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Our First New York-iversary

Last week Josh and I celebrated — and by celebrated, I mean we were both working so nothing really happened — our very first New York-iversary!  We’re glad we’re still here and we consider ourselves lucky to still be able to schlep ourselves about this city every day, but there have definitely been some ups and downs: personal victories and parking tickets, great people and jerkface people, months of work followed by months of sickness, et al.

During these past twelve months we’ve learned a great deal.  And most of it has been through our own experiences, not so much things we knew going into this big life change.  We certainly did more than enough research and were prepared for the big differences, but the little things are what surprised us.

And I have to admit, these things are what I wish I had known more about when I asked people who had lived or do live here for help.   Instead, I got a lot of advice bordering on or either pretentiousness or Captain Obvious-ness.  I found myself constantly responding to tips given to me with “Yeah, of course NYC is expensive” — (doesn’t everyone know that?), “Yes, I know there will be a lot of walking,” “Yes, I know things will not be as nice or as spacious as they are in Atlanta,” “Yes, I know it’s not all safe” — (though NYC is far safer than most of the city of Atlanta, so if anything, we upgraded in that department).

And maybe if I lived in a corn field in Iowa, this would all come as a news flash to me… But it didn’t.  Atlanta isn’t exactly a small, podunk town.

So, for better or worse, and at the risk of sounding naive to NYC lifers, here are a few things we have learned throughout our time here (hoping they help someone out there that’s thinking of taking the plunge and moving to NYC!).  I have abstained from taking the “actor/singer in New York” angle, as I know this isn’t as helpful to the majority of my readers, but if you are wanting some tips in that department, I have some knowledge that I’ve acquired over the past year that I’d love to share (I have to admit I learned a lot about this the hard way because I was told conflicting things from different friends before moving here ).

Here goes!

  • The NYC subway system is amazing, intricate, and endlessly useful.  Coming from Atlanta where we have Marta as the only mass transit system — it’s very limited and you run the risk of getting stabbed — the MTA was like a breath of fresh air.  This part wasn’t news to me, as I visited a few times before moving.  What I didn’t take into account was that with a subway system as intricate as NYC’s, there is constant maintenance, thus trains are constantly re-routing and/or not in operation.  Most maintenance is scheduled during midday, late night, and on weekends, and a lot of it is done during the summer months.  This means that checking the MTA app on your phone is VITAL before leaving for the day (and constantly checking throughout the day isn’t a bad idea either).    There have been countless times where I’ve swiped my card and waited on the train platform for twenty minutes, only to find out the train wasn’t coming.
  • The cheapest place to get a water (or Diet Coke, in my case) is at a bodega.  Newsstands are the second cheapest, and the most expensive by far are drug stores.  Don’t go to drugstores.
  • Duane Reade,  an NYC based drug store chain, is the most expensive drugstore EVER.  Admittedly, their locations are very nice and their name brand stuff is pretty cool, but practically everything there has a twenty cent up charge, if not more.  Shaaaaame Duane Reade.
  • If you live in a fourth floor walk-up, you will never be cold, even if it’s ten degrees below zero.  Science don’t play: Heat rises (and with a vengeance).  My hand to God: we had all of our windows open for most of the winter season.
  • Never underestimate the power of a good umbrella and a pair of rain boots.
  • Remember how I said you should check the MTA website/app before you leave your home?  Yeah, check the weather, too.
  • If you’re living in New York City, you must have a smartphone.  It’s not an electronic snobbery thing, it’s just a necessity with the lifestyle.
  • You don’t want “a piece of cheese pizza,” you want “a plain slice.” And don’t you dare take the oregano and red pepper flakes with you to your table, that stuff stays at the counter.
  • You may not think Snapple is that special, but New Yorkers do.  They really do.
  • I already knew this, but it’s worth sharing anyway: jaywalking is not illegal.  If there are no cars coming, go!  (This goes double if you are in Midtown.)
  • So many stereotypes are true: people tend to be very curt (if not rude), people really are all in a hurry (thus the curtness/rudeness), and it smells bad like, everywhere (which could also be a contributing factor to the curtness/rudeness).
  • You think you’re so clever showing up early for an audition or a free museum night or a really awesome sale?  Yeah, everyone else had that idea, too.

And finally …

  • Punch rat is an endlessly fun game to play on the subway platform.  It’s a lot like punch bug, in case you were wondering…

Any other NYC newbies out there?  Or native New Yorkers?  Please feel free to share your first impressions or any tips and tricks you’ve learned!

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The Fieldwork Experience at NIRH

Data Collection & Evaulation can become a difficult skill to master.

Interning at NIRH has been very beneficial in creating a strong network of public health professionals in the field of Sexual and Reproductive health. The AHCCP Program has also defined a larger component of public health initiatives that create larger opportunities for teens. As the program completes it’s deliverables for the FY 2011-12, I will continue to provide administrative support for the evaluation piece. However, when FY 2012-13 beings in July, I will be in charge of a large portion of data collection and evaluation. I hope to gain more polished skills in data collection, entry, and evaluations. I also hope to learn how to manage excel databases and collective both qualitative and quantatative data for the AHCCP piece.

I want to be competent in research and literature reviews. As well as, be able to accurately and concussively report on collective information and present it in a legible format. These skills will allow me to be a more component and well-round public health professional. Data and evaluation are pivotal when implementing certain programs or interventions for you are expecting to follow-up with your initiatives and see if they have actually worked or not. In order to precise and knowledgeable in this area of program planning, these skills must be developed and used at various points in your career.

At NIRH, I hope this experience will further develop my skills and create opportunities for external networking.

The Project

As a Summer intern at the National Institute for Reproductive health I have been made in charge of various tasks that must be completed in the FY 2011-12. The program has a variety of  deliverables and part of my work requires me to complete evaluations and maintain DOH standards when completing these reports. This includes evaluations of pre and post- tests, scanning deliverables such as sign-in sheets and program evaluations, as well as provide administrative support to the local collaborative intern.

