality that Sarel is the woman he wants. Now he has to train her to work with him as a team when what he wants is her in bed – and not because she feels guilty about she did. Declan and Tori aren’t so forgiving and are less than thrilled about her being back in Eli’s life and don’t hesitate to make that clear.

Eli feels guilty about wanting a young, inexperienced woman. Sarel feels guilty about nearly killing Eli, but the guilt has been shifting to love for a long time, a love she doesn’t expect he wants. They give in to mutual lust. Afraid Eli won’t love her forever, Sarel says no to the bonding. Eli does ‘the noble thing’, sending her away, but it seems it was already too late. It’s Malachi who brings her back when another witch realizes the bond had already formed. Then it’s Eli’s turn to be thickheaded.

Eli and Sarel was much more of a romance than Declan and Tori, which had a central story around which the romance unfolded. For that reason, I found Declan and Tori the better of the two, but that’s just a personal preference. Byron, the third in the menage scene, was window dressing, not a well developed character and a real weakness in the story due to his presence in such a key scene. The writing quality is a cut above the usual for erotic romance, as are the characters. Also unusual for erotic romance, there was no sense of cookie cutter plotting or characters. The fascinating Malachi flits in and out of the story as he did with Declan and Tori.

Hunters was a hot, sexy read and for erotic romance, the stories were actually quite good. Was it worth the cover price of $14.99? Not for me, not did it make my keeper shelf, but that’s just taste. Buy the ebooks on the Ellora’s site and try them. If you feel moved to get a print copy for your shelf, then by all means, buy it. I recommend buying used from Half.com, Alibris, or even through Amazon or Barnes and Nobel. Better still, get it through a book swapping site or from a friend, or try buying new from a discount book site. It’s worth around $10-11 dollars thanks to its substantial length and the quality of the writing.

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Title: Midnight’s Daughter
Author: Karen Chance
Type: Paranormal
Genre: Vampire and vamp hunter – world with magic
Sub-genre: urban fantasy
My Grade: B- (3.6*)
Rating: PG-13
Length and price: Novel over 100,000+ words
Where Available: Any bookseller
FTC Disclosure: Book purchased from online bookstore

This is my first Karen Chance book and that put me at a disadvantage in understanding the ‘world’ in which the story is set. As is usually the case, I read the book reviews AFTER I read the book, or I’d have been warned about that. Despite the lingering feeling I was missing a lot.

Dorina Basarab is a dhampir – the off-spring of a male vampire and a human female. The children of such unions usually have short, unhappy lives and early deaths. Dorina has lived to be 500 years old, but not without incident. She’s prone to berserker rages that leave a trail of bodies and her with gaps in her memories. Her father a member of the North American Vampire Council finds her kneeling over a dead body – a body she made dead. He is the epitome of Continental class against her poor grunge tough girl, and he’s a vamp – and vamps and dhampir’s are the deadliest of enemies, and she isn’t exactly fond of daddy dearest, though he seems somewhat fond of her.

Mircea was neither born a vamp, nor made one by another vampire, he was cursed by a gypsy and turned into a vamp over a period of days. As the eldest son of a ruler, he was accustomed to sleeping with many women and Dorina’s mother was a peasant. He never even realized he left behind a child. When she was born, the peasant’s family wanted her dead. Instead she was given to a passing band of gypsies with the promise they care for her and she would protect them. Dorina has become a vamp hunter, sometimes for the vamps themselves. Now, in exchange for the Council’s help in finding her friend and roommate, Claire, a powerful null who went missing a month ago, Micrea wants Dory to capture an escaped prisoner – her uncle, Micrea’s younger brother – Dracula.

Dory remembers all too clearly what it was like catching Drac the last time. That she didn’t die was more luck than skill. The damn vamps should have killed Drac when they could, instead, they imprisoned him. He’s had a hundred years of solitary to plot his revenge. Despite her general reluctance and above her strenuous objections, Dory ends up hunting Drac in a mutually unsatisfactory partnership of Louis-Cesare, the darling of the European Council, their best swordsman, and the only ‘child’ of her the youngest son in the family, Radu. Most vamps make children to grow their power, influence and wealth, but Radu never did. The loyalty of Louis-Cesare to Radu and Micrea is far deeper than her own and he dislikes her attitude toward father and the family in general. Here was the big problem for me – Louis-Cesare was a huge turn off for me and was not a strong enough character to be an adequate “love interest” for Dory. Not that there was a real romance of any kind, just some attraction, no steam. The story didn’t really need the addition of a romance,

Dracula was creepy, cunning, and evil. many of the historic details often reported about the historical figure Vald the Impaler are used to flesh out Drac’s history and give him context and he comes off a suitably evil creature. Micrea is a and Radu both are well developed as one of my favorite characters, Caedmon, a Fey. The secondary characters are good too and the setting gritty enough to work. There is a review on Amazon by Leslie Vanadeford that pretty much sums it all up for me too. You can read it here. I can’t say it was an ‘easy read’, but it was a good one and even worth the effort if you haven’t read the Cassandra Palmer series like me.

Was the Midnight’s Daughter worth the $7.99? Yes it was. Well written, told in the first person with style, and a good plot, it was an interesting read, even if it did leaving me feeling like I need a Dummie’s Guide to Cassie Palmer’s world a good part of the time. I did find the periods of visions or memory recalls or shared memories a rather distracting affectation. For those who are not Cassie Palmer fans, there are books out there that I thought were better reads, in particular Hallowed Circle and Vicious Circle by Linda Robertson or The Better Part of Darkness by Kelly Gay, all A- to B+ books worth both the time and the money.

*********************************************************************************

Title: Death’s Mistress
Author: Karen Chance
Type: Paranormal
Genre: Vampire and hunter’s
Sub-genre: urban fantasy
My Grade: C+ to B- (3.5*)
Rating: NC-17
Length and price: Novel over 100,000+ words
Where Available: Any bookseller
FTC Disclosure: Book purchased from online bookstore

I read this book as soon as I finished Midnight’s Daughter. It was better in some ways but not as good in others. It follows Dory as she again finds herself hunting for an enemy of the vampires. This time she and the vamp she’s attracted to, Louis-Cesare, is searching for his mistress who is being held hostage. In the middle of all this drama are troubles with the fey who seem to be hunting Claire and her son.

Possibly, the best part of the whole book is the opening chapter where Claire shows up at the house in Brooklyn – only she isn’t Claire, she’s a dragon and she scares the crap out of Dory. It’s really funny. Claire is there for a reason. The fighting among the fey has her uneasy and fearing for the life of her son, the heir to Caedmon, king of the light Fey. A rune was stolen, one intended for her son. It was to be presented in a public ceremony. The rune confers protection against death. Dory would do anything for Claire. She’s the only real friend Dory has had in her long life. No sooner has Claire told Dory her, than the house comes under attack by Aesubrand’s doppelganger – manifestations of their power in an elemental form. The son of Caedom’s sister and the king of the Dark Fey, he was the presumed heir to the throne of the Light Fey before Aiden was born to Claire and Caedmon’s half human son. Like Claire, Aesubrand wants the rune talisman.

Dory searches the underbelly of the Supernatural society looking for the rune. In the process she gets herself accused of murder. She also finds herself once again involved with Louis-Cesare who is out searching for his mistress, Christine. Somehow, Christine and the rune are the same search. Along the way, high ranking vamps keep dying and Louis-Cesare gets in serious trouble with the Council. Now both Dory and Louis-Cesare are murder suspects and being hunted even as they are hunting a serial killer to not just stop the murders, but to clear their names with the Vampire Councils.

There are highlights along the way, blood and gore, but the ‘big reveal’ of the murderer was very predictable for me. In fact, the whole rational for the actions was something I could see coming from Midnight’s Daughter. Where the rune was hiding was really interesting. I just think that Ms Chance is more than capable of writing something MUCH better than such a predictable plot. Yes, it had lots of style and verve, until I once again hit that wall with the relationship between Dory and Louis-Cesare. The too pat ending detracted a LOT.

Was it Death’s Mistress worth $7.99? Yes it was. Not a great book, but a good one. I just can’t completely get past my dislike of Louis-Cesare, or how predictable I found much of the plot. The fun secondary characters added lots of ‘local color’ to keep things interesting. The torture scene and flashbacks to male rape (not too graphic, but disturbing) would be a bit much for most younger readers, so I gave this book an NC-17. As with Midnight’s Daughter, I can’t really call this one a ‘romance’ because it’s not. It’s a paranormal that has some slight romantic elements. For alternative, see Midnight’s Daughter.

**************************************************************************

Title: Born to be Wild
Author: Christine Warren
Type: Paranormal romance
Genre: Part of The Others series – human and cat shifter battle Aryan Human Only group and bio-weapons
Sub-genre: Vet, shifters and contagious virus
My Grade: C- (2.8*)
Rating: PG-13
Length and price: Novel over 100,000+ words
Where Available: Any bookseller
FTC Disclosure: Book purchased from online bookstore

Christine Warren’s books about the Others started as erotic romance with Ellora’s Cave and moved mainstream with Wolf at the Door. Her early mainstream books were mostly quite good but her last few have have become increasingly lightweight and that’s what Born to be Wild is, a lightweight romance.

Josie Barrett was raised in the rural Oregon town of Stone Creek that was home to many Others long before they came out a few years ago. Her dad was the local vet and now she runs his old practice while her mom and dad enjoy retirement in Arizona. She’s in the office late one night when the local sheriff, lion shifter Eli Pace, rushes in with a badly wounded wolf shifter he found in the woods. Eli has only been in Stone Creek 3 years and somehow she’s not really paid attention to him, and now that she has, she wonders how she could have ever ignored him. But the female shifter is in bad shape, and not healing as a shifter should, and she can’t figure out why. When she needs to do emergency surgery, she’s shocked that a shifter would even need it. The only MD in town is away, so even though she’s a vet and not qualified to treat shifters, she does all she can.

Eli is very concerned that the wolf made no attempt to shift to human to speed healing. It’s instinctive in all shifters. The slow speed of healing is very troubling as well. It’s unheard of for a shifter to need stitches. They get cancer, they get poisoned, but they heal fast when injured and they’re immune to most human diseases. He goes to find Rick Cobb, the local Alpha of the wolf pack who hasn’t been answering his calls. He finds him in the woods near where Eli found the wolf burning a young wolf who died from no apparent cause.

When a male shifter shows up at Josie’s and identifies the female wolf as his wife, she allows him to stay overnite. A surprise awaits the staff in the morning when the wolf, Billy, refuses to shift to human and won’t let anyone near him or him wife. Eli arrives and with no thought shifts to lion and goes after the wolf threatening Josie. Wow, Josie is just so turned on by Eli, and she gets a real eyeful of him when he shifts back to human. OK, find me a reader who can’t take the plot from this point.

The story progresses with mindles predictablity and with few complications and limited tension. At the end of each chapter is a journal update by the person experimenting on the shifters, but the villains don’t get much screen time till the very end, which does the big denouement so fast, you’ll miss if you blink. What a huge letdown. The general lack of tension, flimsy plot, and superficial characters left the whole story flat and lifeless. Born to be Wild is the paranormal equivalent of a Regency romance. Slight and insubstantial.

Was Born to be Wild worth $7.99? Well, if you like puff paranormal, it’s OK, but there are just so many better books out there you should really try one of them instead. So I’d say, unless you’re a huge fan of the Others series, give it a pass, borrow it from a friend, or wait a bit and buy it used.

********************************************************************************

Title: Blood and Destiny
Author: Kaye Chambers
Type: Paranormal urban fantasy romantic suspense
Genre: Lioness and vamp lover
Sub-genre: Treachery and betrayal
My Grade: B- (3.8*)
Rating: NC-17
Length and price: Novel about 60,000 words
Where Available: ebook available from Samhain
FTC Disclosure: Book purchased online from Samhain

Samhain’s motto of ‘It’s all about the story’ holds true here. Samhain publishes some of the best books of any small publisher. While they certainly have their fair share of average entries, they have an above average percentage of hits, at least for me. I simply cannot resist a combination of PI and shifter, so Blood and Destiny was an immediate buy even though I knew nothing of the author. Yeah me! I was not disappointed.

Destiny St. George is a lioness and a private investigator. Her sister Yasmine, well not by blood but by virtue of a shared past, is a wolf shifter about to marry/mate to the local pack Alpha’s son and heir. The party the night before has her exhausted and yawning at her newest client – potential client. Destiny’s competitor, Cajun transplant Frank LeCroy, sent Matthew Vincent her way for a reason, not as a favor. Somehow, Betsy Vincent’s disappearance couldn’t be run of the mill. Sure enough, there are vamps involved and Frank knew Destiny was ‘connected’ to the local vampire king. Well, shit. She was not happy, but a hundred grand cashier’s check overcomes a lot of resistance and Destiny has a new client.

Mystic Vantage is one of the hottest clubs in San Francisco. It’s also owned by Destiny’s former lover, Marcus Smythe – or at least that was his current name. Vamps his age had many over the years. Destiny wasn’t looking forward to seeing him again, not because she hated him, she didn’t, but because she hated herself for being with a man who couldn’t be faithful because of his need for blood, the payment for which is sex with the donor. Destiny couldn’t live with being his twice a week regular, knowing the spent the other days with different women. Not even a lion shifter could be a vamp’s single source. Destiny wanted emotional security and that went hand-in-hand with a monogamous relationship in her book. No way was she getting hurt worse than she already was.

Marcus had been waiting as patiently as he could for Destiny to return to him. He could never give her what she so desperately wanted. it was a just what he was, a vamp that needed to feed daily and that required multiple donors. Sex was the coin with which donors were paid for their pain. Destiny was here again, but not for him, for information. But it was a chink in her armor and he would exploit it any way he could.

Destiny is determined to do two things, find Betsy Vincent and avoid getting entangled in another affair with Marcus that end only one way. Enter Luke, a very handsome lion friend of Kale, Yasmine’s mate and her partner in the wedding party. Destiny has never met a male lion and she’s surprised at the reaction of her inner cat, who is very interested indeed. But Destiny wasn’t raised in a pride and she’s no more comfortable with their lifestyle than she is with the vamps. Luke is as persistent as a tick. It was true, by nature a lioness was no more monogamous than a vamp. The males all had harems.

Marcus doesn’t want to hurt Destiny, but he is what he is. And now he must deal with his bastard of a father who has set his sights on taking Marcus down and making him pay for the humiliation he was dealt centuries before.

Against the background of the strange triangle, Yasmine and Kale’s wedding, and apparently conflicting physical and emotional needs, there is the search for Betsy Vincent and threat from Marcus’ father. When Betsy is found, her bitter attitude is something that was far more realistic than what you usually get.

Blood and Destiny is a well crafted story that is mainstream paranormal and a worthwhile read. part of the ending is predictable, but there’s a twist that’s interesting. It does not come up all hearts and flowers, with neat, simple solutions to the fundamental conflict. I liked that. Like many paranormals, it was told in the first person, also a plus for me. I don’t much care for first person in erotic romance, but I do like it in mainstream and romantic suspense. The characters were interesting and the world building good – though it could have been a little more atmospheric to pack a bigger punch.

Was Blood and Destiny worth $5.50? Yes it was. I can recommend it to those who want to read an interesting mainstream paranormal.

[Via http://toursbooks.wordpress.com]

Ubisoft to tackle skate and football News | Eurogamer

Deep Preaching: Creating Sermons That Go Beyond the Superficial

2010-03-06T08:53:00.000+02:00

Deep Preaching: Creating Sermons That Go Beyond the Superficial

By: J. Kent Edwards

My normal reading habits would not have led to a book on preaching and crafting a sermon. I have often times thought that preaching is something that I would not be good at (although I have often desired greatly to preach). Nevertheless, this semester I took the bold step to register for a class on Expository Preaching at Talbot because I desired to learn how to preach and prepare a sermon. Thus far I am glad that I did.

Deep Preaching (DP from here on out) is an excellent book! Not only does it discuss the methods and mechanics of preaching and preparing a sermon, it also discusses the preacher’s need to prepare himself while studying the text and preparing his outline. Dr. Edwards-who also happens to be my teacher this semester-begins his book by laying out the challenges of preaching in today’s world (ch. 1). In order for the preacher to be able to preach deep sermons his must understand the challenges that await him, both inside and outside the church. Likewise, Dr. Edwards lays out the reasons why preaching in today’s world is necessary.

In chapters 2 and 3. Dr. Edwards gives his reasons for preaching. His concern for and his emphasis on the theological reason for preaching is a breath of fresh air. To often this is missed in books and lectures today on preaching. I am unable to count the numerous times I have either heard or read how theology is divisive and what people need to hear is that Jesus loves them. Dr. Edwards does not allow this mentality to go unchallenged. Instead, he emphatically declares that theology is what makes a preacher deep, and without theology there will only be sermons of man’s clever ideas and not the gospel of Jesus Christ.

The most beneficial part of DP is the emphasis on the preacher’s closet work. It is here according to Dr. Edwards where the preacher learns to go deep by means of the Holy Spirit’s work and power. While reading these chapters (8-9) I almost forgot I was reading a book on preaching; it read more like a book on spiritual growth and how the Spirit is to play a part in understanding and teaching us Scripture. Nevertheless, I found these chapters to be my favorite, and I have already began to implement these disciplines into my daily bible study and time with the Lord.

All in all, DP was hands down the best book on preaching I have come across. Dr. Edwards does not leave us with a how to manual on how to preach, or the steps to forming an expository message. No, what we are given is far greater! We are shown how to become deep preachers by means allowing the Spirit to work in us from the beginning our time in exegesis of the text to the deliverance of the sermon on Sunday morning. If you are a preacher, or a lay teacher, I highly recommend that you pick up this gem and put into practice the lessons which are laid out within. If you do, you will soon find yourself preaching deeply the word of Jesus Christ.

Paperback: 197

Publisher: B&H Academic (2009)

Language: English

ISBN-13: 978-080544695-1

[Via http://theologicalmusings.wordpress.com]

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Biter-sweet Euro: Before and after Greece

2010-03-06T08:30:00.000+02:00

Biter-sweet Euro: Before and after Greece; (Mar. 7, 2010)

Before Greece, Lithuania, Hungary, and Spain suffered the same fate of a prematurely imposed Euro on States of weak economies. There are many articles analyzing the financial crisis in Greece. I thought that I can make sense in a short post for readers eager to know but would refrain reading lengthy erudite articles.

There are two main factors for Greece financial problems; there are two resolutions available, equally painful, but one is far better in shortening the pain and healing faster. First, the common currency Euro forced weaker economies to relinquish their sovereignty over issuing money in time of shrinking economy to re-launch the inner trade. Second, the US financial multinationals before the crash infused too much credit in a small economy that did not correspond to normal credit rating behaviors; this quick infusion of money inflated the sense of economic boom and generated laxity in financial control and management. Greece is awakening to new demands for harsher financial control and imposition of higher taxes to straighten the budget balance sheet.

The first remedy is inviting the International Monetary Fund (IMF) to intervene and infuse $1.7 billion in the Greek coffer to pay the debts due this spring. This would be a bad decision. It is worse because even the EU is encouraging Greece toward that option. For example:

Lithuania GNP shrank 18% in the first year the IMF intervened with its draconian conditions: jobless rate climbed to 20%, the high level in health, education, and retirement suffered greatly. Actually, retired persons are bleeding and the socialist political parties lost ground.

In Hungary, the IMF intervention made sure that the people suffer and the socialist government be replaced by like minded anti-socialist government headed by the former minister of economy. If Greece ends up asking the “help” of the IMF, as the EU wishes too, then the socialist George Papandreou will start packing; a decision that will please Merkle PM of Germany.

Greece with budget deficit reaching 13% of GNP and growing has a reasonable solution out of this mess if it wants to avoid 10 years of suffering and humiliation. Until the EU comes up with a financial recovery plan then Greece should revert to its national currency the drachma. Greece should regain its sovereignty issuing money in this difficult period: Internal and external trades should not be hampered for lack of liquidity.

Since Greece imports amount to only 20% of its GNP then better competitive drachma should enhance exports and reduce the loan deficit. With the already strict financial control in place, Greece will be able to shorten the period of its pain. The EU will accept Greece currency to revert to the Euro in due time in order not to let other Euro member States following Greece decision.

Greece should learn how Argentina recovered. After four years insisting of keeping the currency linked to the dollar the economy faltered entirely. Argentina decided to float its currency and it devalued accordingly. Argentina was able to default on $100 billion of foreign loans. The government insured that bank deposits of consumers keep the same purchasing power by regular re-evaluation and re-fixing of the national currency. People living in their own properties enjoyed the same financial facility at the rate of pre-devaluation. Within a single semester, Argentina economy was back to normal and going strong.

Greece has choices: either the MIF intervention accompanied by ten years of suffering or reverting to the drachma until the economy is back to normal within a semester.

[Via http://adonis49.wordpress.com]

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Skin Boats: Acts of Faith and Other Navigations

2010-03-04T20:02:00.000+02:00

John Terpstra. Skin Boats: Acts of Faith and Other Navigations. Gaspereau Press, 2009

First, I must admit that I am biased when looking at this book. I have only met him once, but John Terpstra is distantly related so, in an effort for full disclosure, I admit that I am, by default, a fan of his work.

But regardless, Skin Boats is a delightful reflection on faith and life. John interweaves his own story with that of his local church, the members thereof, and the saints Cuthbert and Brendan to bring the reader on a journey through the sometimes rocky territory of what it means to be a person of faith.

The book reads as a stream of consciousness, shifting effortlessly between the various narratives and weaving those narratives together. His honest reflections on church, religion and faith articulate many of the questions and struggles that arise when one attempt to live an examined life of faith, while at the same time reminding the reader of the communal nature of faith. It is a book that needs to be experienced, more than just read. And so, to entice you to find a copy of this books, here is a small quotation

I have thought this about the G-word: it is an acronym, a three-letter signifier of the kind that is used for an international corporation. The corporation is made up of many smaller branch companies and groups of companies. Each company runs independently and is allowed to maintain its own particular identity. Each has little knowledge of its sister organizations, but is confident that it has a direct line to head office.

I have thought: it is a non-name which has become a name; it is a verbal touchstone for what is ultimately nameless.

I have thought: and yet we bandy about the name, or non-name, as though we knew all that it meant.

[Via http://jeriwieringa.wordpress.com]

Moonbattery: Olympic News

36 Arguments

2010-03-04T08:21:00.000+02:00

I just finished reading Rebecca Newberger Goldstein’s 36 Arguments for the Existence of God. Well, I still have to get through the appendix, where the arguments are stated (and refuted) logically, but the meat of the novel is behind me.

Tempted as I was to think of it as the first “new atheist” novel, one whose protagonist is a public atheist a là Sam Harris (though much more cuddly and polite), I’m not so sure if that’s the best way to characterize Goldstein’s book. Which means it’s not fiction-as-propaganda for the new atheism. It’s a pretty sappy modern love story with affectionate portraits of Hasidim reminiscent of Chaim Potok’s The Chosen.

Of course, there’s a lot of what John Brockman dubbed the “third culture,” which means science: game theory, mathematics, anthropology, etc…and a brilliantly over-the-top lampoon of Harold Bloom which is worth the read in itself.

So will this book convince you God does not exist? No. But then again, you don’t need books to help you with that, do you?

[Via http://marcalandimartino.wordpress.com]

Dem Source: Massa Won't Run (Updatedx2)

Deconstructing Legal Analysis, a 1L Primer by Peter T. Wendel

2010-03-02T20:47:00.000+02:00

Deconstructing Legal Analysis, a 1L Primer

By Peter T. Wendel

(Aspen Publishers, Wolters Kluwer Law & Business, $32.95, 9/30/2009). 224 pages, Index, line illustrations. Paper. ISBN: 9780735584754

Reviewed by Betsy McKenzie, Suffolk University Law School, Boston, MA

Law students and young lawyers need all the help they can get with legal analysis. I was very excited to see a book focusing entirely on legal analysis. I should reveal that I know and like Peter Wendel, from the years that I spent working at St. Louis University. All of which makes it all the more tragic that I am very disappointed in this book and find it not at all the book to fill the vast need I see for teaching students how to do legal analysis. I looked in the book, and my heart sank; I really felt like I did not understand half of what he was trying to explain. My first impulse, as in law school, was to blame myself. This is exactly how most students will react, and why I cannot recommend this book.

Perhaps to underscore how awful the traditional, “darwinian” sink or swim teaching of legal analysis is, Professor Wendel chooses to illustrate it (and legal analysis through a good bit of the book) with the 1805 property case of Pierson v. Post, written in archaic language. I am afraid that the choice and continued use of the case is very off-putting. The student is confronted immediately with anxiety-inducing language. Professor Wendel does his best to explain the case, and to steer the student through the legal process, using diagrams and explaining what the law professor will expect of the student. But it takes him to page 67 to get through the basic briefing on the Pierson v. Post case, and another ten pages to discuss adding hypotheticals. The diagrams are not clear, and the explanations are murky. At page 79, we are nearly half way through the book, and just beginning to look at a second case, on adverse possession.

Part II of the book is The Exam Taking Process. This portion of the book is not so confusing. But it is verbose, and has been done elsewhere, better. Wendel covers exam essay-writing, analyzing issues, issue-spotting, organization of the exam essay, multiple choice questions, and includes watching your time on the exam. He discusses the very important post-exam self-diagnosis. I do like that Wendel illustrates how to synthesize a series of cases. I applaud a late chapter that discusses statutory construction. This is something rarely covered in law school these days, and much needed. The book concludes with “Miscellaneous Law School and Exam Taking Tips.”

However, I compare this book, which focuses entirely on legal analysis, against Succeeding in Law School, by Herbert Ramy (Carolina Academic Press) 2006, $22.00 (250 pp • paper • ISBN-10: 1-59460-189-5 • ISBN: 978-1-59460-189-7 • LCCN 2006010128 ). While Ramy’s book includes a single chapter specifically on legal analysis (pp. 111-122), many of the other chapters deal with things that Wendel includes in his book:

legal synthesis (pp. 101-110),

legal writing generally (pp. 123-162),

and law exams specifically (pp. 173-206).

