I ended my last post rather abruptly because i got a phone call from a distraught friend. I was going to expound about the book "The High Frontier". That post was getting a little to long though.

I'm still undecided about which direction my reading should go and it seems i have less time for it every year. That's why I can't decide whether to spend that time reading frivolous stuff or serious stuff. Maybe the way I do it now, bouncing back in forth is best.

So I'm going to finish the books I have now, write short reviews for the edification of my audience of 2, :-D , and just leave it up in the air.

more on books

I finally finished that lightweight science fiction book I was reading. It was called "The Viper of Portello". It was ok but I just couldn't seem to get engrossed in it. The main character is the bastard son of a woman who had cheated on her rich husband and then raised her son as part of the family. He has artistic talents but because of his strict upbringing goes into the military and becomes a commando who later acquires the nickname 'Culebra' (a fact the author never seems to tire of telling his readers about, until it loses all power to grip your attention). During the opening chapter his unit goes on a raid, is betrayed and ambushed. The voice he hears before he is knocked unconscious leads to the trail of the betrayers who are revealed much to early in the book to shock. All in all, it is a rather formulaic book and neither the main scenes nor the parts that are supposed to flesh out the characters are captivating. Perhaps it is more interesting to those who like Military Sci-Fi, but even considering that I would have to say, Heinlein did it better.

I would give it 2 out of 5 stars.

I'm still haven't finished the 9/11 commission report. It's a long and very dry account of what led up to that day, what happened that day, and what the US should do in the future. I've had it on my nightstand for about a year now. I'm debating whether to to finish it or not because I have a whole list of related books on terrorism, radical Islamic fundamentalism, and the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan that i was thinking of reading. I've read a couple already and have taken out of the library Benazir Bhutto's "Reconciliation: Islam, Democracy and the West". I've started to read it and will tell you about it in my next post. I was shocked, saddened and dismayed when those bloody savages in Pakistan killed her. I really thought she might bring a new and better government to Pakistan, but those Islamo-fascist murderers just couldn't stand the idea of an intelligent woman having power, could they? ...... So Sad.

The other book I'm reading is "Inside Al- Qaeda: Global Network of Terror." It's as dry as the 9/11 report so far, but maybe once I hack my way past the first chapter it will be better. The odd part about the book is all the typographical errors. I might critique that in my next post also.

I've already red these 3 books,

~"Fiasco:The American Military Adventure in Iraq" by Thomas Ricks
(Penguin Press, NY; 2006)
{an excellent account of the blunders of the Bush administration during the occupation of Iraq}

~"Jawbreaker" by Gary Berntsen and Ralph Pezullo
(Crown Publishers, NY; 2005)
{an account of the war against the Taliban and al-Qaeda in Afghanistan and how the Bushies let Usama bin-Laden escape}

~ "The Looming Tower: Al-Qaeda and the Road to 9/11"
by Lawrence Wright (Alfred A. Knopf, NY, 2006)
{EXCELLENT book. Insight into the origins of the Islamist/terrorist philosophy}

,, hence my dilemma in continuing my reading about this topic. You know how it is, once you've invested time in doing something you don't want to give up on the project. For me, it is usually series of books on a particular subject with some sci-fi thrown in for entertainment. That and watching late night Anime i've recorded from Adult Swim. :-D

After many months of reading a small section at a time, I finally finished reading a lengthy document that was on the web about how the Saturn Rockets and the Apollo program came into being. Not the political aspects, but all the engineering, computer and logistics problems that Werner Von Braun and so many, many others had to solve in order for those elegant giants to work. Landing men on the Moon was definitely one of the great accomplishments of the human species.
And while NASA is currently working on getting us back to the moon and exploring further out, and western civilization seeks to solve the problems of global warming and carbon free energy production, medieval minded barbarians with modern weapons are setting off bombs and killing civilians - for the greater glory of god of course. But I digress.....

After reading that old NASA document* on the Saturn rockets and looking at my Space related reading list, I'm considering concentrating on reading books about the history and future of space travel. I was very inspired in the early 80's by the book "The High Frontier" by Gerard K. O'Neil.

(I was going to write more but I'm involved in a phone call now... I'll finish this later.

* http://history.nasa.gov/SP-4206/contents.htm

Autumn

Ahhh, Fall is here. The crisp refreshing air and the colorful leaves. My favorite season. We are now past the autumnal equinox and the days are getting shorter and the nights longer. More time to get cozy under a warm blanket with a cup of tea nearby and a good book in hand.