One of our projects include developing a Front-Line Staff training manual that will be used by teen educators trained in workshop facilitation that the DOH has asked to be included into the deliverables for FY 2012-2013. I have been helping the intern who developed the curriculum review it and make any revisions as seen necessary. They are also in the process of constructing a literature review on what exactly it means to be front-line staff and how they play a vital role in patient-doctor relationship and what constitutes as “teen-friendly.”

M.I.A & The New Scoop

Sorry everyone for the delay- I’ve been M.I.A for the past few weeks because I honestly do not want anything to do with school for awhile.

I’ve started my internship at The National Institute for Reproductive Health and it’s been an extremely benefical time. I am a apart of the Adolescent Health Care Commujnication Program that seeks to use young people in promoting open communication between teens and their health care providers. For the first weeks, I have taken time time to understand the program delvierables and components and have actively been working on a local collaborative piece for the Front-Line Training for medical service providers. This component is just one of the many pieces to the AHCCP initiative at the NIRH.

The ACHHP initiative was designed to help medical providers communicate more effectively with their teens patients thus reducing barriers and increase patient-doctor relationship. This has shown to increase the like hood that teens will make informed decisions about their health. Primarily, this organization is to increase overall awareness and equality among teens and women that affect their sexual and reproductive health. But their work is also surrounding political issues regarding reproductive health and access to quality care. This organization is instrumental in passing certain laws that create opportunities for women and teens to access care and information.

Below is a video of the one the initiatives this organization had implemented called Back Up Your Birth Control from the Pro-Choice America.

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Mung’d Up

Mung Sprouts by Lisa

Check it out, after 72 hours one cup of dry mung beans has sprouted into 8 packed cups of mung bean sprouts. Delicious in salads, sandwiches and stir-fry’s or simply with some olive oil salt and pepper, personally my favourite snack to grab on the go… oh how far I’ve come.

Loaded with vitamins and minerals and lots of amino acids. Sprouts are living foods that nourish your cells and provide loads of those magical enzymes.

Try This

1. Rinse 1/4 cup dry mung beans and soak overnight (or 4 hours)
2. In the morning rinse and drain
3. In the evening rinse and drain

Repeat steps 2 and 3 until the beans have a tail 1/4″ or longer, about 48 to 72 hours. Then just pop them in the fridge to stop their growth process. I use a mason jar with no lid and leave it a counter out of direct sunlight. Remember they will grow about 8x their original size so make sure their container has room.

I promise this is so simple, you could do it at your desk… oh good idea! If you try it Instragm or Tweet the pictures please @thegoodsisgood we wanna see.

CATEGORY: Health & Wellness

Chef and Owner at the Goods. Food is at the root of everything, it has the power to impact our health, wellbeing and spirituality, the economy, environment and overall health of this planet.

Comments (2)

[…] Grains and Legumes Long Grain Brown Rice Quinoa Adzuki Beans Lentils Mung Beans  […]

[…] and legumes are so satisfying, sprout them before cooking for an extra nutrient […]

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Plant Powered Posse

We’re pretty smitten with our pals at the Home Depot Head Office. They invited us over for a Lunch and Learn and we regaled them with tales of our experience with plant food and sweet talked the team into a 7 Day Smoothie Challenge.

And guess what, they did it! Many of them already into their second week of green smoothie guzzling on the daily.

You can try our challenge on your own, all you need to do is make yourself a green smoothie a day for 7 days to experience the benefits of a daily clean, green drink.

We have lots of smoothie recipes on our blog or if you’d like to book a lunch and learn for your team drop us a line.

Hope you’re feeling great team, golden green stars for everyone.

CATEGORY: Health & Wellness
Comments (2)

I feel like the team at Suske Capital should try this challenge!

Obvs I’m all over that! Let’s do it.

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“It’s time to question laws that senselessly expand the concept of self-defense and sow dangerous conflict in our neighborhoods,” Holder said in a speech to the NAACP. “These laws try to fix something that was never broken,” he added.

Meanwhile, in light of Florida’s “Stand Your Ground” law, Zimmerman was not charged until six weeks after Trayvon’s killing.  In addition, the judge in his trial instructed the jury, “If George Zimmerman was not engaged in an unlawful activity and was attacked in any place where he had a right to be, he had no duty to retreat and had the right to stand his ground and meet force with force, including deadly force if he reasonably believed that it was necessary to do so to prevent death or great bodily harm to himself or another or to prevent the commission of a forcible felony.”

When blacks invoke the law

Further, “Stand Your Ground” has failed to serve other African-Americans who have invoked the law.

In November 2012, a multiracial Tampa jury found a black man named Trevor Dooley, 71, guilty of manslaughter in the shooting death of David James, 41, his white neighbor.  He was sentenced to 8 years in prison.  The shooting took place in a basketball court in front of James’ 8-year-old daughter, in what began as a fight over a skateboarder.

Dooley—who is 5-feet-7 and 160 pounds—said he shot James—who was 6-foot-1 and 240 pounds— because the man had his hands around Dooley’s neck and attempted to take his gun.“Do you really think that if it was the other way around and the skin color would be different we would be here today? … We wouldn’t,” Dooley told reporters.

Meanwhile, in a town 125 miles from Sanford, Florida, Marissa Alexander, 31, a black mother of three, was sentenced last year to 20 years for firing a warning shot at her husband who she said was abusive and threatening her.  Alexander had a protective order against the man, who according to her attorney “had put his hands on her and there was a fight in the bathroom.”  No one was injured, and the judge refused to allow Alexander to invoke “Stand Your Ground” due to “insufficient evidence that the Defendant reasonably believed deadly force was needed to prevent death or great bodily harm to herself.”

