"They'll think I've lost control again and put it all down to evolution."

(The Supreme Being, Time Bandits)

Posted by: Fred Kiesche at 09:08 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
Post contains 22 words, total size 1 kb.

My wife just called to tell me that NewDog (Mark 4.0) pulled a leather-bound copy of The History of the Peloponnesian War (by Thucydides) off the shelf and proceeded to chow down on the leather cover. It was not in its usual place, I was referring to it as I read Donald Kagan's The Peloponnesian War (his one-volume "popular" treatment of his four-volume opus).

"...the first page of Thucydides is, in my opinion, the commencement of real history. All preceding narrations are so intermixed with fable, that philosophers ought to abandon them, to the embellishments of poets and orators." (David Hume)

With this, she has joined a very exclusive club. OldDog (Mark 2.0, readers may recall that OldDog, Mark 3.0 passed away last may) chewed up a omnibus edition of The Lord of the Rings when she was roughly the same age.

I know I can get another copy, heck, I can get it for free from Project Gutenberg. But I had this one for about twenty-five years. Ah, NewDog, you're trying my patience!

Posted by: Fred Kiesche at 01:28 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
Post contains 180 words, total size 1 kb.

John D at SF Signal, probably in revenge for my nitpicking habits, has "tagged" me with a meme. Box Office Mojo has released a list of movies made from books...how's my SF movie rating, I guess.

Entries bolded are ones where I've read the book.
Entries italicized are ones where I couldn't make it through the book.
For giggles, entries underlined are ones where I couldn't make it through the movie.

And, I'm annoying five more people by tagging them at the end.

Jurassic Park
War of the Worlds
The Lost World: Jurassic Park
I, Robot
Contact
Congo
Cocoon
The Stepford Wives
The Time Machine
Starship Troopers
The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
K-PAX
2010 (no 2001?)
The Running Man
Sphere
The Mothman Prophecies
Dreamcatcher
Blade Runner(Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?)
Dune
The Island of Dr. Moreau
Invasion of the Body Snatchers
The Iron Giant(The Iron Man)Battlefield Earth
The Incredible Shrinking Woman (I've read The Shrinking Man)
Fire in the Sky
Altered States
Timeline
The Postman
Freejack (Immortality, Inc.)
Solaris
Memoirs of an Invisible Man
The Thing (Who Goes There?)
The Thirteenth Floor
Lifeforce (Space Vampires)
Deadly Friend
The Puppet Masters
1984
A Scanner Darkly
Creator
Monkey Shines
Solo (Weapon)
The Handmaid's Tale
Communion
Carnosaur
From Beyond
Nightflyers
Watchers
Body Snatchers

I tag: The Crotchety Old Fan, Dave Does the Blog, Flying Sauce, Ronzobot and StevenHartSite.

Posted by: Fred Kiesche at 12:14 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
Post contains 237 words, total size 2 kb.

When making coffee, it helps to put the filter and coffee into the machine before walking away; otherwise you're in for a disappointment.

Posted by: Fred Kiesche at 05:27 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
Post contains 25 words, total size 1 kb.

Ever been stuck on a slow elevator?

Posted by: Fred Kiesche at 05:22 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
Post contains 11 words, total size 1 kb.

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
Post contains 21 words, total size 1 kb.

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
Post contains 50 words, total size 1 kb.

"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
Post contains 31 words, total size 1 kb.

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
Post contains 102 words, total size 1 kb.

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
Post contains 14 words, total size 1 kb.

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
Post contains 28 words, total size 1 kb.

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
Post contains 26 words, total size 1 kb.

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
Post contains 21 words, total size 1 kb.

Log tables, slide rules and "computers", oh my!

Posted by: Fred Kiesche at 10:47 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
Post contains 12 words, total size 1 kb.

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
Post contains 25 words, total size 1 kb.

"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
Post contains 90 words, total size 1 kb.

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
Post contains 435 words, total size 3 kb.

"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
Post contains 80 words, total size 1 kb.

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
Post contains 221 words, total size 1 kb.

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
Post contains 38 words, total size 1 kb.