fighting the lack of good ideas
I have a very long–term interest in education. As I look at the current public education “system” in the US, I can see a variety of major problems. The biggest problem, endemic of any system built around the premise that the only people who should be together all day long should all be “similar”. Somewhere…
I have long been interested in the Basque people; first introduced to them nearly 13 years ago in an introduction to terrorism class (a year and a half before it was “cool”) with the separatist group ETA. So it was with great interest I grabbed The Basque History of the World by Mark Kurlansky off…
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For much of my life I have been interested in WWII – my grandpa Myers was in the Navy in the Pacific theater on a mine sweeper. My dad read extensively on the war, largely because of his father, and passed along an interest in military history  – the navy in particular – and intriguing stories…
I enjoy histories – especially when delivered in the format that Gavin Menzies employed in “1421 – The Year China Discovered America”. The only other history I have read in the past 5 years I can recall reading so fast was Gideon’s Spies. Gavin makes a compelling presentation, interpretation, application, and conclusion of a host…
Rodale Press published a collected works book entitled “Producing Your Own Power – How to make Nature’s Energy Sources Work for You” in 1974. There are a host of now-humorous segments of the text: “The US government estimates that by 1980 1 percent of our country’s land will be covered with utility companies’ equipment” {viii}. The contiguous…
Microsoft is trying to buy ~650k IPv4 addresses from in-bankruptcy-proceedings Nortel (for $7.5m). What gets me is that IPv6 has been a standard for over a decade, and yet so few have moved to it. Way back when I was in college the first time – in 2000 – our networking professor told us we…
Gideon’s Spies by Gordon Thomas claims to be “the secret history of the Mossad”. From the myriad reviews on Amazon, I didn’t know whether to be expecting a massive work of historical fiction, or a insightful tour de force. After having nearly finished it, I don’t know if I have an opinion of whether it’s…