Ramy goes out of his way to explain the law school process, the legal process and to make things clear and easy to understand. The layout is easier to follow, with little boxed “Herb’s Hints” sprinkled throughout. He writes succinctly, and adds useful hints such as managing stress and time throughout law school as well as at exam time. Herb Ramy is the Director of Academic Support at Suffolk University Law School and a former legal writing professor, and his specialized focus shows in his style and coverage. Ramy’s professional life is assisting students to master the art of law school, including legal analysis and exam-taking. But he sees the fall-out of depression and lack of time-management skills and the toll they take on law school populations. He offers help to the law student, not only in managing the tasks of succeeding in the classroom, but in the hallways after class. Ramy includes a sample law school exam and sample quizzes and problems with answers in the back of the book to see how you did. While Wendel ostensibly offers chances for the reader to do exercise, there are no problems, no sample answers, no tests offered in the book. The Ramy book is a much better choice for libraries and for individuals looking for an aid to legal analysis and exam-taking skills.

[Via http://aallspectrum.wordpress.com]

Sonic 4 details emerge via ESRB listing News | Eurogamer

Fly, you fools!

2010-03-02T20:34:00.000+02:00

Hello everyone,

I’m working on a blog post about Voice in writing, still, but it’s not quite ready. I’m lacking free time between studying for midterms, trying to get some reading-for-fun in, being sick and working on my notes for Draft 2 of The Names We Chose. Life is nothing but busy! Anyway, you can expect my post on Voice by the end of the week. For now, it’s time for my much overdo post about the Lord of the Rings read-a-long.

Before we start, I want to talk about one or two things. First, thanks to Amalia over at her blog Good To Begin Well, Better To End Well. She so kindly gave me the Circle of Friends blog award! Her blog is really interesting — she’s got a book she’s querying with agents right now, and she so kindly let me read the first 53 pages of it (which were wonderful) — so, if you have any interest in myths, legends, tales, gods, anything and everything and good writing to boot, you should check out her blog! Thanks again, Amalia.

Next, I want to thank The Literary Omnivore for hosting the first leg of the Lord of the Rings read-a-long. It’s been a blast and she’s been an excellent host. She posts about a lot of great books, and I only wish that I had the time to comment there more often, but I do read her blog whenever it’s updated!

This blog post is about The Fellowship of the Ring and The Two Towers, and as such it contains Spoilers.

The read-a-long for The Two Towers is being hosted over at Shelf Love, so many thanks there!

Now, without further ado, it’s time to talk about some hobbits (and men, elves and dwarves!) Let’s start with The Fellowship of the Ring and the questions posed to the bloggers by the Literary Omnivore.

Since we’re dealing with a third of a novel, instead of the first novel in a series, do you find anything different?

To start with, I think it would be very easy for most people to pick up The Fellowship of the Ring without ever having read The Hobbit — that’s not to say they wouldn’t be missing a lot, but I thought that was a nice thing to do for readers. Being the first part of a trilogy, the ending is obviously lacking complete closure. I think the fact that it’s part of a large work gives it more freedom to take its time. Tolkien certainly kept the cord of tension tight and worked at a great pace, but he also didn’t rush things when he didn’t have to. Being the first book in a trilogy afforded us the time to stop in Lothlorien, to really examine and see the world as we move through it. I was a little surprised by the words THE END at the end of my copy, instead of TO BE CONTINUED or something similar!

Do Books One and Two have significant differences to you?

Books one and two are very different creatures to me. The first half of The Fellowship is all about the group coming together. It’s very much a rock that starts rolling down a hill, gradually gathering snow until it turns into something massive. At the start, we have just a few little hobbits wandering in the woods, scared for their lives by the dark riders. It’s amazing to see the way in which new characters carefully work their way into the mix.

As for differences between book one and two, I feel there are quite a few. The tone in these book gets progressively darker and more mature as it goes, and that’s no exception between these books. I think Tolkien feels free to sort of pin-point more things in The Two Towers. He’s not afraid to separate the point of view from Frodo to Strider and the rest. He gives us a grander scope, and we get to step back and say: Hey, it’s really not just this evil concentrated on following Frodo about with the ring. There are terrible things going on all over the place. I see The Fellowship as getting an inkling of an idea, and Two Towers as a way of stepping back and seeing how grand the plan is.

Who’s your favorite character so far into the novel?

That’s so hard to say! Not having read the books in quite a while, I went in expecting to dislike Frodo.

I think some of this had to do with growing up. When I was younger, I don’t think I understood what Frodo’s problem was. Why was he always so moody, why was he always so overburdened. Reading it now, it’s crazy how visible the weight on Frodo’s shoulders are. One line struck me in particular, where I believe it’s Gandalf who mentions that the ring reveals itself to those who know its true purpose. When Bilbo had the ring, he just thought it was a neat trick and it never revealed itself to be more. The effects on him were slow to take, because of this — like a tiny trip from a faucet.

When Frodo wears the ring, he knows full well what it can do, and as such the weight on him is roughly 100x what it had ever been on Bilbo. You can feel the ring working at Frodo, wearing away the edges of him as he tries desperately to keep himself together long enough to do what he needs to. He’s truly a respectable hobbit. If you’d asked me when I was 12, I’d say that Bilbo was 10 times the hobbit that Frodo ever was. Now, I think Frodo truly came into his own, in my mind.

What surprised you the most?

How wonderful Pippin and Merry are! I knew that Sam would be wonderful, but I’d completely forgotten that Pippin and Merry were so great. They’re strong, intelligent (well, save maybe Pippin) and stalwart companions that you’d love to have in a pinch. I was also surprised with how much I sympathized with Boromir this time around. When Strider finds him and he admits to having tried to take the ring from Frodo — well, I just felt so bad for him. It’s not his fault! He was just one man trying to stand against the darkness and save the only home he ever knew. He didn’t really want the ring, but he was weak because of how much he wanted to be able to save his people. It was easy for him to be manipulated by the ring’s power, and in the end when the ring flew far away, Boromir was a broken and sad man, sitting with his broken horn. What a terribly sad scene.

What was your favorite scene?

Truly, I think it was the scene with Boromir that I just talked about.

If not that, then I have to say it was the flight through Mordor, and later on the scene in Lothlorien where Galadriel stands up for Gimli. There’s so much history in the words there, and in the descriptions of Mordor. You get a true sense that it was once a glorious place that’s fallen into ruin, and it’s a shining example of what Tolkien is trying to say is happening slowly all through Middle Earth. The drums are resounding deep in the earth, and they’re getting closer …

Now, let’s move on and talk about The Two Towers — with the questions that Shelf Love has so kindly provided.

Where are you in the trilogy right now? What do you think of the books so far?

I’m only a few chapters into The Two Towers right now, and I’m loving the books. I love the dynamics of the groups. They each have their own talents — and right now on their journey, they’ve been broken and battered but they still, somehow find a way to trust each other and keep putting one foot in front of the other. I love that they’re all such wonderfully realized characters. They have their problems, but they’re truly heroes. When their friends are kidnapped, they don’t hesitate in going after them, in doing the right thing. Sometimes I get tired of the new trend in Fantasy, that everything must be “gritty” and “realistic,” which tends to mean you have characters who are just ruthless bastards and never do anything truly respectable, or if they do they die shortly after.

I like the simple complexity of a good person standing up against all odds and carrying on.

What’s your past experience with The Two Towers? If you’re rereading, how does it stack up against the other two books?

I honestly remember The Two Towers even less than I remember The Fellowship. As such, it’s blowing away any preconceived notion I had of it. I’m loving it!

If you’re a first-time reader, what big questions do you have at this point? What are you hoping to see Tolkien deal with in The Two Towers? If you’re a rereader, what are you most looking forward to?

I’m most looking forward to Strider and co’s journey through these books. They really do come up to some seemingly insurmountable odds — and even though I know they’ll stand against them, somehow, some way, it’s still nerve wracking and I can’t wait to see it all realized.

What about the movie? If you’ve seen it, what did you think of it, and how much do you think it will color your experience with the book?

The only way the movies have truly been coloring my view, so far, is in the way I picture the characters in my head, now. The movies did a good job of giving me good images of what they might really look like — and in addition to that, a scope of what the landscape would be like. How many miles they travel, and what it really looks like around them. It’s true, there’s no greater scenery than the imagination, but it’s nice to have such breathtaking imagery as the movie provided to call back on.

All that said, I’m very much looking forward to continuing my reread! I’m working my way through it a little bit at a time, while also reading The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo, two very different books! It acts as a nice balance between the two worlds, though, and I look forward to diving back into both when I have a moment of free time to breathe.

[Via http://trinza.wordpress.com]

Now developers' PS3s are hit by system errors | Game Development ...

The Crusades, Church Architecture, and Liberty University's Strangest Student

2010-02-27T20:06:00.000+02:00

Hunter Baker has a post up at Evangel on Rodney Stark’s new book on the crusades, God’s Battalions. Here’s what he says about the book by way of description:

Rodney Stark’s God’s Batallions is an outstanding book designed to help the educated reader (not only the academic reader) understand the Crusades. You know the routine. You want to talk about Christianity and the village atheist wonders just how you are getting past the horrors of the Crusades and the Inquisition. This book answers the question with regard to the Crusades. Stark brilliantly explains how the Crusades started, what happened in the course of events, and why they finally ended. All in all, the western church comes off pretty sympathetically. Readers who know Stark find it easy to trust him because he always questions excessive claims and makes sure to back his own assertions up with data.

Check out God’s Battalions. Also, Hunter’s own book, The End of Secularism, looks very good. I am working my way through it and commend it to you. Al Mohler did a whole radio program on it.

************

An interesting post from Matthew Anderson on church architecture. Good Chesterton quotation to kife as well.

************

Amanda Baker reports on a summer she spent living with unbelievers in Washington, DC. Hers was a reserve experience of the kind chronicled in the recent book by non-Christian Kevin Roose, The Unlikely Disciple, which profiles Roose’s strange semester at Liberty University.

I just read Roose’s book and found it provocative on a few points. Nothing too earth-shattering. I think the whole “I studied evangelical Christians thinking they were weird and found out they’re actually pretty normal” genre is a bit played out, personally. Many Christians are indeed pretty normal, sometimes too much so, as Roose’s book shows. The guys he pals around with struggle with lust, pornography use, and nominalism. I was reminded just how difficult it is for young men to fight for purity in this world, whether at Liberty or elsewhere, and just how much we need a robust view of Christ, not merely rules, Christian codes, and chapels, good as these things can be.

Roose’s writing isn’t exceptional, and the book doesn’t unearth anything terribly unusual, but I was glad that he seemed to warm to Christians through his exposure to them, and I hope that he finds the Lord.

************

Have you heard of Libera? They’re an all-boys choir from England. This is not usually my cup of tea, but this is a particularly elegant song.

[Via http://owenstrachan.com]

Breaking: New White House Social Secretary to Likely Be Democratic ...

You're Never Too Old To Read BLACK BEAUTY: THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF A HORSE

2010-02-25T20:50:00.000+02:00

Dear Reader,

I recently read Black Beauty: The Autobiography of a Horse for the first time. It’s one of those books I thought I’d read as a child but hadn’t. But perhaps it’s good it only found me now, because my then limited horse–and human–sense would have kept me from understanding much of what British author Anna Sewell (1877) wrote about the nature of horses.

(Note: “Horse sense” in American English colloquialism (1870) may have referred to strong, bold, simple common sense. I’m talking about sensing what a horse’s body language and behavior communicate.) (Note-note: I understood one horse, a skittish deep brown pony whose name I’ve forgotten. I, a fearful, soft-spoken child, never scolded her for shying away from my hand. We both needed gentleness, so it was easy for me to ride her. )

You might not know this, but, according to Wikepedia, Sewell intended Black Beauty to be an adult novel written for people who work with horses. Her book demonstrates how a person’s character is revealed through how s/he treats her horses. In the early chapters she gently preaches the virtues of kindness toward horses and humans and the benefits of upstanding behavior. Unfortunately, the later chapters her admonitions become annoyingly pontifical.

I think what I liked most about this book is its history lessons about painful treatment of horses, which included docking their tails and putting them in “bearing” reins that forced them to hold their heads unnaturally high, both a reflection of the day’s fashion. It also talks about taxi drivers who leased horses and then had to drive them hard to recoup their costs as well as earn a living. Was a tough life. Yet Sewell didn’t write only about cruelty; she writes about Black Beauty’s early days in his masters meadow and describes dedicated and competent grooms who kept his and other horses’ lives safe and comfortable.

I recommend you read Black Beauty, even if you’re not a horse fan or a kid.

Respectfully Yours,

Faye

www.QuamEditorial.com

[Via http://fayequamheimerl.wordpress.com]

Heartless Doll - Extra Extra! Tabloid! News!

Finding Nouf

2010-02-25T20:30:00.000+02:00

Ferraris, Zoe. Finding Nouf. New York: Mariner, 2008. Print.

Nayir ash-Sharqi may only be a desert guide to some, but to others, he is the only hope of finding out what happened to sixteen year old Nouf Shrawi. When Nouf’s body is found and the autopsy reports drowning…in the desert, Nayir attempts to track Nouf’s last few days. Helping him search for evidence is 28-year-old Katya Hajazi, who hopes that the truth will set Nouf free.

This mystery is set in present day Saudi Arabia, and reveals much about the practices of a society so different from our own Western one, while also revealing that in essence, we are all much the same. I liked parts of this book, but some of the time I found it very heavy reading. I enjoyed the visual descriptions that the author added to make the setting come alive, but I’ll admit that I found it hard to relate to the characters.

[Via http://jennclimenhaga.wordpress.com]

Education News - Winds of Change.NET

Book Review: Marked

2010-02-23T20:31:00.000+02:00

Marked P. C. Cast Paperback, 320 pages St. Martin’s Press

May 01, 2007

Once again, apologies for the lag time between reviews! Things have been really hectic and I’ve been so busy I’ve let some things slide through the cracks. I actually finished Marked over a week ago so this will be more of a mini review with the summary provided by Borders.com:

Enter the dark, magical world of The House of Night, a world where vampyres have always existed. Sixteen-year-old Zoey Redbird has just been Marked as a fledgling vampyre and joins the House of Night, a school where she will train to become an adult vampire. That is, if she makes it through the Change–and not all of those who are Marked do.

Sadly after about a week and a half after reading this book, not a lot of details jump out at me to pass on to you. I didn’t absolutely love it, but I did enjoy reading it and I got sucked into the story from the first few pages. Some of it seemed a bit too cookie-cutter for my taste (a hot vampire fledgling that sets his sights on the main character, an antagonist that is nasty and mean to the MC for no apparent reason, etc.) and I kept wishing that the teenage lexicon wasn’t constantly getting slammed in my face (if Zoey made any more smartass parenthetical remarks or used the words “poopie” or “boobies” one more time…), but it was really hard to put the book down because I was so drawn into the world PC & Kristin Cast created.

I loved the concept of the vampyres worshipping the ancient Greek goddess of night and all the ties to Cherokee rituals and beliefs. And I’m really intrigued by the differences that make Zoey stand out from the other fledglings (completely filled in Mark, bloodlust, etc.) so I hope I find out the reason for that eventually. The characters that make up her new group of friends at the school are great and provide a lot of delicious sarcasm and witty retorts.

The end was incredibly climactic and actually got pretty intense at times and it definitely left me wanting to continue the series and find out what happens next. I’m hoping that as the story progresses and Zoey gets older and (hopefully) wiser, the writing will reflect that as well (Hmmm…deja vu, didn’t I just say that about Percy Jackson?).

After reading Vampire Academy I found that I liked this book better and will probably read the next one before continuing the other series.

But again, I didn’t love it as I hoped I would. Ever since reading the Harry Potter and Twilight series I’ve been searching for more YA books that would captivate me just as much and so far I’ve been unsuccessful. It makes me wonder if those were just flukes and YA really just isn’t for me.

Have you read this series? What did you think? Can you recommend any YA books that will change my mind?

[Via http://fictionfanatic.wordpress.com]

Volks News

The Blade Itself - by Joe Aberbrombie

2010-02-23T08:32:00.000+02:00

True to form for a contemporary fantasy, The Blade Itself plunges us straight into an action scene, a desperate bid for survival and a literal cliffhanger. The mechanics were initially arresting to my cycnical take on novel craft, but Abercrombie pulls it off well. He is never verbose and always seems to come up with simple words that convey the greatest image.

Perhaps the biggest strength of the book, for me, is Abercrombie’s use of voice and point of view. The principles have little idiosynracies of speech – sometimes action – which makes them instantly recognisable without a surfeit of speech tags (he said, she said…) There is the “say one thing for Logan Ninefingers…” and “you’ve got to be realistic” of Logan the barbarian, the italicised thoughts of Inquisitor Glotka, always commenting dryly but giving nothing away to his interlocutors), and the preening narcissism of Jazal dan Luthar.

Logan and Glotka in particular are extremely strong memorable characters – at times pantomimic but great fun. Many of the characters are caricatures, broadly brushed and stock types. This in no way hinders the comedic elements of the book but occasionally distances the reader from full engagement with them.

The plot is at times lumbering, a slow coming together of the principle characters. There are elements of intrigue, detective work, sword and sorcery (shades of Gene Wolfe at times, particularly in the House of Questions scenes). Abercrombie creates a hotch-potch of parody and tribute that nevertheless has moments of brilliance. He is at his best with action and character but occasionally lulls into mediocrity.

Language is also a slight inconsistency. Often it is used effectively, particularly when he remembers the point of view. There are, hovever, some incongruities and a smattering of contemporary expletives that don’t always fit the moment.

Whilst point of view is a definite strength in the book, I felt Abercrombie over did the changes of point of view. We often get a chapter from Logan’s perspective followed by a shift to Glotka, then to Jezal, back to Logan, off to Ferro. I found myself being drawn into a character only to be spat out and forced into another induction. I would have prefferred a little more balance and pacing here.

Nevertheless there are great things in The Blade Itself, the odd sublime scene, cruel wit, and (most of the time) a deceptively simple and utterly effective use of language. It is a refreshing read and stands out from the heap of turgid mush that the genre has been spilling onto the bookshelves for the past few decades.

CFR rating: ***

[Via http://conradlevy.wordpress.com]

Sony buys MotorStorm 3 domain News | PS3 | Eurogamer

The Blade Itself - Joe Abercrombie

2010-02-23T08:25:00.000+02:00

CFR rating: ***

[Via http://cflevy.wordpress.com]

Nintendo patents rumble for handheld News | DS | Eurogamer

Kingsolver's The Lacuna

2010-02-21T20:46:00.000+02:00

I read much of this on the living room couch under the blanket. It's been a cold winter in Texas!

Kingsolver, B. (2009). The lacuna: A novel. New York: Harper. 9780060852573

Back in high school, I picked up Barbara Kingsolver’s The Bean Trees for an English class assignment. Even though one of my guy friends berated the book and me, I enjoyed reading The Bean Trees. Then, I read The Poisonwood Bible for one of courses in college. While this book wasn’t so funny, I was enthralled by Kingsolver’s skill at presenting the same story from multiple perspectives. In fact, I consider The Poisonwood Bible one of my favorites. When Kingsolver’s The Lacuna came out in 2009, I placed a request on her latest book. After checking out the book five times, I managed to finish The Lacuna.

Harrison William Shepherd is the son of an American father and a Mexican father. His parents have split and Harrison spends his formative years bouncing between Dad and Mom, United States and Mexico. The book starts in 1929, when his mom, Salome, has dragged her passive son with her to the remote Isla Pixol, Mexico. They live her rich boyfriend and Harrison nothing but time on his hands. He discovers pastry-making with the household cook, Leandro, and a lacuna in the sea. Also, Salome presses upon him the need to write, to record his passage through life. After an unsuccessful stint in a U.S. military academy, the young man finds himself keeping a journal as a domestic employee of Diego Rivera. Here, he rubs elbows with Rivera, Kahlo, and an exiled Trotsky.

When circumstances bring Shepherd back to the United States, he publishes novels about the Azteca. The Lacuna itself contains many of Shepherd’s journals, letters, articles, and when needed, explanation from his right hand and future archivist, Violet Brown.

Kingsolver deals in many themes here – culture clash/shock, fear, prejudice, and alienation. While I found Shepherd compelling and I cared enough about him that I wanted to know what happened to the guy, I felt that I was kept at arm’s length. I couldn’t really know this man. As Violet Brown described him, he was a watcher rather than an actor. His words are beautiful but Shepherd is so remote.

I’m divided about the real people of the book. When I did a project about Rivera in high school, I had much the same sense of the muralist as portrayed in the book. Frida Kahlo as a fierce Aztec queen is right on the money. Yet, the amateur historian (okay, I minored in History) within me doesn’t find this kosher.

I think The Poisonwood Bible is a far better work. The Price women were just that – women. In that book, only the females talked to the reader. In The Lacuna, Shepherd, a man, feels cold even when my brain says that’s he’s not. I craved the words of Violet so much more simply because she was a woman and Kingsolver knows women. Whether or not Shepherd was gay doesn’t make a difference when it comes to writing a man in first person.

Beautiful prose but not completely natural. . .

Two out of Five Pearls

Word Bank: lacuna, Aztec, jingoist, Communism, McCarthyism

Places: Mexico, USA

For more on Barbara Kingsolver’s The Lacuna and related topics, please check out the following sites:

‘The Lacuna,’ Barbara Kingsolver’s Disappointing Return | NPR
Book World: Ron Charles reviews ‘The Lacuna’ by Barbara Kingsolver
Book Review: The Lacuna By Barbara Kingsolver – Blogcritics Books
Barbara Kingsolver – The Lacuna << Fyrefly’s Book Blog
Frida’s Red Hot Lover << Lisa’s History Room

[Via http://joriesreads.wordpress.com]

@pc2010: Sporting News To Charge For Online Content | paidContent

Effects of Acceleration on Gifted Learners

2010-02-21T20:31:00.000+02:00

This is a review/summary of chapter 1, by Karen B. Rogers, PhD, from The Social and Emotional Development of Gifted Children, What Do We Know?.

Weighing the disadvantages and benefits, it is essential for the academic, social, and psychological well-being and development of gifted students, for educators to create accelerated learning opportunities and environments. What form this acceleration takes place depends on many factors, some specific to the child and some to the allowances of the educational system. For the greatest benefit to occur, both need to work in a delicate balance.

Good points to bring up with a staff working with gifted students:

“…when high ability is exercised only in environments that provide little challenge, students tend to abandon hope of real learning and begin to expect themselves to excel at everything they try, avoiding situations at which they might not be instant experts and becoming more involved in demonstrating their ability than in the learning task itself.” p. 3
“As Foster (1985) and Gross (1989) have both discovered in their studies, when gifted children are not with their intellectual peers, their social self-concept declines and their negative self-criticism increases.” p. 4
“…in order to address [gifted] emotional and social issues, three educational provisions must be in place: (1) placement with others of like ability when the learning is ’serious,’ (2) exposure to progressively more complex tasks in a prestructured continuum of learning experiences based on mastery and readiness, and (3) flexible progression at an appropriately rapid pace.” p. 4

Questions/Implications raised:

Is the greater success of subject acceleration in the “lower grades” than the “older grades” due to the nature of the increased complexity of the content or the varying ability of the schools to offer accelerated opportunities at various grade levels? What can secondary schools due to change this trend?
Do secondary schools not appropriately address the social and emotional needs of gifted students in accelerated situations, and if so, could this lead to the decrease in the effectiveness of subject acceleration in “older grades”?
How can a school or district system support Rogers’ “four prerequisites of successful accelerative placement: (1) cognitive functioning, (2) personal characteristics, (3) learning preferences, and (4) interests,” p. 10? How does this process and the designed acceleration opportunities vary for our gifted students from “culturally different” or “poverty” backgrounds?

“For cognitive functioning…the child must be processing and achieving well above most others at the current grade level…” p. 10. How do we definer “well above”?
“In terms of personal characteristics, the child must generally be motivated by challenge and learning, be independent in thought and action, persist in other-directed and self-directed tasks, be socially mature and comfortable with older children, and have a positive relationship with at least one adult,” p. 10. How do we keep this from limiting acceleration and instead design differentiated acceleration opportunities for gifted students who do not fit all the qualities listed above? We need to find ways to engage all gifted students appropriately at higher levels of learning.
“The child’s learning preferences should include a willingness to work at his or her own pace, but not necessarily always alone,” p. 10. This is another great argument for homogenous grouping for gifted students. How do we overcome the rampant myths in education against leveled groupings of students while still honoring the benefits of heterogenous partnerships for specific learning targets in mixed-ability classrooms?
“The interests of the child should generally favor academic work, while his or her involvement in a variety of activities and hobbies outside of school might preclude time to supplement school learning in the home,” p.10. Again, we cannot ignore our gifted students who have become disillusioned and are currently underachieving academically. What work needs to be done with this subset of gifted students to prepare them for successful acceleration?

[Via http://erincroley.wordpress.com]

Live -- Tiger Woods News Conference | TMZ.com

Book Review: Parenting, Inc. (part I)

2010-02-20T20:35:00.001+02:00

Parenting, Inc., written by Pamela Paul, goes beyond criticizing the baby product industry for its over-the-top marketing ploys, and analyzes how this exploding industry is impacting parents’ child-rearing abilities. It is an eye-opening read for any couple thinking of having children, as well as for those parents who know they should trust their instincts but are getting swept away in the tide of marketing and societal pressures.

The book’s first chapter discusses the ridiculous amounts of gear that parents are guilted into purchasing even before the little one is born. Forget diapers, baby wipes and onesies; parents are now made to feel inadequate if they don’t purchase every available item (including wipe warmers and baby-monitoring cameras) that could potentially minimize their child’s discomfort and maximize his happiness. Sure, parents want their children to be happy, and there’s nothing wrong with happiness. But, as Paul wonders: “Does it make sense to have a happy baby all the time?”

In the book, Jack Shonkoff, chairman of the National Scientific Council on the Developing Child, reminds us that “babies need to live in a real world, a real environment, where things sometimes go well and sometimes don’t… They need some time to flounder by themselves and figure things out.” The author then argues that by catering to the whims of children, parents are creating a generation of entitled and attention-seeking human beings, who look to others when problems need to be solved.

