Ever been stuck on a slow elevator?

Posted by: Fred Kiesche at 05:22 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
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Alexander Dumas, pere (The Three Muskateers, The Man in the Iron Mask) has a new novel out!

Posted by: Fred Kiesche at 06:54 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
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Ah, give me joy of the summer's day! No air conditioner at work. Which I can stand the heat, it's the lack of air that gets freshened that has given me a migraine-sized sinus headache.

Blech.

Posted by: Fred Kiesche at 10:30 AM | Comments (2) | Add Comment
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"Of course, we're not going to have any more fresh ingredients because we're all out of hand grenades."

(Alton Brown, Good Eats, "Down and Out in Paradise")

Posted by: Fred Kiesche at 08:02 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
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Last week, whenever I logged on to read my personal mail at work, I was urged to get a wife from India (no adblocking at work, alas). This week, I keep seeing sidebars and other ads with provocative "local" women who want to date me.

Ummm...seeing that I'm married, thanks, but no thanks.

I recall when the intertubes was going to be the way to personalize advertisements with such accuracy given your browsing and buying habits...ads aimed right at what you bought.

Guess we haven't arrived yet (if ever). Thank goodness for the adblocker at home!

Posted by: Fred Kiesche at 07:53 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
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Why, yes, I am cleaning out my in-box. Why do you ask?

Posted by: Fred Kiesche at 11:50 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
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A fascinating look at Six Books on the Revolutions of the Heavenly Spheres by that best-selling author Nicolaus Copernicus. Was it really the book nobody read?

Posted by: Fred Kiesche at 11:47 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
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Fine art taco photography. Critical reaction! Me, I think the guy is a genius.

Posted by: Fred Kiesche at 11:42 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
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Everything, I repeat, everything, is answered with this one graph. Have a scientific question? Look no further!

Posted by: Fred Kiesche at 11:39 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
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Log tables, slide rules and "computers", oh my!

Posted by: Fred Kiesche at 10:47 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
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It's bad when you finish a book, put it down, and completely forget to update your book log for several days!

Posted by: Fred Kiesche at 05:21 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
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"Jack," he [Stephen] cried, bursting into the cabin. "Oh, I beg your pardon."

"Not at all, brother," said Captain Aubrey: he closed his book. "I was only reading a most uncomfortable piece in Galatians: damned, whatever you do, almost. I am afraid you have torn your stockings."

(Patrick O'Brian, Blue at the Mizzen)

"There's a great text in Galatians,
Once you trip on it entails
Twenty-nine distinct damnations,
One sure if another fails."

(Rudyard Kipling, Stalky & Co.; quoting Robert Browning's Soliloquy in a Spanish Cloister, for all love!)

Posted by: Fred Kiesche at 06:28 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
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Last year I read the book We Were Soldiers Once...And Young, by Lt. General Harold G. Moore (Ret.) and Joseph L. Galloway. The book details the Battle of the Ia Drang, in which a US unit of newly organized airmobile soldiers encounters a large body of North Vietnamese regulars.

The book was made into a movie starring Mel Gibson as then Lt. Colonel Moore. I had not seen it until recently, when I viewed the DVD. A couple of things "made" the movie for me.

First, there is the excellent cast, especially in the form of Sam Elliot portraying Sgt. Major Basil L. Plumley. He absolutely nailed what is important about a fighting sergeant major with his portrayal. Then there's the story, a good distillation of the complicated events of the book. Weapons, uniforms, special effects, all good.

Then there's this song...Sgt. MacKenzie, by Joseph Kilna MacKenzie. Occasionally a song will grab me from a soundtrack. In Blackhawk Down, it was the piece called Leave No Man Behind. With this, as soon as the music started, I knew I had to have the album. Excellent, absolutely chilling music.

Lay me doon in the caul caul groon
Whaur afore monie mair huv gaun
Lay me doon in the caul caul groon
Whaur afore monie mair huv gaun

When they come a wull staun ma groon
Staun ma groon al nae be afraid

Thoughts awe hame tak awa ma fear
Sweat an bluid hide ma veil awe tears

Ains a year say a prayer faur me
Close yir een an remember me

Nair mair shall a see the sun
For a fell tae a Germans gun

Lay me doon in the caul caul groon
Whaur afore monie mair huv gaun
Lay me doon in the caul caul groon
Whaur afore monie mair huv gaun
Whaur afore monie mair huv gaun

Utterly amazing music. more...

