Book Excerpt for the Day

    String theorists can be likened to a primitive tribe excavating a buried spacecraft onto which they’ve stumbled.  By tinkering and fiddling, the tribe would slowly establish aspects of the spacecraft’s operation, and this would nurture a sense that all the buttons and toggles work together in a coordinated and unified manner.  A similar feeling prevails among string theorists.  Results found over many years of research are dovetailing and converging.  This has instilled a growing confidence among researchers that string theory is closing in on one powerful, coherent framework – which has yet to be unearthed fully, but ultimately will expose nature’s inner workings with unsurpassed clarity and comprehensiveness.

(from The Fabric of the Cosmos, by Brian Greene)

  9*/10.  The complete review is here.
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Dino Nightmares

It's the 2% that are scary.

Book Excerpt for the Day

    "Why are you still asleep?  It's ten a.m. and I've been working for two hours."

    "Only insane birds and low-brained vampires work this early.  Besides, the world is round and I'm three hours on the other side."

(from The Tortoise Shell Code, by V. Frank Asaro)

  2½*/10.  The full review is here.
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Hey, Mitt! It's Big Bird on Line 1.

    And he and his friends have a message for you.

The Debate

    I have to admit - I only watched the last 30 minutes or so.  Mittens was definitely the aggressor; Obama seemed like he'd popped a Quaalude.  Of course, it's easy to sound flashy when you're spouting out one lie after another.  And the problem for Mittens is - most voters have made up their minds already.  So I doubt he'll get much of a "bump" from this.

It's Banned Book Week

   The 100 most books most banned/challenged in the US in 2000-2009 are given below.  The list is courtesy of your friendly, local subversives - the ALA (American Library Association).  The ones I've read (fully; partial reads - such as just one volume of the Harry Potter series - don't count) are marked in pink.