Any teacher who works with children of affluence can sadly attest to the phenomenon of problem-solving deficit disorder. I have students who don’t know how to say “help me” when they first start school, and who will sit and stare for 20 minutes at a material I’ve shown them how to use, without making any effort to tackle the work in front of them, ask a classmate for help, or even put the material away. None of my kindergartners (five very bright children) knew what the word “solution” meant when they came to my classroom this year. Does that mean they’d never been presented with a problem???

Paul reminds us that the worst part of all the paraphernalia peddled to parents is its impact on parental confidence. The underlying message is that parenting is an overwhelming job that simply cannot be done well without the use of ridiculous amounts of expensive equipment. And when the perfect family life doesn’t materialize, parents are left to feel that they and their flawed children – not the backed-by-experts products – are to blame.

[Via http://montessorimatters.wordpress.com]

Fox News Analyst, Retired General Robert Scales, Wants US To ...

Philip Kerr - The One From The Other

2010-02-20T20:35:00.000+02:00

Twenty years ago, Kerr wrote the Berlin Noir trilogy of books, following a private eye called Bernie Gunther, working in Nazi Germany. They were, unsurprisingly, very dark but they were also very good, gripping and atmospheric. He’s now returned to Gunther with three more books, The One From The Other is the first. It’s set in 1949, while Germany undergoes a de-Nazification process. There’s no need to have read any of the previous novels in order to appreciate this one.

Once again, the best aspect of the novel is Kerr’s sense of place, the atmosphere envelopes the story. While Forsyth’s The Odessa File treated the subject as a straight fight between good and evil, Kerr is excellent at drawing out the ambiguities, where everyone is compromised, and the spectrum ranges from pitch black to flinty grey with not much in the way of purity. Virtue brings no reward at all.

The plotting is tight, with enough twists to keep you on your toes, but with sufficient foreshadowing that you don’t suddenly have credibility evaporate with a surprise coming out of nowhere. There are a few gumshoe cliches, this one by far the worst: “I would head to the Hofbrauhaus and spend the evening with a nice brunette. Several brunettes probably – the silent kind with nice creamy heads and not a hard luck story between them, all lined up along a bartop.” Other than that, horrible, exception, the writing is very good, and the book works both as genre fiction and beyond that.

[Via http://tiens76.wordpress.com]

Brad Friedman and Desi Doyen: Green News Report -- February 18 ...

Krik? Krak?

2010-02-18T20:22:00.000+02:00

“Until we moved to the city, we went to the river every year on the first of November. The women would all dress in white. My mother would hold my hand tightly as we walked toward the water. We were all daugthers of that river, which had taken our mothers from us. Our mothers were the ashes and we were the light. Our mothers were the embers and we were the sparks. Our mothers were the flames and we were the blaze. We came from the bottom of that river where the blood never stops flowing, where my mother’s dive toward life–her swim among those bodies slaughtered in flight–gave her those wings of flames. The river was the place where it had all begun.”

-from “Nineteen Thirty-Seven,” Edwidge Danticat

* * *

This book is the one I chose for my final, big project for Caribbean Women’s Writing. I finished it today, as we have a proposal due soon in preparation for that final project.

The book is beautiful. It’s a collection of nine short stories that take place in Haiti or in America in the lives of Haitian immigrants. Danticat herself is from Port-au-Prince, and on the back of this book (which was published in 1995), the Washington Globe states, “If the news from Haiti is too painful to read, read this book instead and understand the place more deeply than you ever thought possible.” It seems almost prophetic that this quote is from 15 years ago.

The title, Krik? Krak?, comes from the Haitian oral storytelling tradition. The storyteller asks “Krik?” and the audience responds “Krak?” These stories are about a variety of different characters: Haitian sisters living in America, lovers who have been separated when the man sails to America on a raft, a girl who models for a painter and dreams of leaving a legacy, a woman who desires a baby so bad that she “adopts” a dead baby, and many more.

The above quote is from a story about a woman who flees her native Dominican and watches many other women, her own mother included, be slaughtered by soldiers. She swims across a river full of blood and bodies into Haiti and freedom. The story is told from the woman’s daughter’s perspective. The woman has since been imprisoned, both physically and mentally. Her daughter is the one now who must find her own freedom outside of the constrainsts of her mother’s history.

In another story, “Seeing Things Simply,” the main character Princesse models for a painter. Princesse desperately wants to learn to paint so that she, too, can leave a legacy behind. Something about her dreams and desires is so universal. It’s wonderful that Danticat can write a story about a Haitian girl that I, a white American girl, can relate to.

I’m so excited about having chosen this book. I’ll probably read it several more times before the semester is over, as I work on my final project. Have I mentioned that I’m seriously enjoying Caribbean writing?

* * *

“It struck Princesse that this is why she wanted to make pictures, to have something to leave behind even after she was gone, something that showed what she had observed in a way that no one else would after her. The sky in all its glory had been there for eons even before she came into the world, and there it would stay with its crashing stars and moody clouds. The sand and its caresses, the conch and its melody would be there forever as well. All that would chagne would be the faces of the people who would see and touch those things, faces like hers, which was already not as it had been a few years before and which would mature and chagne in the years to come.”

-from “Seeing Things Simply”

[Via http://hcgambrell.wordpress.com]

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The Return of the Soldier - Rebecca West

2010-02-18T20:17:00.000+02:00

Rebecca West’s The Return of the Soldier was written during the first world war. Perhaps understandably it is not especially cheerful but it is an astute slice of life story. It offers what I thought was a wonderful insight into human behaviour and the effects of war.

The story is narrated by Jenny who shares a home with her cousin Chris and his wife Kitty. It is obvious from the beginning that Jenny is devoted to her cousin. Her purpose in life seems to be to work alongside Kitty to make his life as comfortable and happy as possible. This is a job they both take seriously, the furnishings in the house, even the layout of the garden designed to be comforting and peaceful.

Chris returns early from the war, shellshocked, the past 15 years of his life and the turmoil in the world erased from his memory. He doesn’t remember his wife at all and only remembers his cousin as a young playmate, not the woman she now is. This is something that bothers Jenny. He believes himself to still be in love with Margaret, his girlfriend from that period who is now married herself.

Margaret is central to the story. Kitty and Jenny consider her to be poor, unattractive and badly groomed, to the extent that they are embarrassed for her and to be around her. They don’t consider her a threat at all but soon realise that Chris in his regressed state is besotted with her. She comes to their house to see Chris, to aid in his recovery. Initially hostile, Jenny warms to her, begins to appreciate her genuine and simple character, feels nourished by her company. We don’t learn much about Kitty, she is portrayed as being beautiful and shallow, clothed in silks and struggling to believe that her husband could prefer this undesirable woman over her.

The outer beauty of Kitty contrasted against the inner beauty of Margaret.

The women’s actions will be crucial to the outcome. Especially those of Margaret. Does she follow her heart and in doing so protect her former love – as long as he is “ill”, Chris will be kept away from the front. Or does she do the right thing, honour their respective marriages and help him to recover is memory.

This was one of Rebecca West’s earlier novels, written when she was 24. It is short and I didn’t get to engage with the characters but it introduced all sorts of issues begging to be explored further. Rebecca West sounded like a fascinating woman and I’m looking forward to learning more about her. I would also like to read her non fiction/travel memoir, Black Lamb and Grey Falcon: A Journey through Yugoslavia which was written later in her life.

Read for the Decades 2010 challenge.

1918, 112 pages

[Via http://giraffeelizabeth.wordpress.com]

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Jew Wishes Re: The Sacrifice of Tamar

2010-02-16T08:10:00.000+02:00

The Sacrifice of Tamar, by Naomi Ragen is quite the compelling read on subjects that are varied, yet linked together.

What is it like to be Tamar Finegold, a young bride, married to an academician Rabbi and Talmlud intellectual? How does the environment of the Ultra-Orthodox community in which she is part of receive a woman who has been “stained”? Is there security for a woman within the community when she decides to hide the truth? Is there security within herself, or does the horrifying act that Tamar initially chooses to hide have repercussions psychologically and morally? So her actions and choices cross religious boundaries? Do the consequences extend beyond Tamar to her children, other family members and friends? These are just the basic questions I found myself asking while reading The Sacrifice of Tamar.

The Sacrifice of Tamar is disturbing on many levels. First and foremost, with vividly graphic visuals, the reader is privy to an extremely personal abhorrent and contemptible act of manipulation and violence. Tamar was brutally raped in 1970, while babysitting for her sister. Tamar becomes pregnant, not knowing whether the baby was fathered by her husband or the rapist. She feels ashamed, alone, devoid of the capacity to confide in her husband due to fear from what she feels are religious restrictions that will eventually cause her husband to divorce her.

Tamar feels the urgency and necessity to speak to someone, and chooses to talk to a friend of hers from childhood, Hadassah Mandlebrith. Hadassah eventually tells a mutual friend of theirs named Jenny what happened to Tamar, without Tamar’s knowledge. The secret remains with Tamar, as the years move forward.

The story is told in a flash back type of mode, with the women recalling their childhoods. Their childhoods had great influence on them and the women they matured into within their chosen lifestyles. Stigmas and hardcore tactics were forced upon them, causing them to form their own coping mechanisms and opinions regarding behavior and truth. Moral choices and responsibility factor into their trains of thought and judgment, and they input their own values and own opinions, influencing the choices that Tamar makes. The choices linger in Tamar’s life for over twenty years, and not a day goes by without her questioning her decision.

Flash forward to 1993, and you will be dealt with an overwhelming and disquieting blow, one that might shock you.

Religion and racism are primary issues that Ragen concisely and sharply writes about . Racism is a strong factor within the pages, not only racism for other ethnic groups, but racism and purity within the Ultra-Orthodox community, itself. I found the book to be a difficult read due to the subject matter of rape. Rape, in itself, is a brutal force, and Ragen depicts it with clear details. The Sacrifice of Tamar is extremely unnerving and disturbing, yet it is somewhat intriguing at the same time from a sociological and psychological perspective. Rape is also synonymous to betrayal, not only of the body, but of marriage. It is also a betrayal of the emotional aspects inflicted by a religious community, and most importantly, it can lead to betrayal of Self.

