fighting the lack of good ideas
I finished reading Netherland by Joseph O’Neill Tuesday. It’s a “novel” in the same sense that One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest or Where the Heart Is are novels – it’s a story. The story unfolds in a rambling fashion as a the memoirs of Hans van den Broek. It’s a story of one man’s life…
Earlier this week my wife decided to surprise me with a dinner she thought-of more-or-less on-the-spot. We are both big fans of The Melting Pot. Tuesday she popped out to Kroger and bought a small package of potatoes, some various broths, and an absolutely AMAZING meat rub spice mix. Also she found some strawberries (on sale –…
Years ago, my mom and I would routinely try to catch episodes of Square Foot Gardening (SFG) on PBS. Hosted by Mel Bartholomew, a retired civil engineer, SFG was a program whose aim was to enable gardening by the masses in confined spaces (though, naturally, if can be implemented in larger settings as well). Mr Bartholomew’s…
Max Brooks is likely the world’s foremost authority on zombies – how to survive them, what to do if there is an uprising, etc. In “World War Z – An Oral History of the Zombie War”, he tackles the issue of reporting on what happened by interviews with those who survived. From first-hand accounts from a…
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…
As recently promised, here is my review of Bruce Schneier’s seminal work, Applied Cryptography (2d edition). I received my now-signed copy of Applied Cryptography (2d ed) for my 16th birthday – about a year after it was published. Of all the “odd” books I asked-for when I was younger, this single volume had to take…