Posted by: Fred Kiesche at 05:05 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
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"Reputation is what other people know about you. Honor is what you know about yourself."

"There is no more hollow feeling than to stand with your honor shattered at your feet while soaring public reputation wraps you in rewards. That's soul-destroying. The other way round is merely very, very irritating."

"Guard your honor. Let your reputation fall where it will. And outlive the bastards."

Advice from Aral Vorkosigan (Lois McMaster Bujold, A Civil Campaign).

Posted by: Fred Kiesche at 08:57 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
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FALSTAFF: Hal, if thou see me down in the battle and bestride me, so; 'tis a point of friendship.

PRINCE HENRY: Nothing but a colossus can do thee that friendship. Say thy prayers, and farewell.

FALSTAFF: I would 'twere bed-time, Hal, and all well.

PRINCE HENRY: Why, thou owest God a death.

(Exit PRINCE HENRY)

FALSTAFF: 'Tis not due yet; I would be loath to pay him before his day. What need I be so forward with him that calls not on me? Well, 'tis no matter; honour pricks me on. Yea, but how if honour prick me off when I come on? How then? Can honour set to a leg? No: or an arm? No: or take away the grief of a wound? No. Honour hath no skill in surgery, then? No. What is honour? A word. What is in that word honour? What is that honour? air. A trim reckoning! Who hath it? He that died o' Wednesday. Doth he feel it? No. Doth he hear it? No. 'Tis insensible, then. Yea, to the dead. But will it not live with the living? No. Why? detraction will not suffer it. Therefore I'll none of it. Honour is a mere scutcheon: and so ends my catechism.

(William Shakespeare, Henry IV, Part One, Act V)

Posted by: Fred Kiesche at 08:14 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
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Well structurally it's like, well, imagine if an onion and head of garlic got together and got married and had a kid.

(Alton Brown, Good Eats, "The Case for Butter")

Posted by: Fred Kiesche at 04:56 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
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For the wallet, that is. It seems every time I pass by the bookstore, I notice a few more "must have" titles. From the end of July to early in September, here's what I either have picked up or will be picking up:

Poul Anderson: The Van Rijn Method (excerpt here).

Greg Bear: City at the End of Time (website for the author and the book here) (mention at Boing Boing here) (purchased).

Ben Bova: Mars Life (purchased).

Tobias Buckell: Sly Mongoose (purchased).

Sir Arthur C. Clarke and Frederik Pohl: The Last Theorem (purchased).

Philip K. Dick: Five Novels of the 1960s & 1970s (made up of Martian Time-Slip; Dr. Bloodmoney; Now Wait for Last Year; Flow My Tears, The Policeman Said; A Scanner Darkly) (purchased).

David Drake and Eric Flint: Belisarius I: Thunder at Dawn (excerpt here).

Joe Haldeman: Marsbound (read in serial form).

Robert A. Heinlein: Between Planets (excerpt found here) (purchased).

Paul Kearney: The Ten Thousand (but wouldn't you'd rather read the original?).

George R. R. Martin: A Dance with Dragons (about time!!!).

Larry Niven and Edward M. Lerner: Juggler of Worlds.

Jerry Pournelle: Exile and Glory (excerpt found here) (special ordered, then purchased).

John Ringo: The Last Centurion (excerpt here) (purchased and read as an eARC).

John Scalzi: Zoe's Tale (purchased).

Karl Schroeder: Pirate Sun (purchased).

Neal Stephenson: Anathem.

And I'm sure there will be more!

Posted by: Fred Kiesche at 12:48 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
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Proving once again, you can do anything with Legos. Now let's see if your typical legal type can submit his or her billable hours this way!

Posted by: Fred Kiesche at 09:10 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
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Coming soon from Disney, Pirates of the Canal!

Posted by: Fred Kiesche at 08:31 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
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Whenever presented with a startling new scientific revelation, apply the crackpot index!

Posted by: Fred Kiesche at 04:40 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
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