I procrastinated while reading this book, kept the book at arm’s length, and often pushed it aside, only to find myself gripped by the thought of it, returning to read it in order to find out the ending. No matter the horrendous act, I found the book to be strongly written, not only regarding the violent act of rape, but also regarding the consequences of hiding the truth, and how it can devastate a family, decades later.

~~~~~~

© Copyright 2007 – All Rights Reserved – No permission is given or allowed to reuse my photography, book reviews, writings, or my poetry in any form/format without my express written consent/permission.

Tuesday February 16, 2010 – 2nd of Adar, 5770

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Review and Giveaway: American Rust by Philipp Meyer

2010-02-16T08:05:00.000+02:00

American Rust by Philipp Meyer is a contemporary fiction novel set in a dying Pennsylvania steel town, where the largest employer has shut down years before, where few opportunities exist for the town’s youth or the adults who’ve spent their lives slaving away in the steel mills.

Isaac English is a smart but socially awkward young man saddled with the care of his disabled father. Bitter that his sister was able to get out after their mother’s suicide, he finally decides to leave town to make his way to California. Taking his father’s stash of emergency money and throwing some items in a backpack (journals, a jacket) he heads out, asking his one friend Billy Poe to join him in walking the tracks to the outskirts of town where the plan is he’ll jump a train.

Billy Poe is a young man who has used up all his chances. A football star in high school who’s had a couple scrapes with the law, a fight gone wrong, and some missed opportunities.. . now a few years have gone by and here he is, stuck. His glory days are behind him and his future looks bleak. With self doubt holding him back he has stayed behind with his mom in their trailer rather than pursue offers of college scholarships, thinking maybe he’d go away to school in a year or two- well, he realizes now he’s made a big mistake. Nobody wants him anymore and he’s full of regret.

So with no prospects and nothing to lose, Isaac and Billy set off. Before long they encounter a situation with some homeless men on their way out of town that turns violent and changes their lives forever.

Other characters in the book include Billy’s sad and lonely mother, who has had an on again/off again relationship with the chief of police for years; Isaac’s brilliantly stupid sister Lee, a genius and Yale graduate who married into a wealthy family but is still dangerously attracted to Billy Poe; Isaac’s used-up father, a man who favors his daughter and doesn’t realize his deep feelings for his son until it’s almost too late; and the conflicted Chief Harris, a man who means well but whose actions belie his questionable character.

Told from the perspective of all of these characters, this novel does a lot of things very well. Each voice was entirely unique and felt real and raw. Mr. Meyers has created memorable characters that leap off the page, with inner conflicts that are completely relatable. Not only do you want to know what will happen to Billy and Isaac, but you gain a deeper understanding of the complex issues facing towns like the fictional Buell, PA. This economically devastated yet beautiful town was a huge presence in the book. As I was reading, I kept wondering… even if you get out, can you ever escape your past?

American Rust is an excellent debut novel, dark and emotional. It’s about loyalty, friendship, desperation, and loss. Mr. Meyers storytelling is compelling and gritty. There is no happy ending here, but if you’re ok with that, this is one I highly recommend.

Random House has generously offered a copy of American Rust as a giveaway to one of my readers as part of it’s TLC Book Tour! For a chance to win, leave a comment letting me know if you still live in or near your hometown, or if you’ve left it behind. The contest is open until Sunday, February 21, at midnight.

[Via http://lisamm.wordpress.com]

Saturday Morning News and Views « The Confluence

[REVIEW] Inside Out - Maria V. Snyder

2010-02-14T08:38:00.000+02:00

Maria V. Snyder

Inside Out

HarlequinTEEN (US: 1st April 2010)

Buy (US) Buy (UK) Buy (CA) Buy (Worldwide)

Trella lives as a scrub in the lower levels of Inside, but the Queen of the Pipes can access the upper levels thanks to her air duct navigating prowess. Rumours of Outside have circulated, various prophets proclaiming that all will be revealed in the millionth week. Enough of the waiting – within Inside’s computer system are files pinpointing the Gateway’s location. Trella has a lot of duct work to do…

The concept is by far the novel’s drawcard: futuristic, dystopian, and mysterious. Life Inside is stark, technological, and effed-up. But the settings are difficult to visualise, and the devices not fully explained. Drops that can change iris colour? And other drops that can restore iris colour to its original hue? Colour me confused.

Predictably, my favourite characters are Sheepy and Mama Sheepy

Inside Out brings up more spoilerish questions than answers, therefore making next year’s sequel a must-have. For the time being, I remain befuddled.

[Via http://tezmilleroz.wordpress.com]

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Book Review - The Hawk is Dying by Harry Crews

2010-02-14T08:36:00.000+02:00

The Hawk is Dying is Harry Crews’ sixth novel, published in 1973, and it’s the twelfth of his novels I’ve read to completion (this is if you include Car and Where Does One Go When There’s No Place Left to Go? as novels – they are more novella length). Anyway, I liked this one well enough, even if it won’t end up being one of my favourites overall. Before I go on to discuss the novel in detail, let me say that Crews’ early work (up to and including A Childhood) is remarkably consistent in quality. There’s nothing approaching a poor book in the first nine he published (eight novels and one memoir), and when you think that the essays collected in Blood and Grits and Florida Frenzy are also equally strong, that’s eleven quality books straight. At least it will be if Naked in Garden Hills and This Thing Don’t Lead to Heaven live up to expectations. In interviews, Crews has often spoken of the writing regimen he stuck to throughout his career. Get up at four, ‘put your ass in the chair’ for three hours with the intention of producing a mere 500 words, and that’s it. It worked for him – his books are uniformly well constructed – and there’s seldom if ever a dull or superfluous chapter.

In The Hawk is Dying , we are introduced to George Gattling, a forty-three year-old seatcover salesman living and working in Gainesville, Florida (the majority of Crews’ novels are set here). George works with a man called Billy Bob. He lives with his sister Precious and her retarded adult son Fred. And George is sleeping with one of his employees, a young woman called Betty. Each of these main characters is memorable in his or her own way. George is finding his life to be without meaning in the way that almost all of Crews’ protagonists do. In the absence of God, he struggles for something to believe in, having rejected most if not all of the trappings of Western capitalism.

Duffy Deeter, protagonist of All We Need of Hell, explains it best by saying that ‘a man’s gotta have enthusiasm.’ What he means by this is that people need things to believe in (or obsess over). Practically all of Crews’ novels have at least one character embodying this motto. The Gospel Singer believes in sex; John Kaimon believes in karate; Hermann Mack believes he can eat a Cadillac car; Joe Lon believes in nothing and goes on a murderous rampage as a result. In The Hawk is Dying, George Gattling believes in austringency: the art of hawk training.

This is a novel in which Crews appears to be writing fairly transparently about his own life. He says he has trained hawks himself. He lived in Gainesville for much of his life. He was about George Gattling’s age when he wrote this. And, like his protagonist, Crews himself rejected most of the lures of capitalism. This is an entertaining and sometimes mildly amusing read. Though it does deal with some pretty raw material (a mysterious death in a waterbed being the event that the novel hangs on), it seems a little tamer than The Gypsy’s Curse and much tamer than A Feast of Snakes. Those would be the next two novels he wrote after this. It seems that Crews is really building himself up to something in his fourth, fifth and sixth novels. But I would still agrue that that something reached its fullest expression in his seventh and eighth novels, The Gypsy’s Curse and A Feast of Snakes.

[Via http://guysalvidge.wordpress.com]

Friday Morning News and Views « The Confluence

BOOK REVIEW: What the Dog Saw (Malcolm Gladwell) by Sujay Desai

2010-02-13T20:46:00.000+02:00

BOOK REVIEW: What the Dog Saw, by Malcolm Gladwell

By Sujay Desai

Over the last decade, Malcolm Gladwell has developed a singular reputation for delivering a fresh perspective and unique insights into a diverse and fascinating array of topics. His insatiable curiosity is put on full display in his new book What the Dog Saw, a collection of Gladwell’s most interesting intellectual adventures taken from his days at The New Yorker. Gladwell tackles such subjects the problem of homelessness, Enron, criminal profiling, and job interviews. Perhaps it is not the subjects themselves but Gladwell’s signature approach that sets him apart. His goal is first and foremost to tell a story with vivid characters and fascinating details. Through the story, Gladwell educates the reader and leaves him/her feeling more informed and intelligent about the world than before. More than anything, he helps us understand ourselves better as human beings.

Gladwell’s exploration of homelessness is a shining example of his unique approach to a seemingly mundane topic. The chapter is titled “Million Dollar Murray”, and Gladwell uses the story of the most expensive homeless man in Nevada, Murray Barr, as a starting point to exploring the issue as a whole. Murray is a colorful character, and through his chronic alcoholism, he has cost the state of Nevada over one million dollars in medical bills. Even if we are not particularly interested in homelessness per se, we become interested in it because we are curious about this man named Murray and how he cost the Nevada taxpayers such an outrageous amount of money.

In the chapter on Enron, Gladwell chooses a subject with which we are all very familiar and provides a very different perspective on it. He challenges our deeply held assumptions about the causes of the Enron debacle. People have felt and still believe that a lack of information led to this scandal. In essence, our perspective is that Enron concealed information and misled Wall Street. Gladwell is not convinced, and finds through his research that all the Enron financial information was freely available, but everyone chose to ignore it. Human nature, he concludes, is to transfer blame rather than to accept responsibility.

Gladwell devotes several chapters to the challenges of recruiting, interviewing and hiring. The talent hunt, we learn, is not quite as straightforward as it seems. In one segment, he explores the question of what interviews really tell us. Does an interview really predict a person’s job performance, or is it just a test to see how well they perform in an interview situation? In another chapter, Gladwell follows the tale of an NFL scout looking for the next star quarterback. Does success in college translate into success in the pros? To our surprise, often times it does not.

The beauty of What the Dog Saw is that it works on several different levels. On the one hand, it is a collection of stories and essays that entertain and amuse the reader. In addition, the book will appeal to intellectuals who want to explore interesting issues. If you are looking for a book that educates while it entertains, you will undoubtedly enjoy this one.

By STEVEN PINKER

Published: November 7, 2009

Have you ever wondered why there are so many kinds of mustard but only one kind of ketchup? Or what Cézanne did before painting his first significant works in his 50s? Have you hungered for the story behind the Veg-O-Matic, star of the frenetic late-night TV ads? Or wanted to know where Led Zeppelin got the riff in “Whole Lotta Love”?

Neither had I, until I began this collection by the indefatigably curious journalist Malcolm Gladwell. The familiar jacket design, with its tiny graphic on a spare background, reminds us that Gladwell has become a brand. He is the author of the mega-best sellers “The Tipping Point,” “Blink” and “Out¬liers”; a popular speaker on the Dilbert circuit; and a prolific contributor to The New Yorker, where the 19 articles in “What the Dog Saw” were originally published. This volume includes prequels to those books and other examples of Gladwell’s stock in trade: counterintuitive findings from little-known experts.

A third of the essays are portraits of “minor geniuses” — impassioned oddballs loosely connected to cultural trends. We meet the feuding clan of speed-talking pitchmen who gave us the Pocket Fisherman, Hair in a Can, and other it-slices!-it-dices! contraptions. There is the woman who came up with the slogan “Does she or doesn’t she?” and made hair coloring (and, Gladwell suggests, self-invention) respectable to millions of American women. The investor Nassim Taleb explains how markets can be blindsided by improbable but consequential events. A gourmet ketchup entrepreneur provides Gladwell the opportunity to explain the psychology of taste and to recount the history of condiments.

Another third are on the hazards of statistical prediction, especially when it comes to spectacular failures like Enron, 9/11, the fatal flight of John F. Kennedy Jr., the explosion of the space shuttle Challenger, the persistence of homelessness and the unsuccessful targeting of Scud missile launchers during the Persian Gulf war of 1991. For each debacle, Gladwell tries to single out a fallacy of reasoning behind it, such as that more information is always better, that pictures offer certainty, that events are distributed in a bell curve around typical cases, that clues available in hindsight should have been obvious before the fact and that the risk of failure in a complex system can be reduced to zero.

The final third are also about augury, this time about individuals rather than events. Why, he asks, is it so hard to prognosticate the performance of artists, teachers, quarterbacks, executives, serial killers and breeds of dogs?

The themes of the collection are a good way to characterize Gladwell himself: a minor genius who unwittingly demonstrates the hazards of statistical reasoning and who occasionally blunders into spectacular failures.

Gladwell is a writer of many gifts. His nose for the untold back story will have readers repeatedly muttering, “Gee, that’s interesting!” He avoids shopworn topics, easy moralization and conventional wisdom, encouraging his readers to think again and think different. His prose is transparent, with lucid explanations and a sense that we are chatting with the experts ourselves. Some chapters are master¬pieces in the art of the essay. I particularly liked “Something Borrowed,” a moving examination of the elusive line between artistic influence and plagiarism, and “Dangerous Minds,” a suspenseful tale of criminal profiling that shows how self-anointed experts can delude their clients and themselves with elastic predictions.

An eclectic essayist is necessarily a dilettante, which is not in itself a bad thing. But Gladwell frequently holds forth about statistics and psychology, and his lack of technical grounding in these subjects can be jarring. He provides misleading definitions of “homology,” “sagittal plane” and “power law” and quotes an expert speaking about an “igon value” (that’s eigenvalue, a basic concept in linear algebra). In the spirit of Gladwell, who likes to give portentous names to his aperçus, I will call this the Igon Value Problem: when a writer’s education on a topic consists in interviewing an expert, he is apt to offer generalizations that are banal, obtuse or flat wrong.

The banalities come from a gimmick that can be called the Straw We. First Gladwell disarmingly includes himself and the reader in a dubious consensus — for example, that “we” believe that jailing an executive will end corporate malfeasance, or that geniuses are invariably self-made prodigies or that eliminating a risk can make a system 100 percent safe. He then knocks it down with an ambiguous observation, such as that “risks are not easily manageable, accidents are not easily preventable.” As a generic statement, this is true but trite: of course many things can go wrong in a complex system, and of course people sometimes trade off safety for cost and convenience (we don’t drive to work wearing crash helmets in Mack trucks at 10 miles per hour). But as a more substantive claim that accident investigations are meaningless “rituals of reassurance” with no effect on safety, or that people have a “fundamental tendency to compensate for lower risks in one area by taking greater risks in another,” it is demonstrably false.

The problem with Gladwell’s generalizations about prediction is that he never zeroes in on the essence of a statistical problem and instead overinterprets some of its trappings. For example, in many cases of uncertainty, a decision maker has to act on an observation that may be either a signal from a target or noise from a distractor (a blip on a screen may be a missile or static; a blob on an X-ray may be a tumor or a harmless thickening). Improving the ability of your detection technology to discriminate signals from noise is always a good thing, because it lowers the chance you’ll mistake a target for a distractor or vice versa. But given the technology you have, there is an optimal threshold for a decision, which depends on the relative costs of missing a target and issuing a false alarm. By failing to identify this trade-off, Gladwell bamboozles his readers with pseudoparadoxes about the limitations of pictures and the downside of precise information.

Another example of an inherent trade-off in decision-making is the one that pits the accuracy of predictive information against the cost and complexity of acquiring it. Gladwell notes that I.Q. scores, teaching certificates and performance in college athletics are imperfect predictors of professional success. This sets up a “we” who is “used to dealing with prediction problems by going back and looking for better predictors.” Instead, Gladwell argues, “teaching should be open to anyone with a pulse and a college degree — and teachers should be judged after they have started their jobs, not before.”

But this “solution” misses the whole point of assessment, which is not clairvoyance but cost-effectiveness. To hire teachers indiscriminately and judge them on the job is an example of “going back and looking for better predictors”: the first year of a career is being used to predict the remainder. It’s simply the predictor that’s most expensive (in dollars and poorly taught students) along the accuracy-¬cost trade-off. Nor does the absurdity of this solution for professional athletics (should every college quarterback play in the N.F.L.?) give Gladwell doubts about his misleading analogy between hiring teachers (where the goal is to weed out the bottom 15 percent) and drafting quarterbacks (where the goal is to discover the sliver of a percentage point at the top).

The common thread in Gladwell’s writing is a kind of populism, which seeks to undermine the ideals of talent, intelligence and analytical prowess in favor of luck, opportunity, experience and intuition. For an apolitical writer like Gladwell, this has the advantage of appealing both to the Horatio Alger right and to the egalitarian left. Unfortunately he wildly overstates his empirical case. It is simply not true that a quarter-back’s rank in the draft is uncorrelated with his success in the pros, that cognitive skills don’t predict a teacher’s effectiveness, that intelligence scores are poorly related to job performance or (the major claim in “Outliers”) that above a minimum I.Q. of 120, higher intelligence does not bring greater intellectual achievements.

The reasoning in “Outliers,” which consists of cherry-picked anecdotes, post-hoc sophistry and false dichotomies, had me gnawing on my Kindle. Fortunately for “What the Dog Saw,” the essay format is a better showcase for Gladwell’s talents, because the constraints of length and editors yield a higher ratio of fact to fancy. Readers have much to learn from Gladwell the journalist and essayist. But when it comes to Gladwell the social scientist, they should watch out for those igon values.

o Ian Sample

o The Guardian, Saturday 17 October 2009

o Article history

In 1984, a history graduate at the University of Toronto upped sticks and moved to Indiana. His grades weren’t good enough to stay on for postgraduate work, he’d been rejected by more than a dozen advertising agencies, and his application for a fellowship “somewhere exotic” went nowhere. The only thing left was writing – but it turned out that Malcolm Gladwell knows how to write.

Gladwell’s journalistic trajectory from junior writer on the Indiana-based American Spectator to the doors of the New Yorker makes for a story in itself, but only after arriving at the magazine did he become established as one of the most imaginative non-fiction writers of his generation. As of last year, he had three bestsellers under his belt and was named one of Time magazine’s 100 most influential people.

Gladwell owes his success to the trademark brand of social psychology he honed over a decade at the magazine. His confident, optimistic pieces on the essence of genius, the flaws of multinational corporations and the quirks of human behaviour have been devoured by businessmen in search of a new guru. His skill lies in turning dry academic hunches into compelling tales of everyday life: why we buy this or that; why we place trust in flakey ideas; why we are hopeless at joining the dots between cause and effect. He is the master of pointing out the truths under our noses (even if they aren’t always the whole truth).

Gladwell’s latest book, What the Dog Saw, bundles together his favourite articles from the New Yorker since he joined as a staff writer in 1996. It makes for a handy crash course in the world according to Gladwell: this is the bedrock on which his rise to popularity is built. A warning, though: it’s hard to read the book without the sneaking suspicion that you’re unwittingly taking part in a social experiment he’s masterminded to provide grist for his next book. Times are hard, good ideas are scarce: it may just be true. But more about that later.

Gladwell has divided his book into three sections. The first deals with what he calls obsessives and minor geniuses; the second with flawed ways of thinking. The third focuses on how we make predictions about people: will they make a good employee, are they capable of great works of art, or are they the local serial killer? Brought together, the pieces form a dazzling record of Gladwell’s art. There is depth to his research and clarity in his arguments, but it is the breadth of subjects he applies himself to that is truly impressive. He bounds along from the inventors of automatic vegetable choppers and hair dye to Cesar Millan, the American “Dog Whisperer” behind the title piece, and Nassim Taleb, the US banker who turned his nose up at the investment strategies of George Soros and Warren Buffet and made himself a pile of money.

Gladwell is more than just a people person, though. His forensic dissection of the collapse of Enron and his survey of the causes of the Challenger space shuttle disaster manage to be fresh and compelling when you could be forgiven for thinking there was nothing left to say about the events. “The Art of Failure” is a fascinating examination of how experience plays a part in how you’ll fail when you do fail.

The common theme that runs through all Gladwell’s pieces is his desire to show us the world through the eyes of others – even if the other happens to be a dog. Inevitably this becomes the world as Gladwell sees it through the eyes of others, but his cast of characters (except perhaps in the case of the dog) is strong enough to withstand the filter.

The story of Murray Barr, which first appeared in 2006, is a classic. Barr is a hopeless alcoholic who lives on the streets of Reno, Nevada, and spends more weekends than not in hospital or drying out in a police cell. He is a burden on the system, but that is the fault of the system, Gladwell argues. Barr’s routine involves getting drunk, falling over and being taken to hospital. When he is released, he starts all over again.

The first to raise doubts about society’s way of dealing with people such as Barr are local police officers. Over 10 years Barr’s hospital bills mount up. “It cost us $1m not to do something about Murray,” says one of the officers Gladwell quotes. Barr’s personal story becomes the springboard for Gladwell’s argument that society finds it more palatable to manage homelessness than to end it. Surely it would be cheaper – not to say more helpful – to give people like Barr a flat of their own, he suggests, to keep a watchful eye over them rather than leave them on the streets to rack up medical bills. He plays the idea out by examining pilot programmes that have attempted to do just this, and then muses on why society hasn’t embraced the strategy. We don’t do it because it doesn’t seem fair. Why should someone who contributes so little to society be tossed the keys to a new home? Morality prefers equity, and rewards for doing nothing are inequitable.

This is what Gladwell does best: he takes an idea, recasts it as a human story, and works it through to its conclusion, taking a strip off conventional wisdoms as he goes. Even when the patterns he identifies are spurious or the conclusions flawed, the arguments he raises are clear, provocative and important. It’s as if he is saying, read this, then go and think for yourself. His pieces, he says, are meant to be “adventures”.

Gladwell’s most recent book, Outliers, was knocked by some critics for stating the obvious: that successful people put in a lot of hours, but crucially are often in the right place at the right time and seize the opportunities life throws their way. Before that, Blink drew flak for urging readers to go with their gut feelings, except when their gut feelings were wrong.

Both books were spun out of articles Gladwell published in the New Yorker, and it is easy to see why they met with a mixed reaction. When Gladwell’s theories are drawn across a broader canvas, the cracks are harder to ignore. One virtue of What the Dog Saw is that the pieces are perfectly crafted: they achieve their purpose more effectively when they aren’t stretched out.

In his introduction, Gladwell tries to head off the familiar criticisms by re-stating what his writing is and isn’t trying to achieve. “Good writing does not succeed or fail on the strength of its ability to persuade. Not the kind you’ll find in this book, anyway. It succeeds or fails on the strength of its ability to engage you, to make you think.” On that basis, Gladwell surely succeeds.

Back to that warning. There is nothing new in this new book, but that is clear from the start. What is less clear is that all the pieces are available free of charge from Gladwell’s own website. If you like, you can go there and read the original New Yorker articles, complete with beautiful layouts and cartoons. You can even print them out and staple them together using an industrial stapler from the stationery cupboard at work. A trial run suggests that this could occupy an idle lunchtime.

Gladwell’s publisher no doubt paid a lot of money to repackage his free stories and sell them on for a tidy profit. It is a scenario that has the makings of a Gladwellian dilemma. Why buy the book if the content is free? And what does that say about me? Is the feeling of being mugged by the publisher trumped by the virtue of convenience? The book is beautiful and brings together the writing that made Gladwell the extraordinary figure he is today. That alone is worth paying something for, but if you want to avoid mental anguish it might be safer to buy it for someone else.

[Via http://nalandainternational.wordpress.com]

Shakesville: Great News

Changing the World without Giving Up Any Money

2010-02-13T20:12:00.000+02:00

How To Be an Everyday Philanthropist: 330 Ways to Make a Difference in Your Home, Community, and World – At No Cost (2009)

Written by Nicole Bouchard Boles

214 pages

I’ve never traveled to Africa to help feed the hungry or soothe a baby orphaned by AIDS. I’ve never initiated a rally for the homeless or poor. I haven’t found a cure for cancer, a way to stop domestic abuse, or an alternative energy source that will save our planet. And last I checked, I wasn’t a millionaire. But through simple steps I take each day-actions that cost nothing more than a bit of my time-I’m joining with thousands of other people who are trying to make a difference and give what we can to those who need it most. It is through these actions that we become philanthropists-everyday philanthropists.

Introduction

I love browsing through my library’s shelves. Taking my time to go through most of the aisles, looking at the latest books my library has, walking from section to section finding books I wouldn’t otherwise have found on my own. A few weeks ago I went to the library and stayed as long as I wanted finding a ton of non-fiction reads, including How To Be an Everyday Philanthropist.

Nicole Bouchard Boles gives readers over three hundred ways to contribute to society. The author divides the book into chapter eleven chapters with each chapter devoted to a different way to give. Chapter 1, “Use Your Body”, list ways readers can use their body to help others such as giving blood, participating in baby-snuggling programs in local hospitals, learning CPR and more.

A great thing about this book is that there is something for everyone and every activity takes up only a short amount of time. It doesn’t take long to knit a hat for the homeless or infants, donate your unwanted clothes to a charity, or recycle paper. This book has taught me that by changing the way I buy products, throw away trash, or use my time, I can help someone every day.

A few of the things I’m interested in participating in are:

Seed Savers. Seed Savers is a non-profit organization that shares heirloom seeds. By saving, sharing, and growing heirloom seeds, gardeners are helping to preserve the biological diversity. On the organization’s site, I found many plants I would love to grow.
Blog Action Day. Blog Action day is an annual event that’s hosted by Change.org to raise awareness about a specific issue. Last year’s issue was climate change. Every year on October 15th bloggers around the world post their thoughts on the issue, sharing why the issue is so important and what people can do about.
Donating $50 to the Orphan Foundation of America. The organization has a program that gives birthday and holiday presents to foster kids who may not otherwise get presents.

Included at the back of the book is also a list of books that talk more in-depth about the issues the author has highlighted.

How to Be an Everyday Philanthropist is a great addition to any library.

[Via http://classicvasilly.wordpress.com]

Stocks in the News: Motorola, Ingersoll Rand, Berkshire Hathaway ...

Book Review, From the Shop Floor to the Top Floor:Releasing the CEO Within

2010-02-11T20:49:00.000+02:00

Book Review: From the Shop Floor to the Top Floor: Releasing the CEO Within, by Wes Cantrell. (Bloomington, IN: Crossbooks, 2009), 133 pages reviewed.

In his latest book Wes Cantrell shares his personal “rags to riches” story of his career at Lanier Worldwide. To declare a bias, I am a personal fan of Mr. Cantrell, having worked for his company several years back.

The book details leadership principles that Cantrell learned and applied throughout his career. Each one is accentuated with a personal story and the context of family. He speaks with the tome of a caring friend who seeks to empower the reader to make wise choices in seeking to achieve success in life’s endeavors.

A particularly interesting characteristic is the fact that Cantrell makes no apologies for his Christian Faith and the formative influence it had on him is his career and leadership decisions when guiding a successful public company. In a culture when one can likely “sell more books” by leaving out details of “faith,” Cantrell continues his unfiltered but gentle position of allowing his faith to inform his decision.

For any leader who seeks to understand how to cast vision, maintain balance between work and home, or simply act appropriately with difficult personnel decisions, this book is a must! For the Christian who believes that his faith is somehow disassociated from other pursuits in life, be prepared to reconsider as you take the journey with Wes “From the Shop Floor to the Top Floor.”

You can purchase a copy from Amazon HERE.

[Via http://chrisaiken.wordpress.com]

Fwix Launches API For Realtime Hyperlocal News

Wrapping up A Million Miles in a Thousand Years.

2010-02-11T20:45:00.000+02:00

The majority of this post was written by my friend Doug shortly after he finished reading A Million Miles in a Thousand Years.

“I thought his use of the metaphor of story as a guide to looking at one’s own life was good, but I thought that he had to stretch the metaphor a little too much in order to reach his message. One thing I thought that Don was implying that the only interesting stories, aka lives, are those where the character’s are doing community service or helping others. To be more clear, interesting stories are only those involving “doing” things and not “feeling” things.

If you look at the Don’s character in the book, he really only made strides in his character, in the personal trait sense, when he was feeling things like dealing with the emotions surrounding meeting his father, the loss of his uncle, the loss of his girlfriend. Riding across America, Climbing the Inca trail, starting a mentoring programs, these “doing” things were merely manifestations of his new found enlightenment after Don felt things and learned about himself. He could have never accomplished the latter with out first accomplishing the former.

What I took away from this book is not that we should all go out and build an orphanage some where in order for us to have a good story. Conversely, we should look at those parts of ourselves that our holding us back from realizing our full potential. I think someone who has worked through a difficult issue about themselves, has done more meaningful work than any person who builds an orphanage.

I think in a round about way, Don may believe my former proposition. The last few chapters of the book, where Don talks about how we must seek to know ourselves and that no one on earth is going to fulfill all of our needs. Not even God. I agree with that in many respects. I think we have to do our own work here on earth to get what we need.”

I think Doug makes some really good points. He took some things away from the book that I didn’t notice at first.

I think the chapter where Don talks about growing up in a church where Jesus was the answer to all of life’s issues and the problem with that theology explains why he may have focused more on the “doing” side of living a good story. Many people who will read this book, will come from the perspective of “Westernized Christianity.” They will have grown up a church where they were told in order to get to heaven when they die, they have to “believe” the “right” things. It didn’t matter how you were actually living your life, or if you actions reflected these “beliefs,” just as long as you believe in the “right” doctrine.

But that’s another issue for a different discussion.

All in all, I really enjoyed this book. For anyone who has read and enjoyed Miller’s first successful book, Blue Like Jazz, A Million Miles in a Thousand Year will pick up right where you left off.

[Via http://iclark77.wordpress.com]

Stocks in the News: Disney, Sprint, ArcelorMittal - DailyFinance

In Defense of Food - Michael Pollan

2010-02-11T08:50:00.000+02:00

In Defense of Food – Michael Pollan – Book Review

Eat Food. Not too Much. Mostly Plants.

Pollan intelligently addresses our present confusion about “what to eat (?)” and suggests this confusion is product of the new era of “nutritionism”. – The ideology that our species has lost touch with our traditions, our food culture and our ancestral roots, all of which had the answer to this question.

We focus on nutrients, not foods, and while science is all-powerful, we just don’t know enough, certainly not more than Mother Nature herself. Instead of looking at our heritage, we turn to nutritionists, scientists, journalists or government food pyramids.

I particularly relished Pollan’s unyielding conviction to relevant and recent research that supported his position. Moreover, he devotes an entire chapter to explaining nutritional scientific research, highlighting its strengths and weaknesses.

Pollan aim is to help us “reclaim our health and happiness as eaters” (pg 7) by providing the reader with recommendations “more like eating algorithms, mental devices for thinking through our food choices.” (pg 12)

At the risk of taking the following excerpts out of context, I have a few poetic, insightful and heartening quotes from this book.

“Sooner or later, everything we’ve been told about the links between our diet and our health seems to get blown away in the gust of the most recent study.” (Pg 5)

“Sorry Marge” [an essay written by an Australian sociologist in 2002] looked at margarine as the ultimate nutritionist product, able to shift its identity (no cholesterol! one year, no trans fats! the next) depending on the prevailing winds of dietary opinion.” (pg 27)

“The entire history of baby formula has been the history of one overlooked nutrient after another: Liebig [ref provided] missed the vitamins and amino acids, and this successors missed the omega-3s, and still to this day babies fed on the most “nutritionally complete” formula fail to do as well as babies fed human milk.” (pg 31)

“Yes as a general rule it’s a whole lot easier to slap a health claim on a box of sugary cereal than on a raw potato or a carrot, with the perverse result that the most healthful foods in the supermarket sit there quietly in the produce section, silent as stroke victims, while a few aisles over in Cereal the Cocoa Puffs and Lucky Charms are screaming their new found “whole-grain goodness” to the rafters.” (pg 39)

“At every level, from the soil to the plate, the industrialization of the food chain has involved a process of chemical and biological simplification.” (pg 114)

“These days most of us think chronic diseases as being a little like the weather – one of life’s givens…” (pg 93)

This was a great read, one for the library. As put by The Boston Globe, “Pollan’s accessible, meticulously researched book will be essential reading for anyone who takes food seriously.”

[Via http://52tweaks.co.nz]

Clinical Cases and Images: CasesBlog: Health News of the Day

Black History Month Event

2010-02-09T20:45:00.000+02:00

Toronto Bathurst Lions Movie Night presentation – February 9, 2010

By Robert Payne

On the 18th of February, the Toronto Bathurst Lions Club (of which Robert Payne is a member) is presenting “movie night” featuring the documentary “Prom Night in Mississippi” as a Black History Month presentation. (see attached file) Paul Saltzman, the producer/director of this award-winning documentary will participate in a Q & A at the conclusion. I thought this might fit with some of the journalistic endeavors you’re involved in. Because the theatre is small (180 seats) even we Lions have to purchase a ticket (all of them go for $15) and

[Via http://kakonged.wordpress.com]

Brian Williams Jokes About NBC's Late Night Problems, Slow Jams ...

Learning from Walden

2010-02-09T20:36:00.000+02:00

It is a little-known fact that I used to live near, and love, Concord, Massachusetts. I still love Concord, home of so much history and so many authors, but I no longer live twenty minutes away.

One of my favorite places to visit was Walden Pond. You may recall Walden Pond as the place where writer and philosopher Henry David Thoreau lived in a tiny house for two years. He went in an effort to live simply and to cut out all distractions. He also wrote a book while he was out there. It wasn’t Walden that he wrote while living on by the shores of the pond, but that’s the book that I picked up again recently. I’d love to share some of my favorite passages:

On small living:

“I intend to build me a house which will surpass any on the main street in Concord in grandeur and luxury, as soon as it pleases me as much and will cost me no more than my present one.”

“I had three chairs in my house; one for solitude, two for friendship, three for society. When the visitors came in larger and unexpected numbers there was but the third chair for them all, but they generally economized the room by standing up. It is surprising how many great men and women a small house will contain. I have had twenty-five or thirty souls, with their bodies, at once under my roof, and yet we often parted without being aware that we had come very near to one another.”

On food:

“One farmer says to me, ‘you cannot live on vegetable food solely, for it furnishes nothing to make bones with;’ and so he religiously devotes a part of his day to supplying his system with the raw material of bones; walking all the while he talks behind his oxen, which, with vegetable-made bones, jerk him and his lumbering plough along in spite of every obstacle.”

On stepping back from society’s expectations:

“Let him who has work to do recollect that the object of clothing is, first, to retain the vital heat, and secondly, in this state of society, to cover nakedness, and he may judge how much of any necessary or important work may be accomplished without adding to his wardrobe…. I cannot believe that our factory system is the best mode by which men may get clothing… as far as I have heard or observed, the principal object is, not that mankind may be well and honestly clad, but, unquestionably, that the corporations may be enriched.”

On work:

“This spending of the best part of one’s life earning money in order to enjoy a questionable liberty during the least valuable part of it reminds me of the Englishman who went to India to make a fortune first, in order that he might return to England and live the life of a poet. He should have gone up garret at once.”

If you’re interested, you can read Walden online or listen to a free audio version, both via Project Gutenberg. I highly recommend it if you’re interested in voluntary simplicity, minimalism, or nature.

__________________________________________________________

©2010 at Simple Savvy, the simple living blog where the beach at Walden Pond is also beautiful, but difficult to photograph. First image courtesy of pablo.sanchez. Second image courtesy of Chris Devers. Third image courtesy of Merelymel13.

[Via http://simplesavvy.wordpress.com]

Good News! G7 Nations Announce They Will Cancel Haiti's Debt ...

Opening Words

2010-02-09T08:22:00.000+02:00

Hello all!

This is my first post on my new blog. You should check back in the near future as one of the main focuses of this space will be book and movie reviews.

I read quite a lot – often devouring several books per week. I watch a lot of movies too, old and new. I generally watch movies and read books with a highly critical eye. It is difficult for me not to notice all sorts of minor flaws, inconsistencies, plot holes, etc.. Some people don’t like watching movies with me because I have a tendency to bring up all the flaws when discussing the movie afterward.

I plan to focus mainly on movies and books that I enjoyed. It is rare that I meet a book or movie that is flawless in my eyes, but they don’t have to be flawless in order to be enjoyable, informative, exciting, or hilarious. So I will present honest critical perspectives, while maintaining some degree of objectivity.

It should be noted though, that if a book or movie catches my interest enough that I give it a write up here, then it is probably worth reading or watching despite the shortcomings I may focus on. Either good enough to be remarkable, or so bad that you almost have to watch it just to see how bad it really was. Things that are just mediocre and boring won’t get written up here at all.

So if you are interested in exceptional stories, then you have come to the right place. I may be able to introduce you to a few you hadn’t known of, and I welcome your recommendations as well.

This will mostly be a movie and book review blog, but I reserve the right to go off on wild tangents occasionally as well. Look for the first book review in the next couple of days.

-unmortal

[Via http://unmortal.wordpress.com]

Red Eye Celebrates Third Year By Topping CNN Prime Time Last Week ...

STEP UP - How to Win More and Lose Less in Business

2010-02-07T20:46:00.000+02:00

Book Review: STEP UP

By Victor Antonio, Sales Influence

This weekend I read a book titled, “Step Up – How to Win More and Lose Less in Business” by Daniel Grissom. The book focuses in on one thing, performance. It analyzes, through facts, metaphors and real world examples, why some people outperform others and why some companies operate at a higher level of efficiency. The book challenges us to ask questions to uncover why some folks remain ordinary while others achieve extraordinary results.

Grissom’s book is a manifesto for performance. What I admire most is the courage the author shows in its indictment of procrastination and self-doubt as the perpetrators of many failed careers and/or failed companies. He doesn’t back down from pointing the finger at ourselves for our own inability to achieve desired results.

Grissom’s model for stepping up your personal results is em bedded in the acronym, STEP UP, which stands for: Standards, Talents, Evaluation, Preparation and Unleash Potential. Here’s a summary:

Standards – In the book Grissom challenges you to raise your standards if you want to raise your standard of living; personally and financially. In whatever role you play in corporate America (e.g., sales, manager, employee, etc.) you need to improve on what you’re doing. Complacency is not acceptable and will not increase your performance. The book provides plenty of stories and examples to make the case that in order to grow we have to demand more of ourselves. He quotes Earl Schoff, “Your results are directly related to your philosophy not the economy”

Talents- People have to develop a skill set, talent based on doing something they enjoy doing. If you’re unhappy with what you’re doing the chances are you’re not going to be a top performer. Understand and self-assess your hidden talents and focus in on what you’re passionate about. From a company standpoint Grissom makes the case that you need to hire the right people for the right job (i.e., a good fit). Which leads into his next step.

Evaluation – The cornerstone of this step in the STEP UP process is that you have to know where you are. Much like pointing to a map on wall, knowing your location (situation) will allow you to make the necessary plans to get to where you want to be. The best way of doing this is by first being truthful and objective about your current situation. Asking yourself tough questions is the key here and Grissom helps you out with a key list of self-evaluation questions. In this section he quotes his late mother Dr. Pauline Grissom to whom he dedicates the book, “Average is being at the top of the bottom.”

Preparation: This section is reminiscent of Sun Tzu’s Art of War. Grissom challenges the reader to come up with a tangible and measurable battle plan for achieving your desired outcome. He challenges the reader not to simply set goals, but to set demanding and exacting goals beyond their present scope of what they think possible.

Unleash Potential: The philosopher Aristotle wrote, “To know and not do is the same as not knowing.” In this section Grissom talks about the mental toughness required to take action in order to reach your personal or financial goals. He points to three reason why many people don’t take action: Fear, Lack of Structure and, (very insightful in my opinion,) Not mentally wired for action. People who are afraid to take action fail to do so because they don’t want to measure by their actions. People who lack structure and lack focus will lack the initiative to take action. Lastly, when people prefer thinking over doing then nothing ever happens. What Grissom drives home is that inaction is the killer of achievement in all respects…nobody could argue with that!

Grissom closes out the book by emphasizing how important continuous improvement is in maintaining a high-level of performance of individuals through coaching. Towards the end of the book Grissom uses a Gaussian Distribution Curve to divide up performance within an organization as follows: 20% lagging tail (Move Talent- low performers), 60% center (Average Talent) and the leading tail 20% (Top Talent). He emphasizes the benefits of investing in coaching but then highlights something quite insightful. He encourages companies not to invest coaching in the bottom 20% (Move Talent) but instead in the top third of the 60% of average talent essentially shifting upwards another 20% into the leading tail of performance (i.e., move more Average Talent into the Top Talent increasing it from 20% to 40%). Whether you agree with this approach or not, it merits strong consideration especially in a tight economy or if you’re in a hyper-competitive environment and the utilization of resources and training is critical.

The book is a great read for managers not only in sales, but every aspect of management in a corporation. Again, the book is a manifesto aimed at enhancing individual performance and as a consequence a company’s performance as well. Let me humbly suggest you STEP UP and get your copy today!

Victor Antonio, Sales Influence

“Finding the Why in (How People) Buy”

Copyright © 2010 by Victor Antonio. All rights reserved. Author, speaker and sales trainer Victor Antonio has a BSEE, MBA and over 20 years of executive sales experience and has shared the stage with top national speakers like Zig Ziglar, Dr. Robert Schuller, Rudy Giuliani and other top business experts. This post MAY be reproduced in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, as long as the author’s name, website and email address are included as part of the article’s body. All inquiries, including information on electronic licensing, should be directed to Victor Antonio at info@victorantonio.com

[Via http://salesinfluence.wordpress.com]

Steam News

Millicent Marbleroller and the House of the Toymaker by Wayne Roseberry

2010-02-07T20:02:00.000+02:00

I came across this work of magical fiction through Facebook and I am so glad I did. As an avid reader of Roald Dahl books as a child, I became immersed in the adventures of Millicent from the start. Millicent Marbleroller is s a worthy attempt at a début novel and if Wayne Roseberry continues in this way, he could very well become the next generation’s Roald Dahl. Similarly, just like Roald Dahl, Wayne’s sense of adventure, spirit and excitement will continue, I’m sure for sequels to come.

The only criticism I have of the book is that it could be too long for younger children, however it is a great book to read with your child and is definitely a book both children and adults alike can enjoy. It is a mark of a great story that even at the age of 28 I was left between chapters wondering what will happen next, whether Millicent will beat her adversary and indeed how.

As I reached the end of the book, I marvelled at Wayne Roseberry’s talent for gripping imagination and detail. He has a great play for words, something that as a budding author I envy greatly.

I can’t wait to read the sequels!

[Via http://alphabetgames.wordpress.com]

Sports Media Blog | Sports News | News for Dallas, Texas | Dallas ...

Dear Undercover Economist by Tim Harford

2010-02-07T08:16:00.000+02:00

I wasn’t going to read this, but a friend saw it on my LibraryThing profile, and asked to borrow it. She promptly returned it, and informed me that it was actually a good read. So I had it sitting next to me at work for a few weeks, and every couple of days, while waiting for Stata to do its thing, I read a few pages.

The book is about a hundred columns from the London Financial Times Dear Economist agony aunt column. Overall, some entertaining material – but by the end I was sick of the repetitive formulaic responses… One column in particular caught my eye:

Dear Undercover Economist

I am often offered the chance to have an unauthorised copy of a current film downloaded from the web. As family circumstances presently preclude cinema trips, these offers peresent my only chance to see some films promptly.

I do not believe in enjoying the fruits of other people’s labours for free. So is there any way in which I can make financial reparation for watching an unauthorised copy?

I live very close to a cinema so one option is to buy a ticket for a screening even though I won’t actually be there. Or I could buy a copy of the DVD when it comes out, even though I don’t really want to own it.

If I cannot put this right in economic terms, my conscience tells me not to watch!

– Yvonne, London

And Tim Harford’s response:

Dear Yvonne,

You should certianly watch since there is a positive benefit to you and zero marginal cost to the studio. Yet I believe you’re right to feel uneasy about free-riding on someone else’s time and talent. It is not only unfair but contributes to the wrong incentives for future filmmaking; in fact one suspects that the reason so many Hollywood blockbusters are childish is that the studios know adults don’t have time to go to the cinema any more.

But your proposal to buy cinema tickets or DVDs doesn’t seem right either. It sends a misleading signal that cinemas and DVDs are what you want. You might try alternating your patronage of cinemas and DVDs, while downloading pirated copies many more times than you actually need to. If the studios are paying attention they might start to realise what it is you really want.

All this assumes that your need for an immediate copy is genuine.

I would question that. Do you shoplift when you’re in a hurry?

I would question Tim’s answer on two fronts. First, his assertion that downloading ‘unauthorised’ copies of Hollywood movies “contributes to the wrong incentives for future filmmaking” is contradicted by his advice in the second paragraph (infact, even the advice in the second paragraph is wrong; alternating between cinemas and DVDs while downloading many unauthorised copies sends a confusing signal, if anything!).

Second, the suggestion that shoplifting if you’re in a hurry is the same as downloading a unauthorised copy because you don’t want to wait for the DVD implicitly assumes that watching a film on a DVD is the same as downloading a film – and obviously there are a number of differences. Not least to mention that, depending on where you live, it wouldn’t matter how long you wait – you could never download certain films.

Anyway, this book would be a good present for someone who likes faux novelty, formulaic comedy and one page chapters.

[Via http://tsu.tsu.mu]

Bill O'Reilly Bravely Defends Fox News Against Blanket Liberal ...

“Honolulu Then and Now” by Sheila Sarhangi

2010-02-06T15:00:00.000+02:00

“Honolulu Then and Now” (2007) is a fascinating look at how Honolulu and its architecture have changed over the years. The book juxtaposes history with progress, and makes the past interesting and relevant. If more textbooks were like this, students would pay more attention to history!

Freelance writer and photographer Sheila Sarhangi places historical black-and-white photos side-by-side with contemporary photos, and includes short background information.

Remembering the way things were:

Merchant Street was a dirt-paved road in 1880; today, it is a busy commercial district.

At Punchbowl Lookout you could see trees, the old domed Civic Auditorium, and Diamond Head in the 1930s; today, the view is dominated by high-rises.

Manoa Valley was farmland in the 1980s; today, there are homes and the University of Hawaii.

Lost grandeur (places I never knew existed):

Keōua Hale was a majestic Victorian palace built by Princess Ruth on Queen Emma Street in 1878; today, it is the site of the sprawling Central Middle School.

Helumoa was a royal residence in Waikiki, surrounded by a coconut grove in 1878; today, it is the site of the Royal Hawaiian Hotel, called the “Pink Palace of the Pacific.”

Kainalu House was a grand mansion with Tiffany stained-glass windows, waterfront lanais, and a salt-water pool in 1899; today, it is the uninspiring Honolulu Elks lodge.

[Via http://betterhawaii.wordpress.com]

Perfect Dark XBLA showing at X10 News | Xbox 360 | Eurogamer

The Fall of Highwatch by Mark Sehestedt

2010-02-04T20:54:00.000+02:00

The Fall of Highwatch by Mark Sehestedt- This is the first book in the Chosen of Nendawen trilogy, the second being Hand of the Hunter (due out in December 2010) and the third being Cry of the Ghost Wolf (due out December of 2011), all set in the Forgotten Realm universe. Mark Sehestedt is the author of two other Forgotten Realms novels and a Eberron novel. The Eberron novel is Tales of the Last War and the two Forgotten Realms novels are Frostfell, part of The Wizards series of stand-alone novels, and Sentinelspire, part of The Citadels series of stand-alone novels. A character from Frostfell reappear in this novel.

The story is about a young woman named Hwielan, the granddaughter of the High Warden of the fortress Highwatch. Her grandmother is making Hwielan leave for a year to a city in Damara to, hopefully, meet a young noble to marry. Hwielan doesn’t like this idea and asks her mother her opinion, which, surprising to her, her mother agrees with her grandmothers thought. Before she can go, while at her father’s grave, Highwatch gets attacked from the inside and everything she knows is lost. While being pursued, Hwielan finds her friend and teacher, Scith, who tries to figure out what happen to Highwatch, but never returns. Hwielan decides to go after him and finds him near death and tortured, and she gets caught, but it rescued by an elf named Lendri (from Frostfell) he tells her to follow him to safety. But things don’t go as planned. Between being relentlessly chased by an unholy being in the form of her uncle, being captured by eladrin elf named Menduarthis and taken to the Feywild, and finding out that she is something much more, it looks like Hwielan doesn’t have much chance to escape.

Negatives:

1) Descriptions. Before I really say anything, they were just wonderful. It was amazing how much Mark Sehestedt described the landscape and everything in between. You really can picture everything described. However, there is a slight, slight problem. Every once and a while, the descriptions slow down the story. For example, when Hwielan is going to met the Queen while she is in the Feywild, the palace’s description got in the way more than it should. It just became a little distracting.

2) Cliffhanger. It just had to stop at a cliffhanger. And I have to wait a good ten months till I can read the next one. It just isn’t fair. I really never wanted the story to end.

Positives:

1) Characters. The characters were just plain wonderful. They really made the story as a whole interesting and engaging. Hwielan was a wonderful main character. She brought a lot of helplessness and confusion to the story. Basically, she just was a normal girl thrown into something very abnormal and it really shows with everything she does. It’s amazing how she adapts and grows while the story progresses. Menduarthis was great for many reasons. His, at times, cold attitude towards Hwielan and Lendri makes him out to be more of a villain than one of the heroes. But as the story moves forward, he becomes more and more likable and funny. In fact, he is probably one of my favorite characters within the story. Why is that? Because (Small Spoiler!) the reason for him helping Hwielan escape is because he is really bored in the Feywild. How great is that? No motivation except of his boredom, it’s just wonderful. Also, the side characters and minor characters all add something interesting and really help the story along.

2) Secondary Plot. I love how every time the secondary plot is brought up, the chapter only lasts a few pages, then after those few pages, we go back to the main storyline. It makes the story flow better than having to stop the wonderful pacing for some pointless, or relatively pointless, side plot that the reader really couldn’t careless for. Now, the secondary plot of the person who took over Highwatch and his reasons is really good, but I was really happy to see it as only a few pages after a few chapters with the main storyline. It just didn’t bore you with things that weren’t really happening in the main story. Instead it seemed to be more like a subtle reminder of the what is still going on in Highwatch.

3) Story. The story itself was just wonderful. It may have been a little simple, but it still was interesting and engaging. Basically, the story is having Hwielan running away from everything and it really does work out for the best. It makes the story fly by, because these scenes are fast paced and exciting. Even the slower parts of the story are interesting. They have an underlying sense of excitement when things get slow. For example, while being led through the Queen’s palace it’s a slower scene, but it still builds up what is going to happen when Hwielan meets the Queen. It just was plain exciting.

Side Notes:

1) Gruesome. There were a lot of scenes were things got a little more than gory. It was great however. I squirmed a little more than I should when Hwielan stabbed one of her chasers in the eye. And reading about what this unholy creature looked like after a while was really shiver worthy.

2) Lendri. It was nice to see him return. But his whole back story seems like it needs to be told more.

3) Cover Art. I really like it. First off, it’s actually in the story, when Hwielan meets Menduarthis. Secondly, the way it’s horizontal and not vertical really catches your eye. Finally, the mountains are a little more than plain, they are beautiful in there own way.

Overall: 5/5

Final Thoughts:

The problems I have aren’t really huge issues. They don’t really take away from the positives at all. The story is wonderful, the characters are vivid and very interesting, and it’s just plain exciting. I haven’t read a story this good for a while, and I was pleasantly surprised by how great the story was.

[Via http://travizzt.wordpress.com]

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“The Stranger” by Albert Camus

2010-02-04T20:42:00.000+02:00

I am a “stranger”, too—or am I? There is no “Reason” determining the whole universe, the earth, and the mind of man. But to say that “chance” dominates every process is to pose another determinism—i.e. in chance, events and things always need causes. But if one persists on arguing that a secret power, aside from the physical powers, must be a work especially in the life of human beings, I would say that one is merely adding up an insignificant meaning. Yet we have reason; we are rational. But we are “strangers”—or are we?

“The Stranger” is a novel that tells us the beauty of a (seemingly) indifferent human being named Meursault. Its voice is personal, as how we really face life. The constraint of cultural values, like that of love, has no meaning for him because he does not “understand” these values. Things like love of your mother or of your girlfriend, worth of working, concerns for unknown people, moral and legal matters, or even spirituality—they have no real meanings in themselves. The world at large, including us, is purely disinterested. Only the presence of “personality” gives color and light and shape to these boring concerns. Ironically, we do not acknowledge it, so we, like Meursault, do not really “understand.”

In the end of this struggle to comprehend things is death. What is then the value of values that we claim to be immortal when we know that we are mortals? Camus, as I understand him (do I understand him?), would have said that to be called a “stranger” has sense when to belong to the world of (created) values is as boring as for everybody.

[Via http://bookreviews01.wordpress.com]

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Third Time's A Charm by Virginia Smith

2010-02-04T08:32:00.000+02:00

I have so enjoyed the Sister to Sister series and the last book of the series, Third Time’s A Charm is no exception. It has been such fun getting to know these three sisters: Joan, Allie, and Tori. I think this book was my favorite as I understood a lot of Tori’s emotions and confusion. If you enjoy a heart warming story that involves a lovable family then the Sister to Sister series is a great read!

*****************************

About the Book:

(Dual Residency: UT & KY) – There’s not too much in this world that a little retail therapy can’t fix—except maybe the empty hole in your heart from lost and undiscovered love. Tori Sanderson is no exception. Facing abandonment issues with her father, Tori sets out to find the real reason he left her. Along the way she discovers even deeper truths. Add in two matchmaking sisters plus a couple of attractive men vying for Tori’s attention, as well as a tempting job promotion possibility, and you’ve got one confused sister. Through it all, Tori searches for the love she’s been missing all these years.

Author Virginia Smith, presents Third Time’s a Charm, the third installment of the Sister-to-Sister Series. Page-turning humor surrounding the lives of three sisters will once again engage readers, while somber self-discovery will unveil Tori’s struggles, and perhaps a few of your own. In a world with more than a few dysfunctional families, this story will ring true for many.

An Interview with author, Virginia Smith:

1. This book is the third and final book in your Sister-to-Sister Series. How did you feel when you completed this last book?

I felt a little sad, because I have lived with the characters for three years, and they’re very real to me. I’ll miss them. Plus, I wanted to leave readers with a good impression, so I was anxious for the last scene to be strong. I prayed over that last line for a long time, and when the words finally came, I got chills. They were absolutely the perfect wrap-up for the whole series. I still get tears whenever I read them.

2. Which of the sisters in this trilogy do you relate to the most? Why?

That’s a hard question to answer, because there is a piece of me in each of the Sanderson sisters. But I’d have to say I relate most closely with Tori, because she is professionally ambitious, and she struggles to balance her career and her personal life. I did that for over twenty years, so much of her conflict comes from my experiences.

3. You’ve been contracted to write 12 times in the last 4 years. To what do you attribute this success and how would you encourage others who are doing everything possible to get published?

Perseverance. I wrote for over twenty years before my first book, Just As I Am, was published. But I believed that the Lord gave me the desire to write, and even when my pile of rejections was growing (to an astounding 143 before my first publication!), I knew if He wanted me to write, I was going to keep writing. Even now – or maybe especially now – I trust Him for every story, every contract. Sometimes I still receive rejections, but I keep writing because He keeps giving me stories.

4. How is your relationship with your own sisters similar to Tori and her sisters? Did you pull from these sibling experiences when writing Third Time’s a Charm? How?

I sure did! Actually, my sisters were the inspiration behind the whole Sister-to-Sister Series. They are the most incredible women in the world, and I wanted readers to glimpse the relationship we have. And they were excited to have starring roles in my stories. It was funny watching them try to identify themselves in the books, because I took characteristics from each of us and mixed them up to create each of the Sanderson sisters. Tori, for instance, is a career-minded person, like me. She’s creative, like one of my sisters. And she’s a big flirt, like the other sister. Uh… I’d better not identify who that is, or I’ll start a family feud!

5. What’s next for Virginia Smith?

In May of this year I have a new book coming out from Steeple Hill. Researching A Daughter’s Legacy was a lot of fun, because it is set in a zoo! It’s my first straight romance, and was something of an experiment for me to see if I liked writing the genre. I loved it, and have a few ideas germinating in my mind for future romance novels.

Then later in the year, Into the Deep will hit bookstores. That’s a romantic suspense novel with a scuba diving theme. It takes place partly in Key West, and partly in Cozumel, Mexico. Can you tell I have a lot of fun researching my books?

Virginia Smith recently contracted her twelfth book in four years. Previous books in the Sister-to-Sister series include: Stuck in the Middle and Age before Beauty. In 2008 she was named Writer-of-the-Year at Mount Hermon Christian Writers Conference. Stuck in the Middle was a finalist for American Christian Fiction Writers’ 2009 Book of the Year Award. A Taste of Murder was a finalist for the 2009 Daphne du Maurier Award for Excellence in Mystery/Suspense. Ginny and husband, Ted, divide their time between Lexington, Kentucky, and Salt Lake City, Utah, escaping as often as possible for diving trips to the Caribbean. Admittedly, her adventurous outings are often as much fun as they are “book research.”

Thank You Kathy Carlton Willis Communication for providing me with a complimentary copy of Third Time’s A Charm.

[Via http://crittyjoy.wordpress.com]

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Quackers & Tease invites you to come on over!

2010-02-02T20:35:00.000+02:00

I wanted to share a new and glorious website with my readers, entitled Quackers & Tease. Hosted by a quote “rather odd bunch of Quackers; an interesting blend of: aspiring writer, new writer, and a few established writers”, Quackers & Tease is filled with ”diverse peeps bringing diverse exposition”. Beautiful women run this site, among them Keta Diablo (who I’ve featured here), Hales Levey, Samantha Gail and Phoebe Jordan.

I’m proud to count myself among one of their delightful numbers!

I invite you to come by this enchanting website and hope you’ll drop in often. One of those lovely contributors will be blogging every week about various, speckled topics, offering an occasional book review or maybe something humorous.

Join Us at http://quackersandtease.blogspot.com

[Via http://tamelaquijas.wordpress.com]

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Hunger/Pride/Lust/Insanity

2010-02-02T08:50:00.000+02:00

A lot of people like to court controversy by implying that a character, a story, and everything between the pages of a book shares the same values of the author. That is nothing more than hooha and baloney though without the tasty meat texture. While I know of the Nobel Prize winning author, Knut Hamsun, and his agreement with Nazi ideology that doesn’t mean that the unnamed narrator/character of his novel Hunger shares them.

Rather, the fact that the entire book is set well before such a period in history occurs means that few of the ideas of the Nazis have been expressed, though that doesn’t mean the hatred and xenophobia isn’t felt. In this book, though, none of that comes through. There simply isn’t space for any thing like it. The unnamed narrator spends his time to concerned with something very dear to me – writing, but at the same time as he is trying to write he is starving.

Thus he quickly falls into the trap where he must write to get food, and get food in order to write. A similar situation that I continually find myself in, though I certainly don’t lack for food. This drives him mad, as one would only expect, but at the same time it drives him around Christiana (Oslo) into a number of interesting situations. Most of which could quite easily be remedied if the narrator would actually put his pride aside.

Sadly, he fails to put it aside when he needs to the most - much as many of us do, only to bring about our only downfall. Of course, this continues to drive him on as it puts him right back in the same situation. At the same time, his arguments for his behavior, his thoughts become only that much more delusional and convoluted.

Pretty much all of that, without the mention of the Nazis can be found on the back of the book or in any blurb about it. I just wasted a post repeating it, when all I had to say is that it was an enjoyable read .

Oh yeah, Knut Hamsun is like an early Kafka but Norwegian – also on the back of the book.

[Via http://overnighthostelities.wordpress.com]

Greek Bailout News (1) | afoe | A Fistful of Euros | European Opinion

This Way for the Gas, Ladies and Gentlemen

2010-02-02T08:40:00.000+02:00

I finished reading This Way for the Gas, Ladies and Gentlemen, by Tadeusz Borowski and found it quite disturbing. It is not a book one can call enjoyable, because enjoyable it is not. Borowski narrates with intense and graphic details concentration camp living (if you can call it that), events and situations that occurred during the Holocaust.

This Way for the Gas, Ladies and Gentlemen, is a book that holds a dramatic collection of short stories, concentration camp stories to be specific. With extreme detail Borowski demonstrates how daily life in the concentration camp almost becomes mundane in the scheme of things. The routines become rote and boring, yet he imparts the fact that within the boredom, they are given an opportunity for survival if they can endure the routine.

The prisoners find ways around the scenes set before them, and block out much of the atrocities that they find before their very eyes. They are almost like zombies, individuals with no outward feelings, no outward signs of life, as they parade through each day incognito. They mock each other and seem to find enjoyment in it. Albeit, a warped enjoyment. That is life in the prison camp. The cruelty is overt.

Some of the prisoners exercise their own forms of atrocity on other prisoners, almost acting as if they are uncaring within their interactions. And, to a degree, to act otherwise could cause them, to be sent to the gas chamber. From the snickering and the sarcasm, to the overtly brutal and physical contact, the external appearance of the prisoners towards each other is one that lacks emotion and compassion. Borowski is quite frank and to the point in his description of the dynamics and lack of human sympathy and humaneness. It is a dog eat dog world, where living becomes the primary force, and where working will get you food. There is no time or place for emotion or sympathy.

Not only do the Nazis brutalize, offend and demean the Jews, but the prisoners themselves, do it to each other. They even do it to dying individuals. It is a coping mechanism of sorts, a mode of survival that Borowski demonstrates with gruesome detail. He does not impart judgment within his writing, but rather writes concisely, sharply, frankly and to the point on the issues within the stories. His stories are a journey into the cruelty of man, and a journey into the mind of what is normal and abnormal behavior. Where does normal behavior end and abnormal behavior begin? Where is that fine line?

Borowski, himself, was a Holocaust Survivor, so he knows from where he writes. It is not coincidental that the the main character throughout all of the stories is named Tadek. Some of what is written did occur within Borowski’s experiences, but some of the situations did not occur, and were written to reflect what man will do to survive the horrors of war, and what man did in fact do in order to survive the Holocaust. Tadeusz Borowski understood what man was capable of, and what man would do (or not do), and he penned it so compellingly in This Way for the Gas, Ladies and Gentlemen.

I had to put the book down, and take breathers before returning to read it. The stories were atrocious and depressing, yet it was a book I wanted to finish.