The judge concluded that Alexander’s decision to come back into the home with the gun rather than retreat “is inconsistent with a person who is in genuine fear for her life.”  Alexander had rejected a 3-year plea deal, and was subjected to strict mandatory sentencing for crimes involving a firearm.

State Attorney Angela Corey, the prosecutor in the Zimmerman trial, stands by her handling of the Alexander case. Rev. Jesse Jackson, Sr., the NAACP, Martin Luther King III and others have shown support for Alexander.

But the different outcomes in the cases of George Zimmerman and John White provide further proof that justice is not blind, and race plays a front-and-center role in the administration of American justice. African-Americans seem to get the short end of the stick.  Now is the time to get rid of the “Stand Your Ground” law.

Follow David A. Love on Twitter at @davidalove


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Fromage of the Day, 10.14.10: Sally Jackson Guernsey Cow

Fromage of the Day, 10.14.10 Sally Jackson Guernsey Cow.  Buttery, herbaceous, and complex, this chestnut leaf wrapped cow’s milk cheese is made in Washington state. It pairs with lighter, fruitier red wines, Amber Ales,`and the usual suspects.  If it was a Bill Frisell recording, it would Quartet, elegant yet edgy. The Joy of Cheese October events conclude 10.21 at Culturefix with Old World vs. Our World a comparison of regional cheeses and their European antecedents.  For more information visit

About jmartin437

I've worked in and around the world of high end cheese for 27 years. I've been everything from a department manager who hired and fired and trained staffs to a weekend warrior who shows up ties on an apron the middle of a rush and talks to customers and cleans up the place. I enjoy it all, and I especially like my current situation conducting informal seminars about cheese at area bars and in class at the 92nd St. Y. The current schedule is always up at In addition I conduct private events that are perfect to lead off birthday parties for foodies and sommeliers and also they make great entertainment for corporate team building events and associates meetings at law firms. In addition, I've been a freelance journalist for 27 years. Currently my profiles of leading musicians and filmmakers appear in the Wall Street Journal and I also wrote about sports for the Root, and for five loooong years, which included the entirety of the Isiah Thomas Knicks era, I wrote about the NBA for the New York Sun. I enjoyed writing about basketball so much that I now do it here at rotations for free.
This entry was posted in Fromage of the Day FoD, Upcoming Events. Bookmark the permalink.

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Category Archives: politics

Books about politics.

Review 213: Furies of Calderon (Codex Alera 1)

LL 213 - Alera 1 - Furies of CalderonCodex Alera 1: Furies of Calderon by Jim Butcher

As you probably have noticed by now, I am a huge fan of Jim Butcher’s Dresden Files series. The books are fun reads – fast-paced, gritty and realistic, while still maintaining that tarnished patina of fantasy about them. They have a great narrative voice and I could read them the same way I eat a bag of Doritos – all in one sitting, unsure of how it happened, but with less orange Cheez ™ on my fingers. I know for a fact that as long as Jim Butcher continues to write The Dresden Files, I will continue reading them.

At a certain point, I became aware of his Codex Alera series, mainly because he talked about them in author’s notes in the backs of the latest few Dresden paperbacks. I didn’t really read through the notes, usually because I was far too impatient to get into the next book, but I knew they were out there and that I would, sooner or later, have to read them. I also knew that they would be a different beast from what I was used to.

Not every story can be as inspiring as others...

Not every story can be as inspiring as others…

This series is Butcher’s real baby, as he tells us. From his childhood, Butcher was fascinated with high fantasy, the kinds of epic journeys that were made famous by people like Tolkien and Eddings, Zelazny, Brooks, and Weis and Hickman, to name a few. So, when he decided that he wanted to be a writer, it was on that kind of world-spanning, epic fantasy that he set his sights. He found what a lot of young writers find – that this kind of fiction is viciously hard to do well, and is really suitable only for writers who have either mutant-level innate talent or who have spent many, many years honing their skills.

Out of the process of working on his craft, of course, Butcher gave birth to Harry Dresden, which has certainly made the world a better place, but he never forgot his dream of writing an epic fantasy series. After much hard work, and what was no doubt a series of terrifying decisions to let it go public, Butcher published The Codex Alera, his contribution to the Sword-and-Sorcery genre.

It introduces us to the nation of Alera, an old and massive country build on swords, intrigue, and the strange talent possessed by most people to shape and control the very elements themselves. Within the very earth itself, in water and air and fire, trees and metal and stone, there are furies – spirit beings that can bend these elements to their will. The furies, in turn, link to a human, who gives them direction and purpose. A human in control of a fury is a force to be reckoned with, whether they are just bending a water fury to tell if someone is telling the truth, or compelling an earth fury to raise great walls in defense of a population. Most everyone has one or two furies at their command, and some of them have more. Young Tavi, living in the frontier region of Calderon, has none.

"We don't owe nobody nothin'..."

“We don’t owe nobody nothin’…”

Despite his disadvantage, however, Tavi is surrounded by good people. He’s been raised by his uncle, Bernard, who is the leader of their community at Bernardholt, and Bernard’s sister, Isana. Like all people on the edges of empire, the people of Bernardholt have learned to be tough and live without the security of armies or the support of central government. They take care of their own matters, thankyouverymuch, and don’t need a lot of interference from the rest of Aleran political society.

Unfortunately, of course, what they want doesn’t really matter. They soon find themselves at the heart of a violent coup, a plan to overrun the empire and topple its leaders. With the help of the inhuman Marat, the traitors to the First Lord are willing to sacrifice everything in order to save what they believe are the best parts of their nation.

Of all the themes that kind of got lost in this book, that last one is the one I wish had gotten more play – that sometimes people do horrible things for reasons that they believe are not only defensible, but actually good. The main antagonist, a man with the hilariously ironic name of Fidelias, starts out as a wonderfully conflicted character. He tricks his apprentice, the Cursor Amara, into traveling with him to the rebel camp. He makes an attempt to convert her to his way of thinking, and when she rejects a place in his coup, he reverts to Villain Pastiche – the former teacher who is very, very disappointed with his student, to the point where he just has to kill her so she won’t give away the plan. Fidelias travels with a sword-happy knight, Aldrick, who is almost invincibly good at what he does, and the knight’s lady-friend, a semi-psychotic water-crafter named Odiana.