1. Harry Potter (series), by J.K. Rowling
2. Alice series, by Phyllis Reynolds Naylor
3. The Chocolate War, by Robert Cormier
4. And Tango Makes Three, by Justin Richardson/Peter Parnell
5. Of Mice and Men, by John Steinbeck
6. I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, by Maya Angelou
7. Scary Stories (series), by Alvin Schwartz
8. His Dark Materials (series), by Philip Pullman
9. ttyl; ttfn; l8r g8r (series), by Lauren Myracle
10. The Perks of Being a Wallflower, by Stephen Chbosky
11. Fallen Angels, by Walter Dean Myers
12. It’s Perfectly Normal, by Robie Harris
13. Captain Underpants (series), by Dav Pilkey
14. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, by Mark Twain
15. The Bluest Eye, by Toni Morrison
16. Forever, by Judy Blume
17. The Color Purple, by Alice Walker
18. Go Ask Alice, by Anonymous
19. Catcher in the Rye, by J.D. Salinger
20. King and King, by Linda de Haan
21. To Kill A Mockingbird, by Harper Lee
22. Gossip Girl (series), by Cecily von Ziegesar
23. The Giver, by Lois Lowry
24. In the Night Kitchen, by Maurice Sendak
25. Killing Mr. Griffen, by Lois Duncan
26. Beloved, by Toni Morrison
27. My Brother Sam Is Dead, by James Lincoln Collier
28. Bridge To Terabithia, by Katherine Paterson
29. The Face on the Milk Carton, by Caroline B. Cooney
30. We All Fall Down, by Robert Cormier
31. What My Mother Doesn’t Know, by Sonya Sones
32. Bless Me, Ultima, by Rudolfo Anaya
33. Snow Falling on Cedars, by David Guterson
34. The Earth, My Butt, and Other Big, Round Things, by Carolyn Mackler
35. Angus, Thongs, and Full Frontal Snogging, by Louise Rennison
36. Brave New World, by Aldous Huxley
37. It’s So Amazing, by Robie Harris
38. Arming America, by Michael Bellasiles
39. Kaffir Boy, by Mark Mathabane
40. Life is Funny, by E.R. Frank
41. Whale Talk, by Chris Crutcher
42. The Fighting Ground, by Avi
43. Blubber, by Judy Blume
44. Athletic Shorts, by Chris Crutcher
45. Crazy Lady, by Jane Leslie Conly
46. Slaughterhouse-Five, by Kurt Vonnegut
47. The Adventures of Super Diaper Baby: The First Graphic Novel by George Beard and Harold Hutchins, the creators of Captain Underpants, by Dav Pilkey
48. Rainbow Boys, by Alex Sanchez
49. One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, by Ken Kesey
50. The Kite Runner, by Khaled Hosseini
51. Daughters of Eve, by Lois Duncan
52. The Great Gilly Hopkins, by Katherine Paterson
53. You Hear Me?, by Betsy Franco
54. The Facts Speak for Themselves, by Brock Cole
55. Summer of My German Soldier, by Bette Green
56. When Dad Killed Mom, by Julius Lester
57. Blood and Chocolate, by Annette Curtis Klause
58. Fat Kid Rules the World, by K.L. Going
59. Olive’s Ocean, by Kevin Henkes
60. Speak, by Laurie Halse Anderson
61. Draw Me A Star, by Eric Carle
62. The Stupids (series), by Harry Allard
63. The Terrorist, by Caroline B. Cooney
64. Mick Harte Was Here, by Barbara Park
65. The Things They Carried, by Tim O’Brien
66. Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry, by Mildred Taylor
67. A Time to Kill, by John Grisham
68. Always Running, by Luis Rodriguez
69. Fahrenheit 451, by Ray Bradbury
70. Harris and Me, by Gary Paulsen
71. Junie B. Jones (series), by Barbara Park
72. Song of Solomon, by Toni Morrison
73. What’s Happening to My Body Book, by Lynda Madaras
74. The Lovely Bones, by Alice Sebold
75. Anastasia (series), by Lois Lowry
76. A Prayer for Owen Meany, by John Irving
77. Crazy: A Novel, by Benjamin Lebert
78. The Joy of Gay Sex, by Dr. Charles Silverstein
79. The Upstairs Room, by Johanna Reiss
80. A Day No Pigs Would Die, by Robert Newton Peck
81. Black Boy, by Richard Wright
82. Deal With It!, by Esther Drill
83. Detour for Emmy, by Marilyn Reynolds
84. So Far From the Bamboo Grove, by Yoko Watkins
85. Staying Fat for Sarah Byrnes, by Chris Crutcher
86. Cut, by Patricia McCormick
87. Tiger Eyes, by Judy Blume
88. The Handmaid’s Tale, by Margaret Atwood
89. Friday Night Lights, by H.G. Bissenger
90. A Wrinkle in Time, by Madeline L’Engle
91. Julie of the Wolves, by Jean Craighead George
92. The Boy Who Lost His Face, by Louis Sachar
93. Bumps in the Night, by Harry Allard
94. Goosebumps (series), by R.L. Stine
95. Shade’s Children, by Garth Nix
96. Grendel, by John Gardner
97. The House of the Spirits, by Isabel Allende
98. I Saw Esau, by Iona Opte
99. Are You There, God? It’s Me, Margaret, by Judy Blume
100. America: A Novel, by E.R. Frank

    So that's 11 out of 100.  Not bad.  I really should pick another one from the list and start reading it this week.  Or next, since I've just started a matvelous Tom Holt book (The Grailblazers).  I'm leaning towards #21, #88, or #90, but we shall see.

Tube E

Book Excerpt for the Day

    "That's where he got those scars, you know," Disten said.  "The ones on his arms.  He got them at the Pits, from the rocks on the sheer wall he had to climb to escape."

    Harmon snorted.  "That's not how he got them.  He killed an Inquisitor while escaping - that's where he got the scars."

    "I heard he got them fighting one of the monsters that guard the Pits," Ulef said.  "He reached into its mouth and strangled it from the inside.  The teeth scraped his arms."

    Disten frowned.  "How do you strangle someone from the inside?"

 (from Mistborn, by Brandon Sanderson)

    9*/10.  The full review is here.
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A new personal hero - Whitney Kropp

    And if you don't know who Whitney Kropp is, google her name.  A fantastic story.

October Eve

    Tomorrow is October.  Today, it was 100°F, and weather.com is predicting triple-digit highs through Wednesday.  This sucks, Butthead.

Book Excerpt for the Day

    Bugbear felt something cold and hard smash against the back of his head.  It wasn't something he wanted to feel there.  No, not at all.  Yet there it was.  And it was followed by something he didn't want to hear.

    "Don't move an inch, or I'll take your misbegotten head."

    Oh, he didn't want to hear that at all.  He hated the word "misbegotten."

(from Noggle Stones Book 1 - The Goblin's Apprentice by Wil Radcliffe)

  8*/10.  The full review is here.
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The Grinch who stole Social Security

    It's heartening to see that the public is not fooled about Paul Ryan and his extremist ideas about the elderly, the poor, the sick, and the unions.  Even his fellow Catholics find him to be a dangerous twit.