~~~~~~

I personally own and have read this book.

© Copyright 2007 – All Rights Reserved – No permission is given or allowed to reuse my photography, book reviews, writings, or my poetry in any form/format without my express written consent/permission.

Tuesday February 2, 2010 – 18th of Sh’vat, 5770

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Voices from the Iron House

2010-01-31T20:53:00.000+02:00

Leo Ou-fan Lee. Voices from the Iron House: A Study of Lu Xun. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1987.

In this compelling study Leo Ou-fan Lee sets out to complicate our understanding of Lu Xun, both as a human being, and in terms of the literature he produced. Focusing on such an extensively studied figure is not an easy starting point. Any scholar attempting to make true inroads into understanding Lu Xun is confronted with a seemingly insurmountable amount of secondary material on the subject. Yet the daunting task of providing new analysis is handled readily by Lee. The study is driven by Lee’s powerful conviction that Lu Xun, the deified writer of modern China, “has been essentially misunderstood in this process of deification” (p. vi). Lee’s mission is thus to rescue Lu Xun from previous scholarly interpretations which contribute to his misunderstanding. Combining biographical elements with convincing new interpretations of major themes running through Lu Xun’s work, Lee’s picture aims to restore “the artistic dimensions of his writings as literature, not ideology” (p. 191). This is the key in his attempt to “de-deify” Lu Xun. Such a picture, for Lee, returns Lu Xun to mortal status, full of “internal paradoxes and contradictions” (p. 191). What such contradictions reveal about Lu Xun and the time in which he lived are teased out in the chapters of this wonderful study.

The books ten chapters are broken into three sections. In Part One, although covering well-known facts about Lu Xun’s life, Lee skillfully fleshes out key influences on the early writer, including his research in traditional fiction. Part Two provides the bulk of Lee’s literary analysis, with three chapters that focus on the major literary styles employed by Lu Xun. It is here that Lee illuminates themes that he finds consistently in Lu Xun’s work. One such theme, captured by the brilliant title of the book, is that of the loner versus the crowd. Lee sheds light on Lu Xun’s personal affinity to the solitary loner figures, which are often contrasted with images of the crowd throughout much of his work. For example, Lee reads Lu Xun’s Madman in terms of this loner/crowd motif and concludes: “the Madman’s enlightenment becomes the curse of his existence and dooms him to a paradoxical state of alienation– rejected by the very people whose minds he wishes to transform” (p. 71). Lee finds this theme in many places, including the passage from which his title is drawn, with the “awakened few” struggling to wake up the “sound sleepers” suffocating in the iron house (p. 87). Lee concludes that the house is a double metaphor for both Chinese society and Lu Xun’s own mental state as one of the “awakened few” wondering how to “wake up” his countrymen, and for what purpose (p.194).

The final section of the book deals with this issue as it focuses on the relationship between literature and revolution. Challenging widely held views about Lu Xun’s position as a revolutionary, Lee points out that Lu Xun was a writer first, and a revolutionary second. Moreover Lee argues that in his early three-stage conceptualization of the role of literature in revolution, Lu Xun “in fact saw literature as being irrelevant to revolution” (p.136). What Lee uncovers is the tension that men like Lu Xun faced as they increasingly came to terms with revolution. This then is another major theme Lee finds in Lu Xun’s work, that of the struggles of the transitional intellectual. Lu Xun, he argues, was himself a man caught in an age of transition, and was very much “born into an old society and reluctantly drawn into the birth pangs of the new” (p. 194).

Rather than simply fitting Lu Xun into the teleology of CCP revolutionary victory, Lee discovers that his relationship to revolution was far more complex and fraught with tension (p. 149). What Lee finds is a man unable to place all of his hopes in the future, but who lived in the “dark present, on the eve of revolution” (p.173). This is extremely revealing, for it allows Lee to contribute a better understanding of Lu Xun’s ideas on revolution. Lee concludes that revolutionary victory simply did not enter into Lu Xun’s picture, rather he shows that for Lu Xun (in a striking similarity to later Maoism) “it is the prolonged process of revolution itself which defines the existential meaning of revolution” (p.188). Reviewers praised Lee’s groundbreaking analysis, particularly his ability to focus on archetypes in Lu Xun’s thought. Dolezelova-Velingerova appreciated Lee’s abandonment of prior secondary studies to forge his own view of Lu Xun’s psychological processes, but hoped for more discussion of his poetic language (Journal of Asian Studies, 47.3:604-606). Regardless, Lee has succeeded in doing something few other Lu Xun scholars have; to take Lu Xun off his pedestal and reveal the dark tensions he and other creative intellectuals faced as they braced and positioned themselves for the changes emerging on modern China’s historical horizon.

Christian Hess

[Find it on Amazon]

[Via http://ucsdmodernchinesehistory.wordpress.com]

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Sisters and Strangers

2010-01-31T20:44:00.000+02:00

Emily Honig. Sisters and Strangers: Women in the Shanghai Cotton Mills, 1919-1949. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1986.

In this brief but extremely detailed book Emily Honig examines several understudied aspects of the history of labor movements in Shanghai. As she discusses in her introductory chapter, previous scholarship on labor during the Republican period has focused on the emergence of new social relations and institutions as evidence for a new proletarian consciousness through which labor movements grew in strength and number. Honig argues that the role of women laborers in this process has been overlooked. Such neglect is particularly obvious in the case of Shanghai, where women workers constituted the majority of the labor force in its largest industry, the cotton mills. By focusing on this group, Honig reveals the complex process through which women workers developed the foundations of a new class consciousness. “Working-class consciousness, if it has any meaning, must be able to embrace multiple loyalties” (249). As this study illustrates, whom these women were fighting, and how and why they developed loyalties with one another reveals that the formation of this consciousness was as much a product of traditional loyalties and organizations as it was a response to a harsh new urban working environment.