He's an archetype we just can't quit.

He’s an archetype we just can’t quit.

It’s kind of unfortunate, really – I really wanted to be uncertain as to whether Fidelias and his crew were actually good guys, but I was pretty much convinced of their alignment within a few chapters. If I had one wish for this book, it would be that Butcher had kept me wondering throughout the book. I mean, it’s not impossible that the First Lord was deserving of being toppled, and that Amara had given her loyalties to the wrong man, but I stopped questioning that pretty quickly once Fidelias reached mustache-twirling levels.

In general, there were some parts of the story that I really liked, some that left me cold, and a lot that had me playing “Spot The Fantasy Trope” drinking game. Some of the best scenes were fast-paced and full of action, scenes that Butcher has always been good at. Whether it’s Tavi being chased by giant, heat-seeking spiders, or an all-out assault on a semi-impregnable fortress, Butcher does a very good job at controlling the action and making sure the reader knows what is going on where.

On the other hand, a lot of the narration itself, especially in the beginning, is way too talky. Probably one of the hardest things for any epic fantasy writer to do is to introduce his or her world to the reader in a way that is not only clear, but that also makes sense from within the story. Often characters spell out details of history and culture that they already know, and really don’t need to recap.

"As you know, the daily rotation of the Earth - the planet on which we live - makes it look like the firey ball of gas in the sky is rising."

“As you know, the daily rotation of the Earth – the planet on which we live – makes it look like the firey ball of gas in the sky is rising. In the east, no less.”

It would be as though I called my friend back in the United States and said, “As you know, President Obama, who was democratically elected by the people -” “Yes,” my friend says, “in a process that was established over two hundred years ago!” “Indeed,” I say. “President Obama – who is African-American – is thought by some to be Muslim!” “But he isn’t! He is a Christian!” “That’s right, a follower of that ancient religion founded on the teachings of Jesus Christ….”

It would be weird. But writers do this all the time, especially in Fantasy and Science Fiction. And you have to feel a little sorry for them – they have all this information to give us, and no natural way to do it, because the residents of that world already know it. That’s why so many epic fantasies (this one included) tend to start in backwater, isolated regions, where people haven’t seen a tax collector in generations, and why the protagonists tend to be young, working-class people. They are the only ones who would need this kind of history recap. It’s one of the most common ways of filling the audience in, from Lord of the Rings to The Wheel of Time to Star Wars, and Butcher is not an exception.

There is a lot of potential here, though, shining through all the weight that the first book of a fantasy series always has to bear. There’s a complicated political system that we have barely begun to explore, and the way that people and furies interact is shown to be very flexible and creative. As we follow Tavi through the rest of the books, we’ll get to see how someone without the ability to call on a fury might make his way in the world.

Also, I look forward to seeing Tavi grow out of his awkward mongoose stage...

Also, I look forward to seeing Tavi grow out of his awkward mongoose stage…

Incidentally, that is a place where I have to give Butcher credit. I seriously expected Tavi to finally gain his furycrafting powers in a big way at some point in the book, but he never did. For all intents and purposes, Tavi is a cripple in this world, and that is going to be a serious obstacle in his future endeavors. It looks like Butcher’s going to allow the boy to stay disabled, which makes for a far more interesting character in the end.

Anyway, out of loyalty to an author I really like, and in the hopes that he will be able to break the shackles of the Fantasy Formula, I will continue with this series. Don’t disappoint me, Jim….

“Two days ago, I had a lot more sense….”
– Tavi, Furies of Calderon, by Jim Butcher

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Filed under epic fantasy, fantasy, Jim Butcher, politics, war, wizardry

Review 197: The Long Earth

The Long Earth by Terry Pratchett and Stephen Baxter

It is said that the population of the whole world, if packed together into a city of the same density as New York City, would fit into the current boundaries of Texas. This Texan mega-city wouldn’t be a pleasant place to live, and there’s the challenge of infrastructure and living space and waste management, but the point is clear: there’s a lot more space on Earth than we think there is.

True, a lot of it is unfriendly to us – ocean, desert, ice, mountains, New Jersey – but still, despite our habit of packing ourselves into tightly-bound metropoli, there’s a lot of room on this earth to spread out.

Now imagine there was another Earth just a step away. A simple exertion of will, perhaps aided by a small device that anyone could make at home with a potato and some spare parts, and you’re in a new world, untouched by human hands. You’d be standing in the same place you left from, but on another Earth. And if you don’t like that one, well, there’s another Earth just a step away. And another. And another. An infinity of Earths, each one so very slightly different from the one you left, each with its own story to tell.

I’ll take the fifth Earth on the left. It’ll go well with my living room.

With the potential for an entire planet per person, what would that do to the world? Who would go and who would stay? What would happen to the “original” Earth, or Datum Earth as it’s called in this book? The ramifications of the Long Earth are far-reaching and unsettling indeed, as is the quest to map it.

Of the people on Datum Earth, most are able to step with the aid of a Stepper, a small box that they can build from freely available parts using plans that were posted to the internet by a mysterious engineer named Willis Linsay. As long as you follow the instructions properly and to the letter, you should be able to step from Earth to Earth with ease and only a minimum of discomfort.

The first wave of devices were built by kids, prompting an initial missing-children panic as kids popped out of this universe with hastily-built Steppers, completely unprepared for what they were getting into. Soon, though, more and more people were stepping out, eager to explore these strange new worlds.

