Is There Anything That Can't Be Reduced To a Lord of the Rings Analogy?

I submit there is not.

Bloggin' in December

Well, it appears that December is a universally slow month for Bloggers, at least here in the States. Travel, holiday parties, shopping, and a variety of year-end deadlines conspire to keep us away from our computers (plus, in my case a whole lot of home improvement stuff). Although I still have a lot to do, the painting is almost done, holiday shopping is over, I'm done travelling for the immediate future, and no school for three weeks.

I still have to finish unpacking, and decide where all of my Christmas loot needs to go. Christmas as an adult is always a bit weird. Most of it seems to be an exercise in passing money around in a circle (except much more inefficient). I've always tried to get gifts that are more personal, or something that the other person doesn't know about - but that's not always easy. I got some running apparel from my brother and his wife and some anti-chaffing rub, a book (The Omnivore's Dilemma) and a DVD (The Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind) and the normal assortment of strange gifts and stocking stuffers.


My big score was a new bag, something some of you know I have been looking for for quite a while. Most bags are either cheap and crappy (i.e. like the pleather bag I have been using, which I got free from work which had two zippers snap in half within a couple of months), too expensive (e.g. anything from Tumi), too small (e.g. messenger bags), or too big (e.g. duffel bags). The bag in question is a 5" Zero Halliburton Deluxe Briefcase made of ballistic nylon. As this particular reviewer stated, this bag is pretty hot if I do say so myself. I'm not sure if it will help me pick up chicks but it can't hurt.

There is also the annual ritual where my grandad sends all of his grandsons a check for $250 for Christmas. I am not sure why I find this is to be so entertaining, probably because it makes me think about all of the good times I've had with my grandparents, and maybe about all the stuff that you used to be able to do with $250 as a kid.

Anyway, another one of my projects has been to get a large, framed world map to mark out what places in the world I have been to. I have to go pick it up, but otherwise all that is left to do is to chronicle where I have actually been. To this end, I reviewed where I have been with my parents when I was home for Christmas. Here is the list I have come up with so far, not counting states I just drove through or airports I switched over in (keep in mind that the United States is only about 8" to 10" across so a lot of stuff in Minneapolis and Wisconsin is going to get lumped together):

UNITED STATES:
Wisconsin: Madison (hometown), Milwaukee, Door County, Wisconsin Dells, Appleton, and a boatload of towns through various trips with my parents, the Boy Scouts, and athletic competitions.
Minnesota: Twin Cities metro (current home), Northfield (college for 4 years), St. Cloud, Duluth, Lutsen, Brainard, Red Wing, and a number of towns for college track meets.
New York: Buffalo/Lancaster (grandparents - mom's side), Rochester, the Finger Lakes, New York City
Illinois: LaMoille (grandparents - dad's side), Chicago
Florida: The Florida Keys, Orlando, Tampa
Colorado: Boulder (brother went to school there for a decade), Denver
Iowa: Grinnell (college visit)

CANADA:
Ontario: Made a dash for the border right near Niagara Falls

INDIA:
Karnataka: Bangalore (study abroad through grad school), Mysore
Kerala: Kumarakom (Golden Waters resort)

AUSTRALIA:
South Australia: Adelaide, Kangaroo Island, Coober Pedy, some others I can't remember offhand
Northern Territory: Darwin, Kakadu National Park, Ayer's Rock
Queensland: Cairns, Great Barrier Reef
New South Wales: Sydney
Victoria: Melbourne
Tasmania: Cradle Mountain National Park, Hobart, Georgetown (I think)

NEW ZEALAND:
New Zealand: Auckland and some surrounding areas

There you have it, my travel history in a nutshell. My apologies to any cities I have left out.

Book Review: Next

Well, I plowed through to the end of Michael Crichton's latest book Next last night (or technically, this morning). Unlike the last two books, there is actually quite a bit to talk about here without spoilers.