That these women were exploited, often terribly, is clearly reflected in Honig’s carefully crafted chapters which portray these women’s lives inside and outside of the mills. Yet she reveals that relations between women and mill owners and managers were complex. Neither of these two groups was monolithic in its composition. Women came to the mills from different regions, and were segregated on the basis of native place. This division was further complicated by imperialism, “which served to intensify the antagonism among the mill workers” (76). Subei workers, for example, were more likely to take jobs in the Japanese-run mills where they did not receive the poor treatment they received in Chinese-managed mills. Moreover, Honig considers a third force in her analysis: the Green Gang. She argues that as operators of kidnapping rings and labor contract syndicates the Green Gang was as likely to be the target of protest as were foreign or domestic capitalists (247).

In her final chapter, Honig presents a vivid narrative of a violent protest that occurred in 1949 at a major mill in Shanghai. Women at the mill acted together, and were supported by workers at other mills and by women in other occupations such as dancehall workers. This event, led by women laborers, stands out for Honig as “a transcendence of the parochialism that had inhibited women’s movements in the past” (245). They had first developed quasi-traditional organizations like ’sisterhoods’ (jiemei hui), through which they aided and protected on another. The change that occurred in the late 1940s that enabled these small, native-place based organizations to develop into more politically conscious groups, Honig argues, was the vision and training provided by such new institutions as the YWCA. Honig reveals that the YWCA in particular provided women with political education through its night school, and held numerous solidarity-building social events (222-3). At the same time, the CCP made new efforts to work within traditional women’s organizations and spread the party’s vision (229).

The book’s organization and Honig’s presentation of her arguments are extremely clear. Her chapters build logically from one another and construct pictures of women’s working conditions that are not burdened by excessive analysis. Reviewing the book, Mary Rankin’s only issue takes issue with this parsimony, in that she finds that Honig’s “concluding chapter does not do full justice to the analytical possibilities of the material.” Rankin does, however, praise Honig’s use of such diverse source materials as sociological surveys, newspapers, and personal interviews that she conducted with former workers from Shanghai (The American Historical Review, 92,4:1016-7). Most importantly, Honig succeeds in crafting a study that brings to light women’s actions and agency in the formation of Chinese modernity, thereby adding considerably to knowledge of the historical experiences of this very understudied segment of China’s population.

Christian Hess

[Find it on Amazon]

[Via http://ucsdmodernchinesehistory.wordpress.com]

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Battle for the heart

2010-01-31T08:49:00.000+02:00

Here is a little something something I wrote after reading a chapter from Wild at Heart:

I am in a battle for the heart: a battle for my own heart to be set ablaze with love. I am also in a battle for the hearts of my generation to be set from all the chains that weigh them down. That their hearts would truly find themselves in God. Lastly, I am in a battle for the Lord’s heart. The longing of his heart is to show compassion on his people, that Israel would be saved, for his plan for the world to come to fruition, and for to be fully destroyed.

I am truly in a real battle. Not with bullets or swords, but with the power of prayer, love, and the word of God. This is for the sake of real people’s hearts and the fate of the world. I am in a battle for the heart.

[Via http://hanmankim.wordpress.com]

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The Wind Singer

2010-01-30T20:34:00.000+02:00

The Wind Singer by William Nicholson is the first book in the trilogy. There are three main characters, twins named Kestrel and Bowman, and their friend, Mumpo who live a utopian society, or at least that is the idea. Everyone gets rankings, and can build up their status and wealth by succeeding in the tests taken every year. Obviously, there are leaders who have to work to keep this world working, so that there are no rebellions. Kestrel and Bowman’s family is one of the few who speak out against the community. One day, Kestrel angers the leaders, and has to hide, because she is wanted by the police figures. So Kestrel and Bowman, who are then followed by Mumpo have to flee the city and free everyone from the hold of the Morah, the evil force that causes unequality, hatred, injustice, and everything wrong about the world.

The first book may seem a bit childish but the later ones are much more complex, because the characters grow older physically and mentally as they undergo many challenges and hardships. I suppose I like it more than others because I read the first one when I was young, adn the later ones as I got older, so I kind of grew with the characters.

As a random comment about William Nicholson and his books, they are unusually difficult to find. The second one in the series is no longer being published, it is not sold in normal stores, and the other books/series he writes are also difficult to find, they are not in many stores, but I’m pretty sure that they are still in print.

[Via http://vastlyentertaining.wordpress.com]

Shakesville: News from Shakes Manor

Moby Dick: A Whale of a Book

2010-01-30T08:34:00.000+02:00

I finished reading Moby-Dick mid-January as one of the goals I set myself for a New Year’s Resolution. Moby-Dick is one of those books you promise yourself you’ll read but never get around to it.

But if you do get around to it, Moby-Dick delivers a novel on an epic scale which rewards patient readers. It’s long and it’s hard to get into at first, because the opening chapters deal mainly with just Ishmael setting the scene for what happens in the rest of the novel – as well as his musings on the lives and times of his fellow whalers.

The novel is larger than life but contains a lot of realism about the details of maritime whaling history – references to maritime law, the process of whaling and the actual extraction of whale oil from the animal. It doesn’t sound like riveting reading but Melville is such a skilled writer that he ties together references to Shakespeare and the Bible with what is essentially a historically accurate (yet fictionalised) account of whaling times.

When I read a novel on the first go, I don’t normally go into too much detail lest I spoil the ending or something, but what I can say about the book outside of a literary appraisal is that if you have a young man who is getting into reading books in your family, they would do well to read this book out of the personal growth and perseverance they will develop over the course of reading and finishing one of the great novels of American literature. It’s not for everybody, and squeamish people who enjoy the idea of whales not suffering might be put off by it. But I’d definitely recommend reading it, because by teaching yourself to develop an attention span long enough to read an entire novel of this size and literary depth, you’re learning a skill you should be developing over the course of your entire life. Oh, and there’s musings on the human condition too. I give this book five stars.

* * * * *

[Via http://ephemeretic.wordpress.com]

Sherlock Holmes 2 News - FilmoFilia

J. D. Salinger (1919 – 2010)

2010-01-30T08:01:00.000+02:00

J. D. Salinger on Time Magazine September 15, 1961

J. D. Salinger, American storyteller, who was born on January 1, 1919, died three days ago at his home in New Hampshire, at the age of 91. (Have you noticed how long people are living nowadays? Isn’t it great!) Salinger’s stature rests primarily on one novel, three novellas, and a handful of short stories, and while the literary world is holding its collective breath over the possibility of new posthumous works, Salinger’s status as one of the giants of American letters is secure, even if nothing new is ever forthcoming.

Salinger’s greatest strength as a writer was his ability to create flesh and blood characters, and breathe life into them. I know of no other author whose characters come to life more vividly than Salinger’s. If I were asked to name just a few of his greatest creations, I would begin with Holden Caulfield from Catcher in the Rye, the title characters from Franny and Zooey, Seymour and Muriel Glass from A Perfect Day for Bananafish, and Boo Boo Tannenbaum from Down at the Dinghy. I could go on and on, and it pains me not to mention a whole host of his minor characters, all of whom are drawn with unerring accuracy and attention to detail. I must mention, however, the extraordinary success that Salinger achieved in his portrayals of children. If you have read his short stories, take another look at Sybil in Bananafish, at Lionel in Down at the Dinghy, and at Teddy and Booper in Teddy. In his portrayals of children at least, Salinger’s achievements have not only never been exceeded, they are unequaled.

A key component of Salinger’s success in characterization was his uncanny ear for dialog. If there is a writer’s equivalent of perfect pitch in a musician, Salinger had it in spades. When his characters speak, we can see right into their souls. We learn at least as much about them from how they speak as from what they say.

To illustrate this, I have reproduced below a short excerpt from A Perfect Day for Bananafish. One of Salinger’s most compelling stories, Bananafish is my idea of the perfect short story. If you haven’t read it, you should run – not walk – to your nearest library or bookstore, pick up a copy of Nine Stories, and read the first story.

A Perfect Day for Bananafish (excerpt)

There were ninety-seven New York advertising men in the hotel, and, the way they were monopolizing the long-distance lines, the girl in 507 had to wait from noon till almost two-thirty to get her call through. She used the time, though. She read an article in a women’s pocket-size magazine, called “Sex Is Fun-or Hell.” She washed her comb and brush. She took the spot out of the skirt of her beige suit. She moved the button on her Saks blouse. She tweezed out two freshly surfaced hairs in her mole. When the operator finally rang her room, she was sitting on the window seat and had almost finished putting lacquer on the nails of her left hand.

She was a girl who for a ringing phone dropped exactly nothing. She looked as if her phone had been ringing continually ever since she had reached puberty.

With her little lacquer brush, while the phone was ringing, she went over the nail of her little finger, accentuating the line of the moon. She then replaced the cap on the bottle of lacquer and, standing up, passed her left – the wet – hand back and forth through the air. With her dry hand, she picked up a congested ashtray from the window seat and carried it with her over to the night table, on which the phone stood. She sat down on one of the made-up twin beds and – it was the fifth or sixth ring – picked up the phone.

“Hello,” she said, keeping the fingers of her left hand outstretched and away from her white silk dressing gown, which was all that she was wearing, except mules – her rings were in the bathroom.

“I have your call to New York now, Mrs. Glass,” the operator said.

“Thank you,” said the girl, and made room on the night table for the ashtray.

A woman’s voice came through. “Muriel? Is that you?”

The girl turned the receiver slightly away from her hear. “Yes, Mother. How are you?” she said.

“I’ve been worried to death about you. Why haven’t you phoned? Are you all right?”

“I tried to get you last night and the night before. The phone here’s been – ”

“Are you all right, Muriel?”

The girl increased the angle between the receiver and her ear. “I’m fine. I’m hot. This is the hottest day they’ve had in Florida in – ”

“Why haven’t you called me? I’ve been worried to – ”

“Mother, darling, don’t yell at me. I can hear you beautifully,” said the girl. “I called you twice last night. Once just after – ”

“I told your father you’d probably call last night. But, no, he had to – Are you all right, Muriel? Tell me the truth.”

“I’m fine. Stop asking me that, please.”

“When did you get there?”

“I don’t know. Wednesday morning, early.”

“Who drove?”

“He did,” said the girl. “And don’t get excited. He drove very nicely. I was amazed.”

“He drove? Muriel, you gave me your word of – ”

“Mother,” the girl interrupted, “I just told you. He drove very nicely. Under fifty the whole way, as a matter of fact.”

“Did he try any of that funny business with the trees?”

“I said he drove very nicely, Mother. Now, please. I asked him to stay close to the white line, and all, and he knew what I meant, and he did. He was even trying not to look at the trees – you could tell. Did Daddy get the car fixed, incidentally?”

“Not yet. They want four hundred dollars, just to – ”

“Mother, Seymour told Daddy that he’d pay for it. There’s no reason for – “

“Well, we’ll see. How did he behave – in the car and all?”

“All right,” said the girl.

“Did he keep calling you that awful – ”

“No. He has something new now.”

“What?”

“Oh, what’s the difference, Mother?”

“Muriel, I want to know. Your father – ”

“All right, all right. He calls me Miss Spiritual Tramp of 1948,” the girl said, and giggled…

Isn’t that amazing? Don’t you feel like you know these people, after just a few minutes of dialog? This is Salinger’s great gift: He creates real people. Characterization is far more important to him than plot. The plot serves primarily as a way for him to reveal his characters. We, the readers, feel that we know them. Within a few lines, their issues, their lives, become important to us, and we care about them.

If you haven’t read Salinger, I would begin with The Catcher in the Rye. It is a classic, and mandatory reading for everyone. Then I would pick up his volume of his Nine Stories, and read A Perfect Day for Bananafish, Down at the Dinghy, and Teddy. For your next course, read Franny and Zooey, and if you still hunger for more, read Raise High the Roof Beam, Carpenters and Seymore – An Introduction and the rest of Nine Stories. You may get hooked on Salinger, but you will never regret a single minute of the time you spend with him.

[Via http://derricksblog.wordpress.com]

Report: Nearly Half of Google News Users Just Read Headlines, Some ...

Douglas Adams' 'A Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy'

2010-01-28T20:51:00.000+02:00

I can see you now, “What’s with this dude and British authors, anyway?” Or perhaps you’re saying. “Hey. Alex. You’re from America. Read American.” To which I say, “Ptttttttthhhhh.” Just for that, I’m reading Nail Gaiman next. Serves you right!

Anyway, this review will only encompass the first installment in this series, because if you want the other books reviewed, you’ll just have to wait for the future. I’m not at your every whim, you know.

“A Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy” chronicles the worst day of Arthur Dent’s life. He wakes up to find a construction crew set up outside his home, preparing to demolish his house. While objecting to this development, his friend Ford Prefect drops by in order to take him to a noontime drink. At this noontime drink, Arthur learns that the impending demolition of his house is the least of his problems.

See, Ford Prefect is an alien from the planet Betelgeuse 7, who happens to have been stranded on Earth fifteen years ago while updating the planet’s entry in “the most remarkable book ever to come out of the great publishing corporations of Ursa Minor” – The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. To top it all off, Earth is scheduled for destruction in order to build an Interstellar bypass, which will occur in 12 standard Earth minutes. Which leaves Ford with only one real decision – grab his friend Arthur and hitch a ride with the Vogon Construction Fleet as it swings by to wipe out our “Mostly Harmless” planet.

“A Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy” is a journey aboard stolen space ships, with the President of the Galaxy, as they journey to the planet Magrathea and discover the nature of their home planet and the Question to Life, the Universe, and Everything – the answer of which is “42.” Don’t Panic.

“I mean, here we are are on the run and everything, we must have the police of half the Galaxy after us by now, and we stop to pick up hitchhikers. Okay, so ten out of ten for style, but minus several million for good thinking, yeah?” — Zaphod Beeblebrox, President of the Galaxy to Trillian, one of the last 2 humans in the Galaxy.

Next up – ‘Stardust’ by Neil Gaiman

[Via http://bigbadbloggerbookclub.wordpress.com]

Lane 9 News Archive: Industry News: New Site Brings Athletes of ...

When Reading Trumps Blogging (mini-reviewish book discussions)

2010-01-28T20:46:00.000+02:00

January is almost over, and I’ve just started to feel as though I’ve recovered from the holidays. The process of getting here has left me with that special mid-winter variety of brain drain that makes me want to read a lot and do very little else. And now, with snowpocalypse 2.0 on the horizon, there is a very real chance that I’ll spend the next several days curled up with a book. Nothing to complain about there, but the growing pile of books to be reviewed makes me antsy. So here’s what I’ve been reading lately.

Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll

I read this for the LOST Books Challenge, and I have to say it was very interesting to revisit a story that I seem to have learned by heart without ever having read it. And the whole thing begins with Alice declaring that she is bored and uninterested in the book she’s been given to read because “What is the use of a book…without pictures or conversations?”

You know the story, too. Alice falls down the rabbit hole, finds a bottle marked “drink me,” and proceeds to grow and shrink and almost drown in a pool of her own tears, then she unlocks a little door and walks right into Wonderland. There’s the mad hatter whose clock is stuck at tea time and the caterpillar who makes her recite poems that she can’t seem to get right and the cheshire cat with his riddles and the queen whose response to just about everything is “Off with her head!”

Since I’m addicted to introductory material, notes, and bookish extras, the best part of revisiting this story was learning more about Lewis Carroll (whose real name was Charles Lutwidge Dodgson) and the deeper themes of this work inspired by his relationship with ten-year-old Alice Liddell and her sisters. Though the introduction to this Barnes & Noble classics edition describes Dodgson’s relationship with the girls as “by all accounts innocent and kindly,” it also notes that Dodgson was barred from the Liddell household before Alice’s story was even completed. Definitely makes you wonder if something dodgy were going on.

Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland is an allegory for growing up and a snapshot of the nineteenth-century tendency to “disregard disorder and chaos as problems to be tucked away in regressive moments of dreaming and remembering,” and I enjoyed the opportunity to read this story for what lies beneath its surface. And the LOST tie-in felt obvious: just as Alice stumbles through Wonderland trying to impose order on chaos and make sense of her encounters with nonsensical characters, so the survivors of Oceanic flight 815 struggle to do the same on their mysterious island. See Lostpedia for more of the direct literary tie-ins.

The Wordy Shipmates by Sarah Vowell

Blame it on Nathaniel Hawthorne and that fantastic Jonathan Edwards sermon “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God,” but I just can’t help loving the Puritans. That’s right. Loving them. I am fascinated by these people who were so convinced they were God’s chosen that they left their families and communities for what can only be described as a harrowing journey across the Atlantic to a new world of unknowns. Sure, they also believed this destiny entitled them to kill the natives, take the land, and impose their religious beliefs, but doesn’t that make them interesting?

This was my first time reading Sarah Vowell, and it was pretty much love from page one. Focusing on John Cotton, John Winthrop (author of the famous exhortation to be “as a city upon a hill”), and the social, political, and religious motivations of the people who founded America, Vowell brings to light the petty arguments, deeply felt convictions, complex relationships, and community values that, whether we acknowledge it or not, continue to form the basis of our society today. And yes, Vowell has her own political agenda here, occasionally pointing out that the things that make the Puritans sound crazy are not so different from the things that motivate members of other exremist religious groups to attack and criticize America today.

The post-9/11 context gives The Wordy Shipmates added depth, and Vowell presents her research and her just-subtle-enough jabs with a snappy pace and a hefty portion of snark. But the book is really all about the story behind the story, the seldom told history of the people who came after the Mayflower, and the complexities of their inner lives and their relationships with each other. The blurb on the back of The Wordy Shipmates calls Vowell’s Puritans “highly literatate, deeply principled, and surprisingly feisty,” and that sums it up nicely. The story is so interesting, in fact, that I didn’t even notice it is written as one long piece—no chapter divisions here—with just the occasional paragraph break.

Where the God of Love Hangs Out by Amy Bloom

I finished this book a week ago, and I’ve been trying to find a way to write about it ever since. My first experience with Amy Bloom has left me flummoxed and rendered me inarticulate. The stories in this collection are crafted so beautifully and packed with such emotional power that I am just in awe. But I’m going to try to talk about them because how else will I convince you to READ THIS BOOK NOW!

Where the God of Loves Hangs Out is comprised of twelve short stories, but it’s really more like two novellas plus four stand-alone stories. The first four stories of the collection present William and Clare, best friends who are married to other people but embark on a romantic relationship that will define the final chapter of their lives. Bloom alternates between Clare’s narrative voice in the first story “Your Borders, Your Rivers, Your Tiny Villages” and close third-person for the remaining three and paints a remarkably full picture of these two people and their families and the larger narrative of their lives at four distinct moments.

This section is followed by two stand-alone stories that I remember enjoying but that I didn’t find nearly as compelling as the William and Clare pieces. Then comes a four-story block about Julia and Lionel, a middle-aged woman and her stepson, who sleep together the day after Lionel’s father’s funeral and spend the rest of their lives trying to make amends for the mistake and repair their relationship. Bloom shows deft narrative skill in writing stories from Julia’s perspective, Lionel’s perspective, and close third-person, and I could not turn away from Julia and Lionel’s struggle to navigate the complex and long-lasting effects of one moment of confusing, desperate sadness.

What have you been reading lately?

[Via http://thebookladysblog.com]

Paradox reveals Sword of the Stars II News | PC | Eurogamer

Book Review: Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance

2010-01-26T20:44:00.000+02:00

I recently completed the book Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, by Robert M. Pirsig, which, contrary to its name, is not a book about Zen or motorcycle maintenance, except in a very roundabout way.

The book is set in the motorcycle roadtrip of a father, the narrator, and his son, Chris, but the real meat of the book is contained in a series of chataquas, or talks, investigating a philosophical conundrum central to Western thought. Actually, it is the philosophical conundrum that defines Western thought, at least according to the narrator. The whole book is about the conflict between Value and Reason, and how reason came to be the dominant mode in Western thought and action. To explain this point, the narrator takes us through his past life as a philosophical genius-turned insane, as well as a quick journey through the development of Western rationality with the Greek philosophers.

I found this book riveting. You would think that a book that was essentially the absent-minded philosophical musings of a guy on a motorcycle tour would be pretty dull, but he relates the conflict between Value or Quality and Reason to everyday life and behavior so strongly that you feel like you are a part of the ongoing war. The absolute supremacy gained by Rationality in our society has had some pretty brutal aftereffects, but it wasn’t until I read this book that I began to understand the origins of the problem.

Pirsig does a great job of helping you take a step back not only from society, but from the whole mythos of Western thought, that great edifice of rationality that has become so powerful as to be accepted as the norm. The thing is, reason was not always the basis for making a decision. Scientific thought was not always the end-all-be-all of truth seeking. Of course, we would say that before then, people simply weren’t enlightened enough to use it, relying instead on inadequate forms. But Pirsig opens the reader’s eyes to the possibility that all this was just the result of some Ancient Greek mind games set amidst a great academic debate. It’s impossible to convey even the gist of the argument in a summary, and Pirsig not only does a good job explaining it, but also of setting it up. There is a lot of set up required to see the charade of Rationality, which is why it’s a long book.

If anything, this book really made me think. The truth is, I had always had misgivings about this blind reliance on reason, but it’s very difficult to argue against the variety of thought that is now taken as the definition of thought. I’m glad I finally sat down and read this book, and I will certainly think differently about my life and the most basic assumptions of the way I form my thoughts. I recommend this book to anyone who has ever had even a passing interest in philosophy or psychology, especially artistic types who have been frustrated by the argumentative, hyper-rational sciency friends. This book doesn’t repudiate science and reason, but it seeks to return them to their proper place as one of many tools in the great human endeavor of truth and meaning seeking, not basis for defining that endeavor.

[Via http://khaledallen.wordpress.com]

News From Across The Pond: Robert Pattinson Offered a Record Deal ...

World's Best Science Fiction Third Series

2010-01-26T08:30:00.000+02:00

This book was published in 1967 so it rather dated but the stories are not. The list of stories involved in this book are:

We Can Remember It For You Wholesale – Philip K. Dick

Light of Other Days – Bob Shaw

The Keys to December – Roger Zelazny

Nine Hundred Grandmothers – R. A. Lafferty

Bircher – A. A. Walde

Behold the Man – Michael Moorcock

Bumberboom – Avram Davidson

Day Million – Frederik Pohl

The Wings of a Bat – Paul Ash

The Man From When – Dannie Plachta

Amen and Out – Brian W Aldiss

For a Breath I Tarry – Roger Zelazny

I do actually wonder about the science fiction published in that year as Roger Zelazny features twice in this anthology, were the stories just not good enough or was Zelazny’s writing that much better than the competition? Don’t get me wrong, Zelazny’s writing is very good I did enjoy his stories, I just have to wonder, that’s all.

We Can Remember It For You Wholesale by Philip K. Dick was adapted into a movie called Total Recall starring Arnold Schwarzenegger. Reading the story again after all these years made me understand why Arnold Schwarzenegger got the role, he was just right for the part at the time. There are now other actors who would do a better job, I name Matt Damon as one, but Schwarzenegger was the best at the time. The only thing I have against Schwarzenegger in this role is his too memorable face. A secret agent shouldn’t look too distinctive as they need to fade into the background, or at least that’s what I’ve been taught by reading spy books by Robert Ludlum and John le Carre, and he just doesn’t do that whereas Matt Damon does. Anyway, this is meant to be a comment on the story, not the casting of the movie. If you’ve seen Total Recall you will have some idea of the story except in the story we don’t see the hero actually leaving his home town.

While I was reading the first part of Bumberboom by Avram Davidson I was also composing a blog in my mind all about books that have rather a large proportion of non-dictionary words that really need translating in order to be able to understand it. The story came good in the end and I was able to get the gist of what happened in the first half of the story but it was still hard going. I think I read the same page three times because I was so bored with it I kept putting it down after only a couple of paragraphs, it had so many words that didn’t make sense that I just couldn’t cope. I did make it through but it was slow going. The story was a lesson in reading instructions in full before using a dangerous machine.

Anyway, that’s just a taste of the stories in this book and now I’ve scribbled a little about it and recommended it to you I’m going to put it back on my shelf as I have no intention of selling it.

[Via http://suzsspace.wordpress.com]

Hot Air » Blog Archive » Great news: Noted deficit hawk to ...

Dying To Win: The Strategic Logic of Suicide Terrorism

2010-01-26T07:56:00.000+02:00

Author: Robert A. Pape

Copyright: 2005

Copy: Paperback used during last year of graduate school while studying with Brian Houghton.

Gist: Pape is a social scientist that went about collecting data on every known suicide terrorist attack since 1980. He paid a bunch of college students to punch the info into some charts and then tried to make something out of all the data. In the end, what Pape identified from his research was that suicide terrorism is not the result of uneducated religious fanatics. He suggests that the tactic of suicide terrorism is a strategically logical technique used more so by non-religious terrorist groups to overpower otherwise superior entities. He cites the now defunct nationalistic LTTE terrorist group from Sri Lanka as well as some of the early Hezbollah suicide attackers who were non-religious, educated, and a handful of them were women. Ultimately, Pape tries to turn most of the Western preconceived notions of what a suicide terrorist is upside down based on his immense data.

My Ideas: There is a lot in this book that I could talk about. It was one of the most influential books for me while I was studying at the University of Hawaii doing my masters degree in political science. One little tidbit that I fascinated me was that Hezbollah is credited with being the first to develop the suicide bomber tactic, where one person blows himself/herself up to kill others. From there, members of LTTE were trained by Hezbollah in the Bekka Valley in Lebanon and the technique transferred to Sri Lanka where it was improved upon and elsewhere. Most people believe LTTE or others were the first, but Pape proves otherwise with convincing clarity.

But that’s not what I want to write about. I think the most important idea in this text is that suicide terrorism is almost always the result of one group of people reacting to a perceived existential threat that is brought about due to occupation. In other words, suicide terrorism is the result of occupation. I’ll write a few words about that and then I’ll talk about my definition of suicide terrorism.