At the forefront of this wave of colonization were the rare few who could step from world to world without a Stepper. One of these is Joshua Valienté, who was propelled to fame when he rescued children from their first journeys on Step Day. Joshua is hired by the Black Corporation to explore the Long Earth. With the support of Lobsang – formerly of Tibet and now an artificial intelligence – Joshua is going to step as far as he can go and see what there is to see at the distant ends of the Long Earth.

And for every one of you, there is another one with a goatee.

This is a genus of book that I really enjoy – one that takes a simple, straightforward idea and tries to find all the angles of it. To that end, Pratchett and Baxter look at how the people, governments, and businesses of Datum Earth adjust to this new reality. And some of the questions are decidedly thorny. Is America still America on all Earths? If someone commits a crime in an alternate New York, could they be prosecuted by the NYPD? What happens to the value of commodities such as wood or gold when you have a nigh-infinite supply of it? And what happens to a nation when its people start stepping out en masse?

There is a sub-plot in the book, following police Lieutenant Monica Jansson, who becomes the law’s expert on stepping, with all the challenges that come with it. For example, what can you do to stop someone from stepping one world over, taking a few steps to where a bank vault should be, and then stepping back? How do you make a space step-proof against intruders? And what do you do with the increasingly disgruntled percent of people who can’t step at all? That’s to say nothing of the scam artists, the escapees, and the people who just abandon their lives to walk the Long Earth. It’s a concept rife with possibilities.

Each Earth is slightly different, representing an Earth that could have been. Some are steaming jungle, others arid wasteland and still others are lush and perfect for agriculture. There are animals that claim descent from the megafauna of North America, from our own ape-like ancestors, and from dinosaurs, and others still that are unlike anything on the Earth we know. On none of them, however, are there humans – only the Datum Earth has those.

You can have my gun when you pry it from Anton Checkhov’s cold, dead hands!

As great as the concept is, though, I found myself disappointed by the end of it. It seemed like Pratchett and Baxter missed a lot of good opportunities for the story, failed to fire at least one of Chekhov’s guns, and let the Datum Earth plot line with Monica Jansson go woefully under-explored. Furthermore, while the Big Bad at the end was certainly big, it wasn’t that bad, and it was dealt with in a rather perfunctory and, in my opinion, unfulfilling manner. The ending was flat, with a bunch of loose ends that really should have been tied up, and there was even one question that came to mind that seemed so painfully obvious that I was shocked none of the characters thought of it: the Stepper boxes refer to the alternate Earths as being “west” or “east” of Datum Earth, and are built with a three-point toggle switch.

If there’s a west and an east, how about a north and south? What if you had four choices from any given Earth instead of two? I can understand leaving that option out for reasons of narrative simplicity, but it seems like such an obvious question that I’m surprised it wasn’t even raised.

Overall, I think the book fell under the same curse as so many of Neal Stephenson’s works: an amazing idea, done really well until the authors had to figure out how to end the book. There’s no real climax to it, no sense of fulfillment and achievement. Just a feeling like they had to stop somewhere, so they did.

That said, if they’re clever, they’ll make this a shared world project. I would love to see lots of different authors take a crack at some Tales of the Long Earth, precisely because it’s such a useful idea. There are so many stories that can be told, including the ones that got short shrift in this novel. Let’s hope we get to see that.

[Jansson] opined, ‘Oh.’ This response seemed inadequate in itself. After some consideration, she added, ‘My.’ And she concluded, although in the process she was denying a lifelong belief system of agnosticism shading to outright atheism, ‘God.’
– from The Long Earth by Terry Pratchett and Stephen Baxter

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Filed under adventure, alternate earth, colonization, quest, revolution, science fiction, Stephen Baxter, Terry Pratchett, travel, world-crossing

Review 192: The Audacity of Hope

The Audacity of Hope by Barack Obama

I know, I was supposed to have read this, oh, back in 2007 or ’08 when everyone else was reading it. And I thought about it, really I did. But the cynic in me thought, “Come on – what do you think it’ll be? It’ll be a 400 page sales pitch about why he should be President.” I lost faith in our elected officials a long time ago, and if I wanted to learn about Obama, I would rather have done so from a third party, rather than reading a self-aggrandizing autobiography about how awesome he is.

In a way, my Cynical Self was right – this is a sales pitch for Barack Obama. I don’t know if he was giving the Presidency serious thought when he was writing it, but he could have re-titled the book “Why You Should Vote for Barack Obama” and it would have been perfectly appropriate. Given that he wrote the book after his exceptional keynote speech at the Democratic National Convention, however, it is very likely that he wrote it with higher office in mind.

What an unpleasant little man he is…

The table of contents reads like a campaign platform, with chapters titled simply, “Values” or “Faith” or “Family,” and each chapter deals not only with Obama’s views on the topic, but his personal experiences dealing with it. In “Republicans and Democrats,” for example, he talks about how the Gingrich Rules bled out from Washington to infect his own state of Illinois, and how hard it was to get anything done when Republicans and Democrats viewed each other as enemies, rather than as different actors in the same play. In “Opportunity,” he talks about meeting the guys over at Google who can’t find enough American software engineers and the auto workers who can’t see their jobs surviving in the new economy. In “Family,” he talks about the challenges he faces as a political husband and father, and the more serious challenges facing other families around the country.

Make no mistake – this book is, first and foremost, an answer to the question “Who Is Barack Obama?” And it’s a very comprehensive answer. We get not only his positions on the issues of the day, but also his personal history (and how it informs his opinions) and a good sense of how the man looks at the world. For an angry, post-Bush Liberal, however, it is immensely, frustratingly even-handed.

You should see me – I’m grinning like an idiot already.

I’ll admit – if I’m feeling a little low, I think about my favorite things: a good book, a thunderstorm on a summer afternoon, sunlight filtered through autumn leaves, and Dick Cheney in an orange jumpsuit and manacles, preferably tarred and feathered. With bells on.