First off, and apparently unlike a lot of people, I actually enjoyed the book quite a bit. Most of the reviewers on Amazon refer to Next as basically the worst Crichton book ever. The two literary criticisms you will hear the most are that the plot line is very confusing and all over the place and that the plot itself is just too much of a stretch to be believable. In general I would agree with both of these points. The chapters are very short and with roughly a dozen related subplots it can be hard to remember who is who, but with a little effort it shouldn't be that hard so I don't think it detracted from the story that much. As far as the overall plot, yes, it is rather unbelievable. Most of Crichton's science themed books tend to be fairly plausible, but [spoiler alert] in Next most of the protagonists end up in some kind of transgenic Brady Bunch while the villains are generally left embarrassed, dead, in jail, or somehow hoist by their own proverbial petard. The ending reminded me more of a Dan Brown novel than of Crichton's better works. And obviously most of Crichton's characters were hyperboles, but if you want to make as many points as he tries to make that's kind of inevitable.

One of the oddest things about the book is the character Mick Crowley. Although I have yet to read anything from the Crichton camp, it would appear that the character is intended to be a swipe at columnist Michael Crowley who wrote an unfavorable review in The New Republic of Crichton's last book State of Fear. Besides the name and a couple descriptions that sound a lot like the real-life Crowley (Yale graduate, based in Washington), the character adds nothing to any of the subplots. Besides a few factoids, the only description of the fictional Crowley is that he is apparently a child rapist with a small penis. First off, despite what some of the reviewers state there is no "graphic description of child rape" anywhere in the book. While there are a few sentences that some people might find distasteful you will hear worse in a lot of prime time dramas. Honestly, my first thought was "couldn't Crichton come up with something better than this?" This is the kind of thing you would expect to see in Borat, not an author like Michael Crichton. If you're going to mock somebody, you should at least put a little intellectual effort into it.

Another thing that appears to stick in the collective craw of Amazon reviewers is the fact that they consider the book to be pushing Michael Crichton's political agenda. Umm, okay. Why is that bad, again? A lot of books push various agendas, but people only label them "polemics" when they are pushing something they don't agree with. My guess is some people's opinion of the book is colored by State of Fear, Crichton's last book, which is considered by many (such as the aforementioned Michael Crowley) as an anti-global warming screed full of questionable claims. Since I haven't read the book myself, I can't comment. But most of Crichton's arguments - with a few exceptions such as the times he appears to be calling out specific Democratic senators - seemed fairly nonpartisan to me. The media seems to be the the most frequent target in the book, being accused of being lazy, failing to do adequate fact-checking, recycling junk news, etc. Last time I checked that was basically the same criticism that has been leveled at the D.C. press corps ever since Bush took office. And I don't hear a lot of complaining about the evangelical scientist character who goes around stealing other people's research and other dastardly things (well, maybe the character is a red herring but whatever).

Okay, so maybe Michael Crichton is turning into a Republican hack. Still, this is a pretty good book. I think you're smart enough to make up your own mind.

Rating: * * *

Book Review: The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid

The other book I have read recently was The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid: A Memior, by Bill Bryson. I actually finished it a couple of weeks ago but didn't want to post about it because I got it as a Christmas gift for someone.

Bill Bryson is one of my favorite authors. The majority of his books are essentially memiors of his travels throughout most of the English-speaking world (mostly America and England, but also Australia) and a couple books on the English language, although perhaps his best-known (and best - IMHO) book is A Short History of Nearly Everything, a kind of humorous layman's guide to science.

Anyway... half of The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid is Bryson's recollection of his childhood in Des Moines, Iowa, and the other half appear to be a cobbling of stories and facts about the 1950's. In case you're wondering, the eponymous Thunderbolt Kid was a sort of superhero alter ego Bryson had when he was a kid. I'll try not to spoil to many of the stories, but a lot of them center around the pop culture of the 50's and people's apparent obsession with exposing themselves to dangerous chemicals, radiation, and explosives. I really enjoyed this book, and if you are a fan of Bill Bryson or grew up in the 50's this is a great read.

Rating: * * * 1/2

Now I'm off to read Michael Crichton's Next. It's gotten pretty bad reviews - mostly centered around having too many plot lines and that the book is something of a polemic - but I'm going to give it a shot. I'll let you know.