It’s All About Occupation

If we were to look at almost every scenario where suicide terrorism is used, it is most often that the conflict is centered on the issue of occupation. In Sri Lanka, the Tamil minority that created LTTE felt threatened by the “occupying” Sinhalese majority. In Iraq and Afghanistan, Al Qa’ida (AQ) is reacting to a military occupation by the U.S. In the conflicted land of Pakistan, a number of militant groups feel the civilian government is not the true Islamic government that should be in power so the civilian government is “occupying” a position and land unrighteously. There are a number of other conflicts that all seem to center on the same issue. It seems that this sense of occupation is so frightful because it causes the minority, or those who feel their land is being occupied, to feel that their identity is being threatened. For example, by having American troops in one of the holiest of Islamic lands, Mecca, Muslims around the world to include Usama bin Laden (UBL) feel that Muslims and Islam itself is being threatened. This is a perfect example of what is meant by a perceived existential threat. Those who feel they are being occupied feel that their existence, their identity, is ultimately being threatened and they are on the verge of being labeled invalid by an occupying and often militarily superior power.

What I noticed about this idea of an occupying existential threat is that in order for the occupiers to be considered a threat, in most cases they have to have a religion that is different than those whose land they are occupying. Christian Americans in Iraq or Afghanistan or Israeli Jews in Muslim Lebanon are easy examples. Each of these cases involves an occupier with a different religion causing a perceived existential threat. Similarly, I have often wondered why the nationalistic issue of the Hawaiian Nation has not become violent. One of the reasons I’ve come up with is that those who feel they are being threatened by an occupying Western power notice that they can too easily relate to the “occupying power” on Christian religious grouns. The religion and language have become the same. If there were a more drastic contrast between the religion of the Hawaiians and that of the Western “occupiers” it is likely that conflict would have escalated to violence years ago. But, you don’t see many people who still worship Pele on the islands causing a sense of tension over religious differences. That makes it very difficult to feel threatened by those who you consider to be an occupier because there is too much common ground.

So how does this relate to our world in 2010 and the global terrorist threat? Pape suggests that in order to mitigate the threat of suicide terrorism the U.S. needs disregard what President Bush has said on the issue. Pape suggests that Bush was wrong when he stated AQ attacked us on 9/11 because of who we are and what we believe. Pape says that had nothing to do with it – it has everything to do with what we as a country are doing. It has to do with foreign policy, it has to do with military forces “occupying” Muslim lands – it has to do with our actions and not our beliefs. So, in that sense Pape suggests that we as a country need to reevaluate our foreign policy and the placement of our troops to see if they are contributing to or inhibiting our national security. We need to remove any troops of U.S. personnel who may be seen as “occupiers.”

However, this isn’t as easy as it sounds. By doing so we will have taught those who use suicide terrorism that it is an effective means of forcing the United States to bend to the will of terrorists. We as a country cannot allow ourselves to be coerced into taking action via a threat of suicide terrorism. It is extremely difficult to mitigate every terrorist threat because it means we have to stop every threat that exists, using every available means to thwart threats to the country, and that burns a lot of money and man power. Also, by showing terrorists that suicide is an effective means of dealing with the U.S. it proves to other nations and groups that they can use this technique in the future. Just like the bombings of the U.S. embassies in Lebanon in the 80’s. In the end the U.S. pulled our embassy out of the country. This was a huge win for terrorists because it proved that they were able to cause the mighty U.S. to leave the country. It caused the U.S. to de-occupy a location where the Lebanese felt an existential threat from the Israelis. Hezbollah saw the U.S. as the power behind the Israeli’s so they attacked us and won the fight. We cannot give into suicide terrorism like this again! It gives a false sense of victory to those who espouse terrorism.

What is suicide terrorism?

I have had a number of discussions on this topic with people who are supposed to be “in the know” but I’ve often come away disappointed with their definition. Here’s my contribution to the definition of suicide terrorism: any terrorist act where the willful and intentional taking of ones own life (not death by cop style) in turn takes the lives of those around you. The terrorist attacks in Mumbai on Nov 08 were not suicide attacks they were fedayeen attacks. These are attacks where the likelihood of survival is slim and the deaths of others were not dependent upon the attackers taking their own lives.

To be honest I don’t know why I make such a distinction and big deal about this issue. One thing is for sure, there is something very frightening and overwhelming when you know that an attacker is willing to take his own life in order to kill you. You know that his death equals your death as well. This isn’t the same with a fedayeen attacker (death by cop style). If I were in the middle of a fedayeen attack I know that if I can put the attacker down then I will have saved mine as well as others’ lives. If you try to take down a suicide bomber with an explosive laden vest it’s very possible everyone including yourself could die. At any rate, suicide terrorism is any terrorist act where the willful and intentional taking of ones own life in turn takes the lives of those around you. If you have questions about my definition I highly encourage you to leave a comment and we can keep this discussion going through the rest of the week.

Comments: That’s enough on this subject I think. I know I’ve bored my wife on this issue on more than one occasion – I hope I haven’t done the same to you my dear reader. It’s one of my personal favorites because the reality of the issue is often the opposite of what the usual Westerner thinks.

Next Book Review: I’ve taken the rest of the books I want to review and started placing them into more of a decent order for the following reviews. I’ve only got about 22 left on my blue book shelf. I either need to start reading again or find copies of books I’ve already read so I can be reminded of what I’ve read and thought about in the past. For next week I’ll be writing about a book entitled “Leadership on the Line.” I took a political leadership class at the University of Hawaii and had to read this little nugget. It has a few great ideas that I want to write about. The main idea will be about fear of loss vs faith in principle.

[Via http://marcallredreviews.wordpress.com]

Catholic 'Womenpriests' Touted in WaPo News Story by Leftist ...

Book Review Blogging

2010-01-24T19:55:00.000+02:00

I am currently beginning a program that offers a free book and in exchange I am to write an open and honest opinion about the book whether good or bad. I am hoping to be able to join more sites which do this. I am waiting on my first book: Nelson’s Complete Book of Bible Maps and Charts, 3rd Edition. I’m looking forward to doing this as I love reading and writing so this will give me a chance to do both.

[Via http://zealfire.wordpress.com]

Dear News Media… | The Intersection | Discover Magazine

Bono-metrics

2010-01-24T08:31:00.000+02:00

Bono-metrics and more; (Jan. 28, 2010)

Rock superstar of U2 Bono published his 10 ideas for the next decade in the New York Times. I selected a few of these ideas with comments.

Half a million children in developing countries died of diarrhea this year. There is a vaccine for antirotavirus that could save millions of children. The vaccine can be delivered with the other available inoculations. Super rich Bono has established many humanitarian associations such as ONE and the label of RED products to fighting tuberculosis, paludism, and AIDS. Super rich and supper motivated Bono can start this campaign of vaccination and then play the catalyst for other billionaires, public figure personalities, and international organizations to taking over the movement.

Soccer “world cup” games for 2010 are organized in South Africa. During the games, many African civil wars will declare cease fire for the event. Between now and then, soccer is enflaming enmities among peoples instead of letting politicians fight it out: it is a shame that Egyptians feel so strongly of Algerians simply for a soccer game. In this century, people can still exhibit small mindedness; as if knowledge and simple common sense decency have never touched them.

Each individual should have the right to sell his polluting conduct to the heavier polluters and receive the money for his sustainable life behavior. The Ethiopian who is polluting the environment with 200 kilos of CO2 related chemicals per year should be paid by the US polluter of 20 tons.

I love the European Union dynamism: Do you remember the “Spanish auberge” movie where European students study in any EU State? Well, there is an extension to that program for small entrepreneurs. The Erasmus program offers stipends for entrepreneurs who manage to contact skilled entrepreneurs to be mentors and learn new techniques in administration and managing their business. Damn, I love to have dual citizenship with any EU state.

For example, the Netherland allocated one billion to cover salaries of part time workers so that companies retain qualified employees for better economic periods. What a better strategy to keeping people off the street and feeling worth as a person during downturn period. It is amazing that small Netherland, with no raw materials, and with flat land under sea water level can progress as a super wealthy society. The EU should move most of its institutions to the Netherland and be kept up to date to notion of courage and organization.

[Via http://adonis49.wordpress.com]

Helen Duffett: News reviews - and a digestion question

My First "Real" Post

2010-01-24T08:18:00.000+02:00

What I’m Reading

Handle With Care by Jodi Picoult

A Reliable Wife by Robert Goolrick

This is going to be a quick post, because I spent a lot more time talking about me and why I’m doing this than I had planned. But while reading today, there were two things that really stuck out to me.

I’m in the middle of Handle With Care, and the part that I read today just screamed my life. The two main characters, Charlotte and Shawn (I apologize if I misspell the names, by “reading,” I’m actually listening to the audio book) were fighting, and I had such a similar argument with my boyfriend just hours prior, that I had to force myself not to cry. The careless words that Shawn throws at Charlotte hurt me too, and they hurt when my boyfriend says them also. But my boyfriend thinks I can’t see his point of view, and he’s so wrong. I can understand where Shawn is coming from, just as I can understand where the basis my boyfriend’s opinions and thoughts are rooted. I wish he could only see and understand that, though I may not articulate myself well when I feel pressured and threatened, I really do understand. I probably understand more than he’ll ever know.

I just started A Reliable Wife today, and there was one quote that really stabbed my heart: “You can live with hopelessness for only so long before you are, in fact, hopeless.” Is that what’s become of me? Lately, I feel so detached from life. I hoped for quite awhile that things would get better, and when I didn’t start seeing results, I waited, without much faith, that things would get better on their own. Now, I don’t see things improving. Now, I’m not sure what I can do to work my way out of this mess. And I don’t care. I may still cry, but it’s over the emptiness I feel, not because of my hopelessness. Does that make me, in fact, hopeless?

[Via http://willowswords.wordpress.com]

Quantum Computer Simulates Hydrogen Molecule Just Right - Science News

Sue Monk Kidd & Creativity

2010-01-23T20:49:00.000+02:00

In this video Sue Monk Kidd shares her journey of creative writing. It is shown that creativity is a rewarding process that one takes it with passion and watching for synchronicity.

Ten years ago Sue Monk Kidd was a traditionally grounded Christian writer. But like her engaging narrator Lily Owens, Kidd is on a spiritual journey, heralded by her 1996 nonfiction work The Dance of the Dissident Daughter and confirmed in this captivating first novel [The Secret Life of Bees] about love and forgiveness. Guided by bees and a group of women devoted to a black Madonna, 14-year-old Lily Owens embarks upon a spiritual quest that carries her through the shadow of racism and her own spiritual suffering and brings her to adulthood.

Title: Review of the Secret Life of Bees

Author(s): Ann-Janine Morey

Publication Details: Christian Century 120.4 (Feb. 22, 2003): p68-70.

Source: Contemporary Literary Criticism. Ed. Jeffrey W. Hunter. Vol. 267. Detroit: Gale, p68-70. From Literature Resource Center.

[Via http://unioncitylibrary.wordpress.com]

Big news for Kindle owners – Amazon to release a Kindle SDK ...

“There must be something wrong if she approves, unquestioningly, of what he has written.”

2010-01-23T20:28:00.000+02:00

Cover credit: Wasim Hetal. I've read the book on the top of the central pile (Amitav Ghosh's The Calcutta Chromosome).

There are two ways to parody a genre. One is to make a genre piece that continuously winks at the audience by breaking the prevalent rules, like the ______ Movie franchise. The other, superior, way is to make a piece that sticks slavishly to its rules, taking them to their logical extremes, as done most memorably by Samit Basu’s GameWorld trilogy (fantasy) and the movie Harold and Kumar Go to White Castle (Hollywood buddy comedies); breaking rules is the job of genre artists (artistes?) who want to extend the genre.

When I use the word genre, most people will think of science fiction/fantasy (it’s just one genre, popularly known as SF/F) or crime fiction, and with good reason, for these are the biggest ones, the ones with the most devoted cults. There has recently, however, cropped up a new genre, which tends to write books that sound like J. M. Coetzee and T. S. Eliot having a joint colonoscopy; which is, down to every last example, heavily post-modern; which, in other words, has been desperately calling out for a parody. Even those that we enjoy, we enjoy because they make the colonoscopy sound mild. The genre is the ‘identity’ branch of Indian English literature, and the parody is Prashant Bhawalkar’s Unruly Times.

“Prashant Bhawalkar was” – as is written on the back of the book – “born in Mumbai and studied English Literature at St. Xavier’s college. Upon graduation, he worked briefly as a journalist and went on to study journalism at the University of Technology Sydney (UTS) in Sydney, Australia. A naturalised Canadian, he has lived and worked in Sydney, Toronto, Singapore and New York where he currently resides. He enjoys reading the classics in translation (Greek, Latin and Sanskrit) and playing truant from work to go to the museums.”

Dushyant, the protagonist of Unruly Times was born in Mumbai, did his post-graduation in Sydney, is a Canadian national, lives in New York, and … enjoys reading the classics in translation (Greek, Latin and Sanskrit). I was wondering why there was no mention of Singapore or museums. Which is beside the point; the story is about him writing a novel which stars Advaita who does his college in Mumbai and post-grad in journalism in Sydney, gets Canadian citizenship … and enjoys reading the classics in translation (Greek and Latin only, but wants to branch out into Sanskrit). Thankfully, Advaita isn’t writing a book. If he is going to, it’s after the end of Unruly Times.

There’s three sorts of parts of the narrative at the Dushyant level, the parts where he’s writing, the parts where he’s reminiscing about his life, and the parts where he’s being criticised by an unnamed American woman-friend. In his writing moments, he is joined by the colourful and imaginary pair of Bhavabhuti, Dushyant’s fictional ancestor, and Macrobius, a symbol for Greek/Latin classic writers. In his comparatively rare reminiscing moments, he is… well, reminiscing about his experiences to get himself clear for writing his book. It is the third sort of part where Prashant (I feel like I’ve broken some unnamed barrier by calling him this, but I’m determined to, even if just for fun) really shines. His relationship with the woman is, down to every last detail, real. The fakeness of their political discussions, the hypocrisy of their acknowledgement of their hypocrisy, the metaphorical sense replacing logical sense for no other reason than to support one’s argument, I’ve been (note tense) these two. Take a look at the time when she first appears in the book.

They greet each other in French.

‘Bonjour, Mademoiselle’, he greets her.

‘Bonjour, Monsieur’, she responds, seemingly charmed that he has called her mademoiselle. Not only does it have more syllables (anything that has more syllables in French is charming), but it also makes her appear younger.

Dushyant begins with a diatribe against the unfortunate nature of modern civilisation and modern literature in particular.

‘You’re too young to be cynical. Lighten up’, she teases.

‘That is the problem with everything. Everyone has lightened up a little too much. It is why the world is in the mess it is in. Everyone feels entitled to their two-bit opinion, however stupid it may be.’

‘Stupidity – that great equaliser. It is what makes life worth living. If there wasn’t so much of it around, we wouldn’t appreciate the rare glimpses of brilliance.’

It is her criticisms of Dushyant’s writing (Dushyant hates the idea of having to produce post-colonial literature) as ‘not Indian enough’ – she repeatedly urges him to include a wedding –, and not in his ‘true voice’ (“It’s somewhat hoarse…”, he weakly replies) and his conversations with the ancient pair in which the satire really comes out (the book is a parody; the points are satirical). It is after one of these criticism sessions that the line that formed the title of my review came.

The rest of the book, especially Advaita’s story – written in a different, more rounded, font –, is a direct parody of the writing I mentioned. It uses a similar voice, the points made in all the discussions are a perfect mockery of what you get to see there, and Dushyant’s book veers into a more and more post-colonial mould as time goes on, though the ending gives hope for the future.

The structure is of Advaita’s story intercut with Dushyant’s tribulations during writing it. As I went further and further into the book, I was reminded of the Kurosawa quote “Take me, subtract movies, and the result is zero.” Finally, it is the last fifty pages, when Advaita’s story gets increasingly ponderous whereas the cutting to and from Dushyant’s story gets more and more hurried, that really got me laughing, with wierd situations, blind alleys and great misquotes (the pinnacle being one of T. S. Eliot’s about pants).

While there is a lot to be said about the book – chief being that his parody of the rather irritating style is never allowed to go on for too long –, there are problems. The first is the editing; I understand that the publisher Rupa is dedicated to providing cheap novels (this one cost around Rs. 200/$ 4, and it’s one of the most expensive I’ve seen them sell), but that shouldn’t mean that they don’t provide their writers with editors, though I do have to commend the cover they provided; a better edition to own than read. The second is that parts of the end are too preachy; the mockery is left behind to ‘seriously’ articulate some learnings about identity, which didn’t really connect. Of course, this may just be me because I read the book in four widely-spaced bursts and missed out on some continuity.

You must be thinking, ‘I thought it was a parody, why are there serious teachings about identity?’ The answer is that because it is the superior type of parody; the type of parody that is a quintessential example of the genre. You know, too quintessential. And, after all, Prashant only wrote it to write an Indian identity novel that wouldn’t be ignored by readers, like me, who are jaded and cynical about ‘identity’ novels. And you know what? It worked.

[Via http://ronakmsoni.wordpress.com]

The Allmusic Blog » News Roundup: 1/21/2010

Pizza and pie lovers: Problems of etiquette and equitable portions

2010-01-23T08:42:00.000+02:00

Pizza and pie lovers: Problems of etiquette and equitable portions; (Jan. 27, 2010)

This article explains how it took 11 years for the two mathematicians, Rick Marby and Paul Deiermann, to come up with a satisfactory resolution of how to split a round (circle) pizza or a pie equitably between two eaters. Marby stated what amount to this: “If a mathematician is unable to solve a problem then, it would be stupid to take on the challenge. We decided to play stupid. Paul and I are the kinds of mathematicians who take pleasure in the beauty of the demonstration: we care less for applicability of the concept.”

There are many cases of mathematicians working on problems that “consciously” have no practical applications; they do take the time to demonstrate their concepts and theorems and produce functions: applications materialize much later for the benefit of sciences. For example, the Italian Guiseppe Peano described in 1890 a function that filled entirely a finite space (a square in that case). A century later, this function turned out to be fundamental in fractal theory (applied in biological structures, in economics, and meteorology). Personally, I think that no one invest time on a project if there was no personal practical interest; the initial interest is so personal and feels un-important to colleagues that the mathematician is shy to state his “secret” interest.

Let us try to expose the problem. First, the two eaters have to abide by the etiquette that you cannot get another slice before the other has finished his slice. The portions are picked up clockwise for easy visualization one after another. Another restriction: all slicing lines cross a single point if the server is lousy enough not to cut along the center of the perfectly circle (geometrically) pizza.

Now, if one of the lines cross the center then, there is no problem of equitable portions (in the final quantity of devouring pizza), regardless of the design on the number of lines of slicing. If the pizza is cut in two parts then you know which part is larger when the line does not cross the center. Otherwise, for any even numbers of lines the equitability is restored, assuming you are abiding by the etiquette rule.

The problem gets nasty if the number of lines is odd. If the number of lines is 3, 7, 11, or 15 then the one eating the piece including the center will be at an advantage (this advantage is relative to the quantity and not what happens after eating!). If the number of lines is 5, 9, 13, or 17 then the advantage is reversed. That should cover the equitability problem.

Now for the remaining story: In 1967, the mathematician LJ Upton resolved the problem with four lines; then he threw the challenged to resolve the problem along that concept of equitable portions. In 1968, the problem of 8 lines was solved (mathematically) and for all even numbers of lines. In 1994, Marby and Deiermann accepted the challenge to study the odd number of lines slicing the pizza and not passing by the center. For lenient practical eaters it should not matter that much if the point is close to the center: the problem is to convince mathematicians.

Paul quickly found a “gorgeous” demonstration for three lines and it got nastier later on. The problem can be solved easily by induction using the current technology of measuring areas: in this case, induction reasoning on the possibilities is accurate since we are not taking samples in complex experiment with many variables (all we have is number of odd lines as variable). Rick and Paul wanted a classical mathematical demonstration, preferably the simpler and most beautiful demonstration. They had to skim the Internet for theorems and functions and discovered that in 1979 a mathematician got fun demonstrating the complex algebraic problem of rectangular strips (don’t ask me for further details).

If you ask me to take on the psychological characters of Rick and Paul, I may venture to say that this couple is voracious but pretty cheap.

[Via http://adonis49.wordpress.com]

Facebook unveils new games dashboard | News

A Bloody Good High Seas Adventure Tale

2010-01-21T20:42:00.000+02:00

The Bloody Jack series by L.A. Meyer has been on my list of books to read for a very long time now. Well, I have some good news-RRPL finally has the complete series, including the most recent installment of the series, book 7, Rapture of the Deep: Being an Account of the Further Adventures of Jacky Faber, Solider, Sailor, Mermaid, Spy. The first book in the series, Bloody Jack: Being an Account of the Curious Adventures of Mary “Jacky” Faber, Ship’s Boy, is also available on CD (but not now because I am listening to it). I just started it this morning and I really like it so far. I am making it my goal to complete the series this year, which shouldn’t be hard to do because I already love Jacky and can’t wait to read about all of her adventures as a cabin boy for the Royal Navy. What’s not to love? Incredibly long and descriptive titles? Girls disguised as boys? High Seas Adventures? Pirates? Sounds good to me! Check them out with me.

˜Megan

[Via http://rockyriverteenlibrarian.wordpress.com]

Apple shares jump on news of Jan. 27 event

Q&A with Marcus Chown, author of "We Need to Talk About Kelvin"

2010-01-21T08:12:00.000+02:00

Award-winning writer Marcus Chown is on a blog tour down under to promote his latest book, We Need to Talk About Kelvin. And guess what – the man himself was kind enough to drop by to answer a few questions about his book, his writing, and his views on the universe!

Marcus is one of a handful of guys in the world that can make science sound interesting without making your head explode trying to understand it. He is currently the cosmology consultant of the weekly science magazine New Scientist, and is the author of hugely successful books such as The Universe Next Door, Quantum Theory Cannot Hurt You and Felicity Froshiber and the Three-Headed Aldebaran Dust Devil.

In We Need to Talk About Kelvin, Marcus takes familiar features of the mundane world and shows, how in the light of our current scientific knowledge, they tell us profound truths about the ultimate nature of reality. For example, did you know that:

the reflection of your face in a window is telling you that the universe at its deepest level is orchestrated by chance? or

the iron in a spot of blood on your finger is telling you that somewhere out in space there is furnace at a temperature of 4.5 billion degrees? or

your TV tuned between the stations is telling you the Universe had a beginning?

Don’t worry, I didn’t know either.

Well, without further ado, let’s get this Q&A started!

Marcus Chown

1. Let’s get straight to the question everyone has been asking – just who or what is Kelvin and why do we need to talk about him/it?

Let’s hope you are right that everyone is asking that question! Because – well – that’s what I hoped. My book, in common with the books of every other author, has to compete with thousands of others in a bookstore. Why should anyone else stop for a moment and pick it up and read what it’s about? Well, maybe because the title intrigues them, because they think What’s that about? Who is Kelvin? Why do I need know about him? It seems to have worked with you, which I am very happy about!

I picked the title because, in the UK, Lionel Shriver’s novel, We Need to Talk About Kevin, about an American boy who massacres his schoolmates and half his family with a crossbow (!), was a huge best seller (Reading your question, I worry it might not have been so big in Australia!). People who recognise the pun, laugh, which again makes them stop and pick up the book. On 20 December, The UK’s Independent newspaper wrote: “The award for the cleverest title of the year goes to the popular science writer Marcus Chown for We Need to Talk About Kelvin.” But, actually, it doesn’t matter whether you recognise the allusion and chuckle, or whether you don’t recognise the allusion and just wonder Who the hell is Kelvin? The point is that you notice my book. Or, at least that’s the hope!

(Lord Kelvin was actually one the greatest physicists of the 19th century. He invented the “absolute” temperature scale which bears his name and was even involved in the laying of the first undersea telegraph cable between England and America – it snapped! – a task comparable to the Apollo program. Oh, and he spent much of his life trying to figure out why the Sun is hot, which is the subject of one of the chapters of my book, and why I sneaked him into the title. The book is subitled by the way “What everyday things tell us about the Universe”. And one of those everyday things is the Sun being hot)

[Editor's note: for the record, I did 'get' the title of the book. I just thought it was a funny thing to ask.]

2. You were formerly a radio astronomer at the California Institute of Technology – what made you decide to become a writer?

I always wanted to be a writer. But, when I was at school, I liked English – writing stories – and I liked science. Unfortunately, in the British system – and I hope it isn’t the same in Australia – it’s not possible to do both beyond 16. Personally, I think it’s stupid that you can’t do arts and science. But that’s we way it is. So I had to choose. And I chose physics, first going to university in London, then, as you say, the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) in Pasadena. But I kept writing stories and I always wanted to get back to writing. So I decided to give up research in the US and come back to England and see if I could be a science journalist. And I’ve been working my way towards being a writer ever since. I’ve gone from science journalism to writing popular science books to fiction. The book I am most proud of and had the most fun writing is actually Felicity Frobisher and the Three-Headed Aldebaran Dust Devil, which is for kids – from 5 to 85. As a plot device it does use “wormholes” – shortcuts through space-time which are permitted to exist by Einstein’s theory of gravity. But, actually, it’s about having a very bad school friend who gets you into loads of trouble and it was just an opportunity to be very, very silly. It’s also autobiographical!

[Editor's note: luckily, in the Australian system, you can do both science and English. I didn't do science after 15 because I sucked at it and my science teachers (when they were not throwing dustpans at our heads) bored me to death. Funnily enough as a child, the first thing I wanted to be when I grew up was a scientist. If only I had Marcus Chown to explain stuff to me, then maybe my life could have been different.]

3. You have written books about the origin of atoms, quantum theory and a little girl by the name of Felicity Frobisher. Where do you come up with the ideas for your books?

The ‘origin of atoms’ book you are referring to is The Magic Furnace. I happened to go to some lectures while an undergraduate at the University of London. They were on “nucleosynthesis”, how the atoms in our bodies were forged inside the furnaces of exploding stars and the big bang. It blew my mind. We all think of the Universe as out there, not at all connected to our everyday lives. But it isn’t. The big and far away is directly connected to the small and close to home – the atoms in your body. The iron in your blood, the calcium in your bones, the oxygen that fills your lungs each time you take a breath – all were forged inside stars that lived and died before the Earth was born. If you want to see a piece of a star, hold up your hand. You are stardust made flesh. All this stayed in my head. Then, one day, I thought, I could write the story of how we made this discovery. Unfortunately, I didn’t realise how complicated it was and how long it would take me. However, The Magic Furnace is in my opinion my best book.