It’s a natural human impulse, I think, the drive to give as good as you get, and after the last eight years of being on the side slandered every time it questioned authority; of being a supporter of elected officials who have been the target of right-wing vitriol since I was in college; of having to defend the idea that government can be a force for good against thirty years of the incessant, endless, Reaganite drumbeat of Government Is Bad, what I really, really want is to see some heads roll. I want shame and ignominy visited upon those who put their own twisted and medieval ideologies ahead of governing the country. I want to see talking heads and pundits begging on the streets for spare change while the rest of us soar into a utopia of rational understanding.

And Barack Obama won’t let me have that. Dammit.

There are a lot of people annoyed with President Obama right now, and not only from the opposition party. There are Democrats who are frustrated with his pace and what they perceive as his lack of action. All of those people really should have read this book before they got behind him. I’m sure they still would have thrown their support to him, but they would have known better what to expect – a centrist, deliberative politician who plays the long game in lieu of scoring empty political points by, just to pick an example out of thin air, sending Karl Rove to Gitmo.

Not a bad role model, if you ask me.

Throughout the book, he emphasizes that while he has indeed picked a side in our political system, he can also see the value in opposing opinions. He knows that there is merit to some GOP ideas, and that they have simply lost their way at this time. Rather than dismiss ideas that don’t match his own, he looks for where his ideas and those intersect, and tries to find some kind of common ground to work from, in the hopes that a synthesis can lead to good governance. He is constantly questioning his own assumptions and trying to examine his own biases, seeing the world in the manner of Atticus Finch. He admits that no real problem has a simple solution, no matter how much we wish it were otherwise. And above all, he knows that hope alone won’t make the world better. Only deliberate, consistent action will lead us to a better country. Hope merely points the way.

Reading this book is a glimpse not only into the mind of Barack Obama but, in some sense, into the mind of everyone who wants to occupy higher office. A great deal of the book focuses not only on his positions and how he has come by them, but what it’s like becoming and then being a lawmaker. He says near the beginning that it takes a certain kind of personality to make it this high in public office. “Few people end up being United States Senators by accident,” he writes. “At a minimum, it requires a certain megalomania, a belief that of all the gifted people in your state, you are somehow uniquely qualified to speak on their behalf….” Along with a burning ambition, he also admits to the other lodestone of campaigners: fear. “Not just fear of losing – although that is bad enough – but fear of total, complete humiliation.”

Describing not only the physical trials that are involved with becoming a Senator but also the emotional and interpersonal ones that come with it, my first thought was, “What sane person would choose this kind of life?”

Oh, the notes I’ve taken…

It’s an illuminating book in many ways. My Inner Cynic has asked me to remind you that this is a book about Barack Obama, written by Barack Obama, and is not necessarily trustworthy in that sense. But the things Obama said in here are very consistent with the things he’s saying now, as long as we control for new information gained between 2006 and now. If I learned anything from this book, it’s that I now have confidence that he’s dealing honestly with the American people (given a certain political value of “honest” of course).

While I still don’t know if he’s going to be able to pull the country up into greatness the way his advance press claimed he would, I am at least confident that he has the nation’s best interests at heart. I like a lot of his ideas, and I think he’s got a good vision for the kind of America that I would enjoy living in someday. He may not get us there, but he can at least get us started.

“I am convinced that whenever we exaggerate or demonize, oversimplify or overstate our case, we lose. Whenever we dumb down the political debate, we lose.”
– Barack Obama, The Audacity of Hope

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Review 191: The Great Derangement

The Great Derangement by Matt Taibbi

There is an essential flaw in human nature that makes us think we’re special. It used to make us think that we were literally the center of the universe, which it turns out we aren’t. It makes us think that we’re all going to grow up to be movie stars and astronauts, which we aren’t; our children are all brilliant and well-behaved, which they aren’t; and that God is on our side, which It isn’t.

Oddly enough, though, there is one place where this boundless optimism is flipped on its head. Every generation is absolutely convinced that this is the nadir of human accomplishment, that we are well and truly screwed and that there has never been a more messed-up, terrible time to live. The past was better, we think, and we look back on the days gone by as a golden age when things were simpler and no one had the kind of troubles that we have today.

When you join us, all will be perfect. Join us. Join us.

Of course, that’s not true. We are healthier, freer, and generally better off than generations before us, who were healthier, freer, and generally better off than the ones before them, and so on. While things certainly aren’t perfect, they’re not nearly as bad as we like to think that they are. If people were able to look at their world with an unjaundiced eye and a fair heart, we would realize that and maybe start living our lives accordingly.

Of course, if we were able to do that, then Matt Taibbi wouldn’t be able to sell his books.

To be fair, the first decade of this century was messed up on a grand scale. Not the same way the 60s were, or the 30s, or the 1860s, but truly twisted and burdensome in their own special way. We had been attacked, seemingly out of nowhere, by a shadowy cabal of extremists who managed to make a laughingstock of our supposed invulnerability. We reacted by flipping out and invading the wrong country and passing reams of knee-jerk legislation designed to chip away at civil liberties wherever they could. Our government, when it wasn’t handing us lies that were about as transparent as a window where the glass has been removed and replaced with nothing but pure, spring-fresh air, was telling us that there was nothing to see here and that the best way to get involved was to go shopping. And if you did have to get involved, you’d better be with us.

Because we know who’s against us. The tehrists.

Overseeing all of this was a simplistic frat boy idiot manchild of a President and the band of Washington technocrats who had been itching to bomb the hell out of the Middle East since the 70s. The media, for its part, was playing along, doing what it was told, and making sure that the people, with whom sovereign power resides in the United States, had no way of knowing what its government was actually doing at any given time.

This could probably be a campaign sign for whatever politician is running near you.