For that matter...

on this day in 1975

Inconceivable

    It was 25 years ago today, that the movie The Princess Bride debuted.  It didn't do much at the time - Fatal Attraction and Ghost were the biggies that year.  But it has since garnered a loyal following of fans, one of which is moi.

    TPB is not my favorite flic of all time - that has to be Monty Python and The Holy Grail.  But it's in my Top 5.  And the DVD has a b*tchin' cover with some fabulous font-work.

    RIP, Andre The Giant.  I will remember you far more for this movie than for your WWF career.

Book Excerpt for the Day

    April 2068.  It took Scott Fuller a full five minutes to recover from the shock.  A relative of the infamous Dr. Carlos Maiz, the man charged with committing murder on the largest scale in the history of mankind, had hunted him down wanting to talk.  He exhaled a deep breath before returning the call.

    He explained that Dr. Maiz was hitting the depths of despair at the time they'd met, plus their contact had been brief.  Very brief.  A total of no more than fifteen minutes at most.  Not to mention the fifty-six years that had passed since.  However, he assured her, he never for one minute believe Dr. Maiz was guilty of what he'd been accused - to the contrary - he thought the man had done everything in his power  to help humanity rather than harm it, but other than that, there was not much he could say.

(from The Zul Enigma, by J.M. Leitch)

  4½*/10.  The full review is here.
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Surely, you jest

    I have one FB acquaintance who has 853 FaceBook friends.  Is it even possible to call that many people your buds?

Book Excerpt for the Day

    Sharing this love of intrigue had been his boyhood friend, Giles, who was also sent to cathedral school as the proper place for a younger, and in this case legitimate, son of one of the earl's barons.  Giles was more than just a childhood friend.  They had been brothers in toddler mischief, adolescent buffoonery, and finally the more serious sports of wining and wenching.

(from Wine of Violence, by Priscilla Royal)

7½*/10.  The full review is here.

Two and a half Men meets LOTR

    And any of the three of them could whup Charlie Sheen's butt.

Book Excerpt for the Day

    The door opened again.  Taziri glanced back just in time to see Shahera leap forward and take a wild swing at the lone soldier emerging from the building.  Her fist connected with the side of his face and the young man stumbled away from her.

    "Ow!  What the hell was... you!"  Alonso rubbed his head.  "What are you hitting me for?"

    "I didn't know it was you," Shahera said.  "I thought you were one of those soldiers."

    "You hit one of my favorite eyes.  It really hurts," he said, massaging the side of his face.

(from The Broken Sword, by Joseph Robert Lewis)

  7½*/10.  The full review is here.
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Happy "Talk Like A Pirate Day" !!

    Truly one of my favorite holidays of the ye-arrrrrr.

Fiona Apple Concert

    Yeah, we'll be seeing her in concert tonight.  Jason and Liz really like her; I'm kinda neutral.  So it will be interesting to see if I enjoy the concert.

Back from the Cruise

    We're back from our 1-week Alaskan cruise.  We departed Seattle last Sunday night on the above piece of floating luxury, and got back in town at midnight last night.

    This was our first cruise, and it was definitely a memorable experience.  The legs of the cruise were :

Day 1  :  get on board.  explore the ship.

Day 2  :  at sea.  rough water.

Day 3  :  Ketchikan

Day 4  :  Juneau

Day 5  :  Skagway

Day 6  :  at sea.  kinda rough water.

Day 7  :  at sea until 6:00 PM.  then Victoria, Canada.

Day 8  :  disembark.  in Seattle with friends.  fly home.

   We didn't do any of the tours.  Seattle and Victoria were sunny.  All the Alaska stops were overcast, with occasional light rain.  Well, it is a rainforest, after all.  And since we were coming from Phoenix summer weather, we dug the cold and the gray and the wetness.

    We took tons of pictures.  If I get ambitious. I'll put 'em up on a blog.  Along with "30 things I learned on the cruise". 

Back to reality

    Back from the cruise.  Time to get real.

Football is here!

   And hopefully it will be a good year for my Washington Redskins, Arizona Cardinals, ASU Sun Devils, and Penn State Nittany Lions.  Although things look grim for PSU.

You are what you eat

   All that's needed to complete this pic is a head of lettuce.

26 puns

    There's a couple I don't get - E, G, L, O, R, Y, and Z. 

Why does the Universe exist?

  Another theological question resolved.