The other book you mention is Quantum Theory Cannot Hurt You. It’s about the two major developments in physics of the past century: quantum theory and Einstein’s theory of gravity. Quantum theory is our theory of very small things – our very best description of atoms and their constituents. It has given us lasers and computers and nuclear reactors, not to mention an understanding of why the sun shines and why the ground under your feet is solid. Einstein’s theory of gravity is our theory of big things – stars, black holes and the whole Universe. The reason I wrote about them was that, as cosmology consultant of New Scientist magazine, I’m often given books to read with titles like Quantum Physics for Dummies or Einstein for Dummies. And they baffle me, even though I have a physics background! So I thought I’d try and see if I could do better. The result was a slim, 200-page book, with no equations or anything like that. Writing it helped me understand quantum theory better. And it has surprised me and my publisher by selling far more copies than any of my other books.

Now to Felicity Frobisher and the Three-Headed Aldebaran Dust Devil! Well, as I said before, I always liked writing imaginative stories. So I thought I would write a children’s book. Because it’s a very competitive field, I thought: How can I be different? What can I do that other children’s writers cannot? And I thought: I can use things that I know about because I have a science background. That’s why I used “wormholes” as a plot device. They are shortcuts through space-time, which are permitted to exist by Einstein’s theory of gravity. But, actually, Felicity Frobisher is really not a science book. As I’ve said, it’s about having a very bad friend who gets you into loads of trouble. And it was an opportunity for me to be very silly (This reviewer really got what it was about… http://tinyurl.com/ylxeb6p). I had no idea what to expect. But I had an overwhelming response from children. And The Sunday Times, which never reviews my popular science books, called it: “One of the books most likely to fire children’s imaginations”. I had so much fun writing Felicity Frobisher that I am writing a sequel at the moment called Felicity Frobisher and the Newly Weeded Capellan Toast Weevil.

4. How long does it usually take for you to write a book? Is a lot of research involved? You don’t just make things up…do you?

Normally a year – although The Magic Furnace took me about 4 years and nearly drove me to drink! One problem was that I had left my staff job on New Scientist and gone freelance. I kept waking up in the middle of the night and thinking: How am I going to pay the electricity bill? Consequently, journalistic jobs that paid within a few weeks always took priority. And, when I got back to writing the book, I couldn’t remember where I’d got to. It didn’t help that the story of how we discovered where the atoms in our bodies came from was a complicated one, spanning astrophysics and nuclear physics and geology and chemistry. As I’ve said, teasing out a linear narrative was like trying to unknot a very knotted ball of string. To add to this friends kept saying to me: “You really want to finish that book, Marcus!” They thought they were helping but it was infuriating. I wanted to finish the book. Even worse, friends would come around and drink coffee with me and say: “You really want to finish that book!” They were drinking coffee with me, taking up valuable time when I could be finishing the book, while telling me I should finish the book! Anyhow, I did finish the book. And it’s still my best book, I think. But I vowed never to spend so much time writing a book again.

Actually, the idea for the next book occurred to me while I was writing The Magic Furnace. I noticed that, when I wrote articles for New Scientist or newspaper, I usually got no letters from readers. But, occasionally, I got an avalanche of letters. So I thought: Why don’t I write a book about the subjects that trigger an avalanche of correspondence? Can time run backwards? Are there multiple universes in which all possible histories occur? Was our Universe made as an experiment by aliens in another universe? The book became The Universe Next Door. It’s from a line of poetry by e. e. cummings:

Listen, there's a hell of a good universe next door: let's go!

5. Do you have any quirky writing habits?

I can’t do it unless I’m stark naked with bells on my toes. No, I have all my clothes on! I just said that to make myself more interesting since my writing habits are so dull and boring. Basically, I sit with a notepad and write, crossing out most of it and throwing it in the bin with disgust. It’s actually my non-writing habits which are more interesting. Like most writers, I am constantly looking for some distraction. When my wife comes home from work – I work at home – I always tell her I’ve been slaving all day. Unfortunately, I give myself away with my comprehensive knowledge of which celebrities have appeared on daytime TV that day!

6. Tells us the story of how you got your first book published. And make it exciting (embellish if necessary).

I was chatting to Spielberg about the big bang and Spielberg said: “You wanna write a book about that, Marc.” And I said “You know, Steve, I’ve never thought of that. What a great idea. I think I’ll do it!”…

Actually, it was duller than that (isn’t it always!). In the early 1990s, a NASA space experiment called the Cosmic Background Explorer (COBE) observed the “afterglow” of the big bang fireball, effectively taking a “baby photo” of the Universe. So what? you might think. Well, after one of the scientists involved said “It’s like seeing the face of God” and Stephen Hawking said “It’s the discovery of the century, if not of all time”, the international media went wild. In the aftermath, the face of God man reportedly got a $2 million advance to write a book. At the time I was working as science news editor at New Scientist and I followed the story. Someone said: you could write about that. You see, I knew a bit about the background. So I wrote two A4 pages with bullet points about what was so interesting about the afterglow of the big bang and why it would make a great book and sent it to one publisher after another. They all rejected it, saying the $2 million guy was writing a book, why write another?

Then, finally, my proposal fell on the desk of Neil Belton at Random House. He said, yes there is this guy with the $2 million advance but we could get a book out quicker and ride on the coat tails of the publicity. So Afterglow of Creation was born (Actually, the best review was from The Australian, which said “Beautiful science, beautifully told”). But the fantastic thing is that my current publisher has let me update it and the new edition is published on 21 January 2010! It means a lot to me because in the Foreword I write about my dad, who had a quite ridiculous amount of faith me. It just so happened that, when I came to write the Foreword, it was the 10th anniversary of my dad’s death. I sat under a tree in London’s Hyde Park and just wrote. I couldn’t think of a better way to mark the anniversary. So it’s a very personal book. If you read it, you’ll also learn how I was Margaret Thatcher’s “first success”!

7. You’ve been called the Katie Price of science writers. Why do you think other science writers make science so bloody hard to understand? And do you like Peter Andre?

That’s me calling myself that! You see, I read that one of Katie Price’s books outsold all 100 books on the Booker Prize long list (That’s the most prestigious book prize in the UK) and she never wins any awards for her writing. I thought, I never win any awards either, and my books outsell just about every other science writer (except people like Richard Dawkins). So I thought, for a bit of fun, I’d call myself the Katie Price of science writing!

Peter Andre seems like a nice bloke.

I don’t know why “other science writers make science so bloody hard to understand”. Do you think they all are? Or just some? What I would say is that many scientists popularise. Some are very good, like Steven Weinberg, and some are not. What distinguishes the good from the bad is the time and effort they put in, which is a function of how seriously they view popularising. Weinberg takes it very seriously and even takes a year off research to write a popular science book. Others think they can dash something off in a spare moment. But I blame the editors. If they were doing their job, they would not be intimidated by big-shot scientists and would say: “What’s this? I don’t understand? What are you talking about?”

8. What advice or tips would you give to aspiring writers?

Be persistent. Never give up. It took me 5 years to get Quantum Theory Cannot Hurt You published. Publishers rejected it, telling me it was “unmarketable”. It has outsold all my other books.

And lastly…just out of interest…in your opinion, what are the odds intelligent life exists elsewhere in the universe, and what are the chances that they have or will visit us on Earth?

I believe the chances of intelligent life existing somewhere else in the Universe is 100 per cent. It’s a numbers game. At least 10 per cent of nearby stars has planets. There are 200 billion stars in our Galaxy and about 100 billion galaxies. That comes to 2 billion billion planetary systems, or to put it another way, 2,000,000,000,000,000,000. I cannot believe that we are the only intelligence to have arisen in all those planetary systems.

The fact remains, however, that we have seen no sign of intelligence – though we have been scanning the Heavens for 50-odd years – and there is no sign that any ETs have been here (I write about this in my book, We Need to Talk About Kelvin).

Many believe that, depressingly, we are the first intelligence to arise in our Milky Way galaxy. However, absence of evidence is not necessarily evidence of absence. ETs could be out there but difficult to spot. But, as the Italian-American physicist Enrico Fermi pointed out, one of the most important scientific questions – perhaps the most important – remains: Where is everybody?

[Editor's note: I knew it!]

Well, that’s that! Thanks to Marcus Chown for stopping by. You can check out the rest of his blog tour spots at his website, marcuschown.com

Review of the book coming soon!

[Via http://pacejmiller.wordpress.com]

AMERICAblog News: More chatter on forcing the House to accept the ...

The Art of Re-Gifting

2010-01-19T20:26:00.000+02:00

Are you all done cleaning up from the Holidays? Did you receive a gift or two that you don’t know quite what to do with? Perhaps it is a vase that does not fit your decor, or a sweater that is not your color. Or maybe it is that other item that every time you look at it, you shake your in amazement that the giver actually thought this would be something you would love and enjoy!

If that ’special something’ is an item that cannot be returned, then you naturally think about RE-GIFTING. A Harris poll found that over 70% of us think that re-gifting is OK, and over half of us have re-gifted something.

There is an art to re-gifting, and some rules to follow according to Jodi R. R. Smith who wrote From Clueless to Class Act: Manners for the Modern Woman. She suggests that re-gifting is OK if the following criteria are met:

The item is new and has never been opened. My husband and I received a wedding gift of some lovely crystal. It fit the box but the description did not coincide with the contents. It could have been an honest oversight at the store, but it is something that I will always remember.
It is something you would have bought for the person anyway. If you don’t like it would you really pick it out as a gift for someone else? *Read on for another suggestion.*
The original giver and the new recipient don’t know each other at all. Oh my, how embarrassing that would be! In our house we re-use gift bags. Once my daughter exclaimed “Wow, that is the same gift bag that she used to give you your birthday present last year!” Who remembers those things anyway!!?? Might be a good idea to attach a note when you use one of these items to stock your gift area.
You have completely re-wrapped the gift. Also make sure there are no gift card inserts or other identifying information.

*My husband’s office holds their Annual Holiday Party in January. December is just too stressful and busy, and everyone is more relaxed in the new year. The highlight of this party is the gift exchange. Everyone brings a gift that is tastefully wrapped in holiday paper. The rule is that this is a gift, given to you, and for which you have no use or desire. Based upon some formula that we create each year, we choose a gift. No gift is opened until everyone has chosen from the pile or chosen a gift that someone else selected (they then pick again).

And every year the most amazing thing happens….there is always someone who absolutely loves their gift! One year a pediatrician received a Loony Tunes tie that he knew his patients would love, and another year someone else loved the whimsical corkscrew. If the gifts are not loved, they go directly to charity and we all know someone will be happy.

I’d love to hear your favorite re-gifting story.

JoEllen

[Via http://organizing4u.wordpress.com]

TRAIL BLAZERS Blog | The Dallas Morning News

Hoarder

2010-01-19T20:19:00.000+02:00

I have gotten obsessed with the show, ‘Hoarders’ on A&E (at least I think it’s A&E…). It’s all about people who collect and keep things until the things control their lives. It’s rather scary, but I watch the show to encourage me & myself to take a keen eye to our own clutter. Books, hair clips, shoes, casserole dishes, letters, hotel lotions, charity walk t-shirts. It all starts to pile up after awhile. Loss of control isn’t all that out of the ordinary.

I’m feeling a little disheveled when it comes to the Book Challenge. Old blogs aren’t filed properly. They don’t follow format and are missing valuable tags. There is no order to the older stuff. At the same time, I have the sudden obsession to call Ms. Pearl out on a few things. Like, why are (nearly) whole chapters in More Book Lust made up of books already listed in Book Lust? There are over 100 titles listed in both books. Some have triple or even quadruple mentions.

In an effort to organize this whole project I am taking a closer look at all of the older book review blogs. I am cleaning up tags (and adding missing ones), including a BookLust Twist to the really old posts, and taking note of repeat titles. I realize this is going to be really annoying for anyone with an RSS feed to this blog. You’ll think I’m writing up a storm when really, all that’s happening is an update here or there. I am really, really sorry about that. I just need a little mis en place in my life.

[Via http://gr4c5.wordpress.com]

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Book Review: "I Love Yous Are For White People" by Lac Su

2010-01-17T08:00:00.000+02:00

If the title of this book alone won’t get you, then I’m pretty sure that the first chapter will. I just finished reading memoirist Lac Su’s book I Love Yous Are For White People and I have nothing but all stars, positive remarks and a (hopefully) persuasive recommendation to give.

Without trying to give too much away, I want to emphasize that this book rejuvenates a love for reading and it can inspire generations who have ever wondered about their estranged relationships to Asian immigrant relatives (especially parents).

Love persists, throughout Su’s journey from Vietnam to the Southern Californian streets of Los Angeles, despite its presence underlining numerous scornful beatings from his father, in noteworthy and futile runs away from gangsters and busters, and even in advances to steal money his family’s food stamps for the sake of friendship. Su’s narrative reveals the hard knock mentality of a boy enduring pain due to the taboo silencing that seems normative in his family.

His story is telling of the cross-cultural cauldron that exists in California; it is oftentimes quite a shocking sight to see for newly immigrated individuals. Becoming acquainted with the law of the land is a constant theme. I Love Yous Are For White People is an internal exploration for any explanation, or a hint towards understanding the plexus of present space – where one comes from, where they are, how they got there and how to be brave enough to go back.

This book caters to those who identify with the acts of service love language. It recognizes the hardship of various forms of “work” like the daily grind that Su’s father (affectionately characterized by the name ‘Pa’ throughout the story) put in while they lived in a rat-infested cell block-like apartment in the projects, like the mental labor that Su himself put in when accounting for his early educational experience or like his mother’s routinized efforts to appease her family. But just like the things that I am trying to figure out about the way this love language operates, Su leaves the narrative with more lessons to ponder and a desire for the reader to learn more.

A well-written book and definitely one that I just couldn’t put down until I ran out of things to read. I even read the interview information and then friended the man on Facebook. It’s a must-read! Lac Su, a work of art well done!

Oh, and here’s a picture I stole off of Facebook with Lac and his father. Hope that’s not too invasive! =P

janice.

[Via http://janicelobosapigao.wordpress.com]

Iran News – French academic's trial ends in Iran (CNN) | Global ...

Superman: Consolation mechanism

2010-01-16T20:46:00.000+02:00

Superman: Consolation mechanism; (Jan. 19, 2010)

Gramsci stated: “We may confirm that much of Nietzsche superman concept originated not from Zarathustra but from the hero of Alexander Dumas’s Count of Monte Cristo. Superman replaces or enhances the imagination of little people: a real waking up dream. Imagination is thus dependent on social inferiority complex that determines in our lengthy dreams ideas of vengeance, punishment of the guilty for inflicted harms done to us”

Many superman heroes preceded the Count of Monte Cristo; there are Athos in “The three musketeers”, Joseph Balzamo and Vaudrin in Balzac novels, and most influential of all maybe Rodolphe de Gerolstein by Eugene Sue in “The mysteries of Paris”, first published as a serial novel. All these heroes were well off financially, they had received extensive educations, they had power to exercise and influence people. All these supermen had no qualm exerting extreme vengeance and extricate justice outside the laws of the land; their law is founded in super moral world that they believed applied to all mankind.

Superman has this knack to be transformed from God the father to an ordinary worker, or to an ordinary citizen

Serial novels that dug up the miseries of little people and recounted their daily hardship affected and encouraged people to read and asking other to read to them about stories they associated with their experiences. Successful serial novels have characteristic attributes; first, select an everyday reality that is not sufficiently considered and where tensions were not resolved. Second, posit an element of resolution that contrasts with the previous reality; this draft resolution must be simple and naïve to impress with its quick results; the result must thus console immediately the little people. Otherwise, a fantastic resolution can be as expeditive and efficacious since it works without going through limiting mediations of concrete events.

The story in serial novel is a succession of repeated cycles of tension-relaxation; thus, it should not obey the classical structure of accumulating tensions up to the last chapter for tensions to be released. Repetition of describing miseries in the real world has the benefit of attracting attention and permitting focus on a particular misery that coincides closest to your condition. Repetition of miseries is meant to exasperate the sensibility of little people. Surprises have to be many and varied. Redundancy is an excellent technique is serial novels: the reader has to identify with the initial characters (reality) and the resolution characters; it is kind of becoming totally familiar with repeated surprises.

Sudden revolts were never initiated by high caliber critical thinkers; they were the results of long period of gestations by little people reading about the varied miseries and possibility of quick revenge. Little people comprehended that the characters in the serial novel never changed even if they experienced some surprised transformations by an unexpected benevolent superman: the good character remains good and the bad character reverted after transformation. In all the story, events and resolutions are within the social structure of classes and thus, society never changes by all these surprised transformation. It is this realization that infuriates little people in the long run even if they don’t feel the energy or determination to change: they want quick sort of change even for a brief moment.

[Via http://adonis49.wordpress.com]

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High taw tawk propah-leah

2010-01-16T08:30:00.000+02:00

this was a book I once had on how to “Move upper class” by getting the accent right. It’s a little dated nowadays, when aristo’s seem to try to talk like Bob Hoskins. But not in Eastbourne. Eastbourne is a whole other kettle of fish.

www.visiteastbourne.com/

Am I twirly?

I think I blogged about this before – apparently in Liverpool bus drivers call pensioners “twirlies” because they arrive before the appointed time and say, in mock-surprise: “Oh! Am I twirly?”

It wouldn’t work in Eastbourne. In Eastbourne, pensioners arrive much too early, stick their hand out and shout: “Tex-yeh!” *

Daniel;s party today. I’ve no idea how many people are coming, since in Home Ed circles, RSVP seems to stand for Do whatever you feel like doing on the day.

Arrrgh!

I know at least five people are coming, including Daniel’s new girlfriend. So he’ll be happy.

Got a car now for 10 days.

Wish me luck!

Kirk out.

* Taxi, if you need a translation.

[Via http://lizardyoga.wordpress.com]

RFID News Roundup - RFID Journal

2010 Goals Update - An 'Off' Week

2010-01-16T07:52:00.000+02:00

I’ll be honest, I hesitated about posting this update because I’m not very proud of my progress this week. But I’m hoping this serves as a good reminder that progress doesn’t have to mean perfection and having an ‘off’ week isn’t the end of the world. And maybe it’ll just serve as good motivation for this coming week! I present my 2010 goal update, week 2:

1. New 1/2 marathon PR – Still haven’t logged any long runs. Last weekend was SO cold so I skipped out on what should have been my last long run pre-half marathon. Whoops! However, I did bank an awesome 5-miler with Lindsey, and enjoyed a quick and dirty run on Friday afternoon. Maybe I’ll squeeze 6-8 in on Sunday morning and I’ll feel a bit more on track!

2. Run 9 NYRR races and volunteer for 1 – The upcoming half marathon is finally becoming very real, which is probably a good thing since it’s NEXT WEEKEND! I’m already looking forward to the next races I’m going to register for, so let me know if anyone wants some running company here in NYC.

3. 200 blog posts – This week, I posted 7 times, between Saturday and Friday. Funny, I was getting stressed earlier this week about not having enough to write about, but now I just can’t seem to stop!

By the way, if you missed them, I wrote about:

Book Review #1 – My Life In France

Recipe – Chickpea and Pasta Rosemary Soup

An Improvised Dinner and Blogger Run

Book Review #2 – The Art of Racing In The Rain

The Huz Becomes a Food Blogger

Taking Time For Breath and Prayer

And even if you didn’t miss this post, you should check out the comments from each! I really loved all your reading list suggestions and I’ve already tried a new wrap combination, as you saw this morning!

4. Read 8 books – In case you hadn’t noticed from #3, I’ve already finished book #2 and am so happy to be back into a reading groove! Once A Runner is on my nightstand and I have big plans for a Sunday afternoon of reading

5. Lose 10 pounds – I mentioned last week that my goal was to just stay on track with my .8lb/week goal. Since I’d already lost 2.2lbs by last Friday, I only needed to not gain .6lbs. This goal was definitely a success. While I didn’t lose any weight (what with the not working out much), I stayed exactly the same. Guess that means I’ll have to get back to the gym a few times next week to start losing again!

6. Eat vegetarian at least 4 days/week – Epic FAIL. Actually, that’s not totally true. While my only completely vegetarian days were last Saturday and yesterday, every meal except dinner each day was vegetarian. In fact, it was vegan! The Huz made the lamb roast on Sunday so we had leftovers that needed to be eaten. My improvised wrap was such a success on Monday that I ended up repeating it each night this week. The wraps proved to be portable, which was a huge plus since I was out of the house Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday nights, and they were very satisfying. And now I don’t have to worry about wasting food since I definitely won’t be consuming lamb this week while on the Spark! cleanse!

So there you have it, a full disclosure update on my goal progress. Hope you’re staying on track and feeling great! If you’re struggling, how do you fight the negative self-talk? I often beat myself up for not reaching a goal but I’ve found that reminding myself of the mantra I learned from Gena (It’s about the big picture, not daily perfection) has been a tremendous help.

Check back soon for my Spark! cleanse prep pictures and a recap of my day with Miss Happy Herbivore!

[Via http://runnerwifelife.wordpress.com]

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BOOK REVIEW: Emma Townshend's 'Darwin's Dogs'

2010-01-14T20:48:00.000+02:00

Darwin's Dogs by Emma Townshend

Darwin’s Dogs: How Darwin’s pets helped form a world-changing theory of evolution. By Emma Townshend. London: Francis Lincoln Limited, 2009. 144 pp. Preface, illustrations, index, acknowledgements. $14.95 (paper).

In the Darwin anniversary year, more books were published about him than probably in all the years of my life preceding 2009. More biographies, and more treatments of his work. Some books seemed to jump on the Darwin wave by connecting a topic to Darwin because, that year, it just might sell. Surely there is Darwin fatigue in publishing. In a review of new additions of Darwin’s work that appeared in 2009, historian of science Jim Endersby asked whether there can be too much of a good thing, referring to the myriad of scholarly work on Darwin, sometimes called the Darwin Industry (1). It is a reasonable question, as one can easily think that since so much has been written about a historical figure, what can possibly be written about Darwin that is new? Or what refreshing approach can be taken in looking at his life and work?

While many books seem to reiterate the standard Darwin story, what I enjoy are those that consider an unexplored or neglected topic. Such is Darwin’s Dogs, a short exposition as to the influence that the many dogs in Darwin’s life, and the group of animals dogs in general, had on Darwin’s thinking. This short book – less than 150 pages – is very readable, and provides a concise overview of Darwin and his ideas while offering a fresh perspective on the story – that “Darwin’s dogs brought evolutionary theory right to the hearth rug of the Victorian home” (9), meaning that using dogs in his writings brought something familiar to his readers.

Essentially, Darwin’s proximity to various dogs – “some of the most important characters in the story of his thinking” (9) – throughout his life taught him several things:

1. That humanity should not feel insulted by its relationship to animal ancestors,

2. That animals have emotions, morals, self-consciousness, and language, too (that human distinctiveness is a myth),

3. About variation, inheritance, and artificial selection through the practice of dog breeding (Darwin’s reliance on “practical men”),

4. The proper treatment of animals (Darwin was an antivivisectionist),

5. The similarities in behavior between dogs and humans (The Descent of Man says a lot about dogs, Townshend notes).

While the book is fun and enjoyable, and made me think differently, I feel that the way the book is presented is a bit misleading. In the Preface, Townshend invites the reader “to a rather different account of the life of Darwin, this one told from the canine point of view” (11). The description on the back of the book states “from a uniquely canine perspective.” These statements reiterate one of the purposes of Darwin’s Dogs: the consideration of other actors, even non-humans, in the history of science. I immediately thought of Bruno Latour’s microbes in The Pasteurization of France, Michael Pollan’s plants in The Botany of Desire, and the various organisms in Endersby’s A Guinea Pig’s History of Biology (one reviewer wrote “Science is a collaborative process and by looking at the roles played by unwilling collaborators, from guinea pigs to zebrafish, Endersby provides a new perspective on the history of genetics” [2]). All these works suggest that non-human actors have agency, agendas of their own. It is not simply humans that drive history.

So, reading “from the canine point of view” and “from a uniquely canine perspective,” I expected an approach (especially since Endersby is acknowledged in the book) that was lacking in Darwin’s Dogs. The book remains a story about Darwin, from his perspective in how he used dogs in his thinking. It is not told through the eyes, minds, or lives of dogs. Their actions – how they fit into the story as useful – is dependent on what Darwin is doing. Darwin’s Dogs is indeed “a rather different account of the life of Darwin,” but it is not from the “point of view” of dogs.

Furthermore, given this book is written by someone in the history of science, I was disappointed in the lack of citations (no footnotes, no endnotes) except those for the quotes that open each of the five chapters, and the lack of a bibliography or sources section. Throughout the book Townshend utilizes direct quotes from Darwin’s letters, notebooks, and publications. Yet no citations for any of them. Why? Maybe because the publisher did not want it. If I were the author of a book about history, and a publisher said they did not want citations and sources, I would find another publisher. For someone like me, familiar with Darwin’s work, I know where to find the sources (Townshend thanks the Darwin Correspondence Project and John van Wyhe/Darwin Online for “their invaluable help and resources,” [144] but no URLs are given). For a reader unfamiliar with how to track down the sources, not having those materials provided misses the opportunity to explore further than the text of the book.

Those problems aside, Darwin’s Dogs is a surprisingly rewarding little book that would be a good introduction to Darwin’s ideas. If you like dogs, all the better. The many anecdotes are informative, while the book is seeded with canine artwork. Townshend has a website for the book, Darwin’s Dogs, where you can see a little animation included within the book’s pages:

Notes:

1. Jim Endersby, “Origins: Selected Letters of Charles Darwin, 1822–1859 (Anniversary edition), edited by F. Burkhardt, and other works by Charles Darwin” [essay review], History of Science 47 (Dec. 2009): 475-84.

2. Nick Rennison, Sunday Times (from the publisher’s webpage for the book).

[Via http://thedispersalofdarwin.wordpress.com]

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