Book Review: The God Delusion

Now that I'm done with school for the semester, I have been able to get back to some reading. Last night I finished Richard Dawkins' The God Delusion. If you are not acquainted with him, Dawkins is a British ethnologist and evolutionary biologist most famous for his 1974 book The Selfish Gene. My guess is that his main inspiration for this book was the frustration of having to deal with "intelligent design" nut jobs, but Dawkins attempts to smash a number of religion-based arguments in this book (e.g. without God there is no morality). Although a lot of the arguments he goes after would be pretty easy to dismiss simply through basic logic, some of the chapters are pretty enlightening (I particularly enjoyed the chapter on the origins of morality). While I found some of his arguments not entirely convincing and wished he had expounded more on others, overall this is a very solid work.

I have two criticisms of the book. The first one is that Dawkins has a very sarcastic (some have described it all bullying) style of writing. One gets the feeling he came home in a bad mood and fired this off in one night. Perhaps the bad mood was caused when it was revealed that Tony Blair was spending tens of millions of pounds of taxpayer money on a creationist charter school which happened to be run by a man now caught up in the knighthood-for-donations scandal. The other criticism is that he tries to hit too many topics and doesn't delve deeply enough into some of them. Some of his chapters end with him basically saying "well I'm not an expert in this so here's some more reading material, but you have to admit I already have a better argument than X." Of course, it's already 370 pages long and I'll give him props for not claiming to be an expert in things that he's not.

Rating: * * * 1/2

I'll be the first to admit this book may not exactly be in the holiday spirit. If Dawkins isn't your cup of tea, perhaps you might try one of these books:

Eating Jesus: The Theology Behind Transubstantiation

1 + 1 + 1 = 1, A Primer On The Holy Trinity

I Found God In My Hat: The John Smith Story

Stone Your Wife To Death If She Is Not A Virgin: 101 Biblical Rules For Everyday Life

Hey, We All Hate The Gays Right? A Heartwarming Story Of Reconciliation Between Christians, Jews, and Muslims

It's Official: NASA Has Really Lost It

NASA has recently announced that it wants to have a permanent moon base by 2024. Eventually they hope to "extend human presence to the moon to enable eventual settlement." The Mars Society thinks we should colonize Mars. Stephen Hawkins thinks we need to colonize other solar systems. Far be it from me to criticize, but what the hell is wrong with these people?

Let's focus on NASA's moon "plan." Why on earth (no pun intended) would you ever want to live on the moon? Presumably only if the conditions on Earth were so unlivable that the moon was actually a better alternative. Now let's go over some of the basic living conditions of the moon in case you have forgotten:

- The moon has no real atmosphere, so there is no air to breathe. Kind of a problem.

- Another side effect of not having an atmosphere is that there is nothing to block the sun or retain heat during the night. Thus, the temperature on the moon varies between -387° F and 253° F. In other words, very similar to Minnesota. Fortunately, without an atmosphere there isn't much to transfer heat to, so it won't feel that cold.

- Yet another side effect of no atmosphere is that there is nothing to block the rays of the sun, so you are going to get bombarded by highly radioactive rays. When you're as white as I am, that is not a good thing.

- We're not done with the lack of atmosphere yet, as we haven't discussed the fact that the moon environment is also a vacuum. While this will apparently not make you explode á la Total Recall, the various side effects should kill you within a couple of minutes.

- The moon has gravity that is only 1/6th of the Earth's. While this would allow me to actually dunk a basketball, I imagine the low gravity might cause a lot of problems.

- There is no food or water on the moon. I hope you like the idea of Tang mixed with recycled urine because that's what you're going to get. In fact, pretty much everything would have to be shipped in except maybe for rocks and despair.

- A day on the moon lasts about the same time as 30 days on Earth. Can a moon society survive if women had PMS every single day? I submit that the answer is no.

Now, can you think of anyway to make living conditions on earth worse than that? I can't. An irradiated post-apocalyptic wasteland (even one with Mel Gibson in it) provides a much better living situation than the moon does. Pretty much the only reason I can see for colonizing the moon would be if the earth was destroyed completely, but with no earth to orbit I think the moon might be in for a bad day as well.