Americans had been lied to over and over again for decades, starting with the post-ironic age of advertising (which Taibbi pinpoints as the Joe Isuzu ads) up to the utterly unswallowable “They hate us for our freedoms” line that we were supposed to believe when it slid, wet, horrible and putrescent from the mouth of George W. Bush. And then, if you raised your hand and asked questions about the story you were expected to buy into, people turned around and accused you of being a faithless traitor. So what are people to do when they can’t trust the narrative that their leaders are giving them?

Why, they turn inward, of course, and build their own narrative. Their own bubble, as it were – a space within which everything makes sense. Everything can be explained, people can be trusted, and all the rules work. It is utterly incomprehensible to outsiders, but that’s okay because outsiders are the whole reason the bubble exists in the first place. As Taibbi discovers, there is far more in common between the far right hyper-Christians and the far left conspiracists than you might expect, and that there are far more of them than you really want to know.

This book is basically two interwoven parts, with a few interludes to keep the story on track. In one part, Taibbi goes down to Texas, uses a fake name and gets involved with a Megachurch in San Antonio. He joins the church to find out what brings these people together in a time when the government and the media can’t be relied upon, and what attracts people to a life of fundamentalist Christianity in the first place. He goes to meetings where demons are cast out, to small group discussions in beautiful Texan homes, and listens to people explain why it is that they’ve given their lives to Christ, something that Taibbi would never do himself, were he not researching a book.

He also finds himself drawn into the shadowy world of the 9/11 Truth movement, a group that believes that – to varying degrees – the Bush administration bears some of the blame for the attacks on New York and Washington D.C. Some believe they knew about it but chose to do nothing, so that they would have a reason to launch their war against Iraq. Others believe that they directly caused the attacks, mining the collapsed buildings and aiming the aircraft. The more elaborate theories involve holograms, missiles and a conspiracy of silence that is continually upheld by thousands of otherwise loyal Americans.

Much like the fundamentalist Christianity, Taibbi immerses himself in Truther culture, trying to find out what it is that keeps them going, even when they – like the Christians – have no real evidence to support what they believe. Even moreso for the Truthers, there is actually a lot of logical, circumstantial and physical evidence that outright debunks their theories, but they soldier on anyway, utterly convinced that they are the only ones in America who haven’t surrendered to the lies of the political and media machines.

So what do these two groups have in common, and what do they say about America?

American politics are, generally, about Us versus Them. All politics, really, but we do it really well. The parties in power do their best to say that they stand for Us against Them, regardless of which party you vote with, but it’s become increasingly evident that the parties in power are not really for Us – they’re for Themselves. They push the same canned platitudes and wedge the same minor issues every election cycle with the sole purpose of keeping their jobs, and that is finally becoming evident to the public. Rather than governing, which is ostensibly their jobs, Our Representatives in Congress are doing what they can to help themselves, their parties and their friends, and this is more and more evident the closer you look. To have them then turn around and say, without a trace of irony, that they’re doing their best for the country they love, that they actually care about the concerns of the voter, is enough to make even the most optimistic Pollyanna turn into a Grade-A cynic.

“A riot is an ungly thing… undt, I tink, that it is chust about time zat ve had vun!!” – Inspector Kemp, Young Frankenstein

But rather than rising up as one and kicking the bastards out, the public turned inwards and went into their bubbles. If the game we’re playing is Us versus Them, then let’s do it right. Now we’re not just one group of people with a certain set of political views, we are the anointed of God or, depending on where you are, the only intelligent people in a world of sheep. And who are They? They are not just corrupt politicians. They are agents of Satan, sent to bring about the end of the world. They are power-hungry chessmasters, bent on ruling with an iron fist.

It’s a world view that makes sense to the people who have chosen to live in it, more sense than the “real” world does.

Now this book was written back in 2006 and a lot has happened since then, so it is very much a book of its time. Since then, we have seen our political theater change in many interesting ways, not the least of which is the Tea Party, which is kind of the coming-out party for a lot of the people who felt they had been left out of the discussion for so long. They’ve had their chance to incubate in the churches and on the internet, and now they’re out in force and ready to change the way politics works. A later addition to the party is the Occupy movement, bound together in its view of a nation run by plutocrats and their puppet government. They’re what happens when the Left sits in the echo chamber for a while.

Whether they will ultimately be successful is still up for argument, but so far, well… They’re all kind of freaking me out.

The take-home message from the book is this: There have been far worse times to be in the United States, and our nation has seen its way through far greater trials. But each one is different, born of different causes and with different effects, and we do not have the benefit of being able to look back and see how everything works out. It is much easier these days to find people you agree with and isolate yourself with them, and every time Congress or the President or the Media lets us down, it’s more and more tempting to do so.

But that way lies madness. The madness of an evangelical movement that is anticipating the end of days, the madness of a conspiracy of vast and perfect proportions. The answer is not to isolate ourselves with the like-minded but to seek out those with whom we disagree and make sure that we’re all living in the same world, no matter what it’s like. Rather than dividing ourselves into two giant camps of Us and Them, pointed and aimed by people whose only interest is in seeing us rip each other to shreds, maybe we can finally see what it is that unifies everyone.

Once we can do that, once we can fight the derangement, perhaps we can see our way to making our country into the one we want it to be.

“Washington politicians basically view the People as a capricious and dangerous enemy, a dumb mob whose only interesting quality happens to be their power to take away politicians’ jobs… When the government sees its people as the enemy, sooner or later that feeling gets to be mutual. And that’s when the real weirdness begins.”
– Matt Taibbi, The Great Derangement

Matt Taibbi on Wikipedia
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Filed under american history, analysis, Christianity, culture, economics, Matt Taibbi, memoir, nonfiction, politics, religion, society

Review 189: Men at Arms

Men at Arms by Terry Pratchett

When last we left our intrepid Ankh-Morpork Night Watch, things were looking up. This is a nice change from the gutter’s-eye-view we had at the beginning of Guards! Guards!. Things have changed in the time between books. The Watch has a new headquarters, much nicer than its old one, thanks to Lady Sibyl Ramkin, the fiance of Captain Sam Vimes. She comes from an ancient and respectable family, has more money than anyone else in the city, and loves Vimes despite his deep-seated curmudgeonliness, if that is a word.