I'm currently reading a three books and am almost done with all of them. The first is "Imperial Life in the Emerald City" by Rajiv Chandrasekaran. It's about how the Bush administration sent 'Loyal Republicans' (who didn't know what they were doing) to administer Iraq after the US invasion, instead of sending those who had experience with such things. By being isolated in the Green Zone, they were like imperial patricians who were disconnected from what was actually going on in the country. Like other books I've read, it just reinforces my opinion that Cheney, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz and the rest of the Neo-Conservatives used the terrorist attacks of 9/11 to invade Iraq to control the oil fields, a goal that the neo-cons had for many many years. They have ruined the reputation of this country for many years to come and I doubt I'll vote for a Republican ever again in my life.

The second book is called 'Outliers' by Malcolm Gladwell. I picked it up at random in the library. It's a rather light weight book in terms of analysis. He tries to show that when a person was born, lucky breaks that they get and the cultural milieu that he or she is raised in has as much to do with success as being intelligent or hard working. If I had to give the book a category I'd call it 'Pop-Sociology'.

The third book is light Science-Fiction. What a friend of mine calls a popcorn book, because it is like cheap junk food. It's getting better as I get to the end and if the finish is strong, I'll write a quick review in my next post. might even tell you the title.

Good Books

Hi all.

Well, I still haven't decided if I want to take my blog in a new direction or not. I hardly ever come here or look at other blogs any more. I've lost interest in it the way that i lost interest in going into chat rooms on Yahoo messenger. It's fun for a few months or maybe a year and then it gets boring. I'm also getting bored with the message boards on nasaspaceflight.com. Again, it was fascinating for a while and then I got bored. There are so many engineers there that they don't have much patience with amateurs asking questions or making suggestions. I still haven't completely broken my addiction to reading it yet, but It's just not as thrilling as it was at first. Oh well .......

I've been trying to read the 9/11 Commission Report, It's really dry and it goes into detail about what happened and what led up to it. But it's boring as hell so i read a few pages and then put it back down for days at a time. I got so bored with it that I went a took a few Science fiction books out of the Library.

I was on a kick for a while reading Nancy Kress' books. Her stories are imaginative and engaging and manage to incorporate the science without it overwhelming the story. I think her greatest strength is showing how societies are impacted by technological change and how it affects her characters lives. I highly recommend her work.
(Recommended books - Nothing Human; Beggars in Spain; An Alien Light; Brain Rose; Crossfire;; Probability Space, Probability Moon; Probability Sun {a trilogy})

Lately I've been reading Greg Bear's books. He's written some excellent Sci-Fi over the past 30 years. I'm just finished reading one of his older books called 'Blood Music' in which a scientist creates intelligent cellular based computers that multiply inside of and then take over the human beings that they are in. Interestingly, a couple of days after finishing it, I read an article about some scientists doing almost that exact same thing, trying to use RNA as a basis of for information processing. And he wrote the book 30 years ago! I've read other books by him also and they are even more imaginative. His characters aren't always as good as Nancy's but the technological extrapolations and situations he comes up with are mind blowing. In one of his books, malevolent aliens blow up planet earth. His description of how they do it and what people observe as it's happening is amazing. I just recently finished his latest book "The City at the End of Time." {If you ever travel into the far future, remember to bring your 'reality generator'! You'll need it to protect you from 'The Chaos'!.} He also wrote straight fiction book a few years ago called 'Quantico', about FBI agents pursuing terrorists with biological weapons. He's supposed to be coming out with a sequel to it also.
(Recommended books - The City at the End of Time, Quantico, Moving Mars, EON, Anvil of Stars, Hegira, Blood Music (short story and novel), Hardfought (a short story)).

Let's see, what else have i been reading the past couple of years? Oh yeah, a few UFO books. The most interesting ones were by Jacques Vallee, the French scientist depicted by Francois Truffaut (sp?) in Close Encounters of the Third Kind. He wrote a trilogy of books with the titles - "Dimensions", "Confrontations", & "Revelations". I didn't know it was a trilogy at first as i read Revelations first. I got a good laugh out of the part where some guy is trying to tell him 'secret inside information' about the US military's having a giant secret underground base where alien and human scientists work together. He asks the guy, "Well, if they've got this huge base, who takes out the garbage? Wouldn't there have to be a line of garbage trucks coming out of the place all the time to handle a base that size?" The man he is interviewing gets mad at him for this question, but as Dr. Vallee explains, sometimes you have to ask the mundane questions to find out wether there is any validity to the stories you are being told. He also talks about over the many years he has investigated UFO's that he has, numerous times, been told that some 'Great Revelation' is about to be revealed, only to be dissappointed over and over again. hance, his mundane question to deflate the shady character trying to tell him that latest story. --- If you want to read something about the subject that takes a serious look at it without preconceived notions of what is to be found, his books are a good place to start.

Some of the books I've recommended may be hard to find. I usually seek them out at the local library. It's why I love Libraries! Go there and expand your mind. And throw a few bucks in towards donations if you can, or donate a good book or two. It's a cheap way to contribute to the betterment of humanity.

Until next time......