On the briny

    A quick pic from our excursion.  We did both a chrono-hop and a dimension-hop this time.  Don't be alarmed - that starship isn't about to blast our cruise ship.  It's beaming us up for one of the daily tours.

Whose God is better?

    From the now-defunct internet comic strip, Calamities of Nature.  Hopefully, it will be revived someday.

Demotivational Sunday

    I didn't see God, but ... oh wait.  Elvis is God.

Time Out To Travel

    We're outta here for a couple days for a long-overdue vacation.  But fear not, by the magic of Blogger's 'Schedule' feature, we'll still be posting on a daily basis.  There won't be much text, though.

Book Excerpt for the Day

    She ... thought of Soledad Ordonez, the stooped old shapeless woman from the  San Miguel barrio who didn't speak to her husband for twenty-two years because he sold their pig in San Andrés and was drunk for a week on the proceeds.  He was dying, stretched out on his deathbed with the priest and their three sons and four daughters there and all their seventeen grandchildren and his brother too, and he could barely croak out the words, "Soledad, talk to me," and her face was stone and the priest and the brother and all the grandchildren held their breath, and she said one word, "Drunkard," and he died.

(from The Tortilla Curtain, by T.C. Boyle)

2*/10.  The full review is here.
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Higgs Boson Flowchart

    Actually, I do understand the Higgs Boson.  Sorta.  Kinda.  I've been reading Brian Greene's "The Fabric of the Cosmos", and it gives an excellent explanation of this long-sought-after particle that is essential to the Quantum Physics theories.

    And no, despite the hoopla of a couple weeks ago, they have not yet found the Higgs Boson.  They found evidence of a particle that had Boson-like attributes.  That's a long way from saying they found it.

See ya, Lance

   According to Lance, he just got tired and decided to quit fighting the allegations that he cheated.  Time and time again.

    And that he'd accept being stripped of his Tour de France victories.  And that he'd accept being banned from competing in future events.

    Yeah, right.  I don't have a high regard for the dude (I work with a few people - biking enthusiasts, of course - who worship him), but I will say one thing for him - he's not a quitter.

    So methinks the evidence was overwhelming.  See ya, Lance.  Your string of TdF wins seemed too good to be true.  And now it turns out they were too good to be true.

Caverna Magica - Andreas Vollenweider

Album : Caverna Magica

Artist : Andreas Vollenweider

Genre : Jazz, Ambient

Year Released : 1983

Rating : 8½*/10

    A kewl album cover for a kewl LP; according to Wikipedia, this was Andreas Vollenweider's second studio album.  I've converted about five of his records now; they're all good.

    About the worst I can say about the conversion is that the first and last tracks include sound effects of two people mucking around a cave, and the de-scratching program simply went nutzo with that.  So I was forced to remove the scratches manually, which was okay since it was a very clean disc.

    To boot, Mr. Vollenweider likes to merge the ending of one track with the beginning of the next, so I ended up just simply making it two tracks total.

- TRACKS -

01. Caverna Magica  (3:54)

02. Mandragora  (3:03)

03. Lunar Pond  (2:18)

04. Schajah Saretosh  (3:17)

05. Sena Stanjena?  (2:28)

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06. Belladonna  (5:21)

07. Ahgoh!  (2:45)

08. Huiziopochtli  (5:08)

09. Con Chiglia  - Geastrum Coronatum - La Paix Verde (5:16)

    I've yet to listen to a "meh" album from Andreas Vollenweider.  They're all good "soft jazz", and freaking excellent background music when you're reading a book.  8½ Stars. 

Where Clint got his idea

    I've had this pic since 2010.  Didn't get around to posting it back then, and Sarah's star has since crashed and burned, so I haven't seen a reason to post it since.

   Then came Clint Eastwood's debacle at the Repugnican National Convention.

Book Excerpt for the Day

    "Most bigjob men get married."

    "They do?" said a Feegle in astonishment.

    "Oh, aye."

    "They want tae get married?"

    "A lot o' them do, aye," said Billy.

    "So there's nae more drinkin', stealin', an' fightin'?"

    "Hey, ah'm still allowed some drinkin' an' stealin' an' fightin'!" said Rob Anybody.

    "Aye, Rob, but we canna help noticin' ye also have tae do the Explainin', too," said Daft Wullie.

(from Wintersmith, by Terry Pratchett)

8*/10.  The full review is here.
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Goodreads

    For those of you who are bibliophiles, I am now on GoodReads.  For those of you who are not bibliophiles, well, I'm still on GoodReads.