Besides the fact that it simply makes no sense, of all people NASA should know how ridiculously expensive it is to put anything into outer space, much less keep it there intact. It costs $450 million just to launch the fucking space shuttle. Hey, I'm in favor of space probes and advanced satellites and Mars Rovers and all that but putting people into space is just a dumb idea.*

These other people are just as dumb. The Mars Society thinks it is our manifest destiny to colonize Mars. First of all, anyone who would actually use the term "manifest destiny" to describe something they want to do is clearly not someone you want in charge of any kind of national policy. Apparently the idea is that we establish some kind of Mars base and start to terraform the planet into something inhabitable by earthlings. Let me get this straight - we live on a planet that we can't even terraform out of a couple of degrees of global warming, and we are going to transform Mars into a habitable planet? And now Stephen Hawkins wants us to go to other solar systems and colonize those planets. How, pray tell, are we going to get there? Even if we traveled at the speed of light, it would take over four years or so to get to the nearest star. It's too bad that our current space vehicles only get up to about 17,500 mph in orbit. For the record, the speed of light is 670,616,639 mph. What do you think will happen first? That humans will perfect some kind of worm-hole-antimatter-doohickey that will allow us to safely travel close to the speed of light or that we will wipe ourselves of the planet by one of a variety of means already at our disposal?

In the meantime, I will be working on my time machine that will allow me to travel back to a time when people were not this stupid.

*And I don't want to hear any crap about Richard Branson. Suborbital space flight is not even close to moon colonization.

Oh The Places I've Been

Ugh, it's the 8th of December and this will be my first post of the month. Things have been very busy the last couple of weeks even in the online realm. Besides having to respond to a flurry of blog posts by Mindy and Christy, I have also been busy making trades for my Fafarazzi team on the way to a victory and an all-time Mindy Does Minneapolis league record 85 points.

Back in the real world it's been one thing after another. A case study on Wednesday and a final exam next week, a full plate at work, a doctor's appointment, planning another trip home for Christmas, yadda, yadda. Mostly I've been working on projects, though. My first project is doing my holiday shopping. Not to boast but I am a very good gift giver, especially for Christmas and birthdays. Hmm, maybe I'll have to create a post about gift giving. Fortunately for my friends I'm usually single during the holiday season so they tend to reap the benefits of my largess. This year I started pretty early so I've got a lot done so far, but I am have not had much luck with my parents or grandad. And no Mindy I am not going to tell you what I got you and Otis so you two will just have to wait. Jeez. Oh before I forget Letterbox has their holiday collection out so you should go their and check it out.

The rest of my time has been spent on home improvements, mostly painting. The living room is done, and I'll be very glad when I finish with my bathroom this weekend. I abandoned the Audubon Russet since I thought it was too dark, and instead am going with a color called Indian Tile (Dutch Boy). One piece of advice if you get one of those plastic quart jugs from Menard's - do not take the "shaken not stirred" approach. The paint will probably not mix well, and you will find some red streaks near the bottom of the jug, which is not a good thing unless you are going for a "swirl" look. I also got a world map mounted and laminated, and once I decide whether to put it in my living room or bedroom I am going back to get it framed. The plan is to get some map pins and mark the places I've been. If anyone wants to go to Thailand or the Mirador Basin let me know. I also found a nice shadow box for some art I got a long time ago in Australia. So as you can see, I've been VERY busy. Definately not slacking off.

ALSO: My doctor wants me to start drinking red wine. If anyone has any good ones let me know. The only red wine I've ever really liked is called Menage à Trois (which is a problem unto itself) by Folie a Deux which is a blend of three wines - Zinfandel, Merlot, and Cabernet Sauvignon. Surdyks.com has a "customers have also enjoyed" list so maybe I should check that out.

P.S.: The Bachelor: Rome finished a couple weeks ago, and Jen "won." You didn't miss anything. I was thinking of starting some posts on The Real World: Denver but after watching a half episode I decided it was too painful (plus it's on class night).