What’s more, the Watch is taking on new recruits, as ordered by the Patrician. Ankh-Morpork is a city with a very diverse population, and the Patrician believes that the Watch should reflect that diversity. Now we have a Watch open to anyone – trolls, dwarfs, the undead, apes, women – who wants to join, or who doesn’t want to get their heads beaten in. Carrot Ironfoundersson has become a beloved figure in the city – he knows everyone and everyone knows him. All in all, things are looking up.

But there are those who are of a mind that things would be better if only Ankh-Morpork had a king….

Of course, some kings only make things nightmarishly worse…

This is a recurring theme in the early Watch books – the irrational need for royalty. Although, that’s not entirely accurate. Pratchett is a British writer, of course, and he’s got the Queen to look up to, but she doesn’t have all that much real power. Certain people in Ankh-Morpork are looking for a sovereign – not to wave at them and make a Hogswatch speech, but to actually take over their city. They hope, in their hearts, that a king will solve everything. In that way, this recurring theme is not so much about royalty versus populism, but rather the ability to control one’s own life versus allowing someone else to control it for you. The idea that one has responsibility for one’s own actions and well-being is dominant in the Guards books, no more so than in this one.

There is a man named Edward d’Eath, and he has a vision. He is the last of an aristocratic line whose power has declined in this age of guilds and merchants. He looks to the past and sees it as better, brighter than the future. He knows that, if he can just do one little thing, Ankh-Morpork – and he – will be restored to glory. That one little thing, of course, is to put a king on the throne.

Not just any king, of course. The fools who thought to use a dragon to set up a puppet king showed how ineffectual that would be. No, this would only work with a real king, a descendant of the ancient kings of Ankh-Morpork. Find him, put him on the throne, and everything will finally be set straight.

I like to imagine it looks like this.

Of course, that doesn’t work out nearly as well as Edward hopes. He steals a mysterious artifact to set his plan in motion – the Gonne. It is a weapon created by one of the most brilliant minds on the Disc, a man kept peacefully imprisoned by Ankh-Morpork’s Patrician. It is a device that should have been destroyed, but was instead put on display so that the Assassins, the bringers of death, could look at it and say “Beware this thing.”

Like I said, this book is all about making choices in life. Vimes is engaged to be married to Sybil Ramkin, and thus his days as the Captain of the Watch are numbered. He may be in a better position than he was in the last book – having someone try to kill you is always refreshing, after all – but he knows that the life he’s giving up, with all of its pain and trouble and heartache, is the life that he needs to live.

Corporal Carrot needs to choose how best to serve the city of Ankh-Morpork. He is an excellent policeman, probably the only man on the Disc who could get in the middle of an incipient troll/dwarf race riot and shame them out of killing each other. People do what he says – he is, in his own words, “good at being obeyed.” If he wanted to, he could run the city and the city would be glad to let him do it. But is that the best thing for the city?

How could you not trust a chin like that? (art by Simon Lissaman)

The troll Detritus and the dwarf Cuddy both have choices – will they conform to the ancient animosity that stands between their two races, or will they overcome it for the common good?

And then there’s the Gonne itself. As a weapon, it is frighteningly powerful – much more so than the standard-issue crossbow – and as a firearm, however primitive, it represents a vast escalation in the way violence is done. What’s more, since this is a fantasy novel, the Gonne has something of a mind of its own. Its wielders hear it talking to them, convincing them that the only thing standing between them and what they want are a few simple deaths – something the Gonne can easily provide. It even uses the old NRA saw verbatim – Gonnes don’t kill people. People kill people.

But people have a choice, perhaps more of a choice than the characters of these books do. The Gonne controls them, the trigger practically pulls itself, and when you’re holding it, you can easily understand how a simple shot, one simple thing, could change the world. For the better, of course – always for the better.

Pratchett’s views on guns and their efficacy aside, it’s a very gripping book. There’s the mystery of it, of course – who has the Gonne, and why are they using it – but it’s also a story about characters and the choices they make for themselves. My absolute favorites in this are Detritus and Cuddy. Trolls and dwarfs have a famous antagonism, stretching back to the ancient battle of Koom Valley (the only battle in the multiverse where both sides ambushed each other) and it would be very easy for them to fall into simple, culturally conditioned roles.

They’re better buddy cops than you’ll likely to see in the movies, anyway.

While it may be a cliche to say that they found common ground, learned to look past their own prejudices and learned to respect – nay, to like one another, that’s exactly what they did. It is due to Pratchett’s skill as a writer and as a creator of characters that we come to deeply care for this relationship, investing a lot of hope in it. We know that if Cuddy and Detritus can become friends, then maybe there’s hope for everyone. This emotional investment pays off, and Pratchett reaches deep into our hearts at the end, showing that just because you start with a cliche, it doesn’t mean it can’t have depth.

Of course, if you’re not quite as analytical as I am, you can still enjoy it as a good murder mystery. Watching Vimes and company piece together the crime is always fun, because there’s always a twist somewhere that you never saw coming. And Vimes really is one of my favorite Discworld characters – he’s cynical and world-weary, but he still has enough idealism within him to carry him through those times that look like they’re trying to kill him.

All in all, a great book and one that’s highly recommended. The earlier Discworld books are largely stand-alone, so if you’ve never read any of the series before, don’t worry – you can pick this one up and you won’t really miss anything. You may, however, find yourself driving back to the bookstore to get as many other Discworld books as you can. I’m just saying….

Generally, I meet people before they’re buried. The ones I meet after they’ve been buried tend to be a bit over-excited and disinclined to discuss things.
– Death, Men at Arms

Terry Pratchett on Wikipedia
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Filed under choices, death, detective fiction, Discworld, fantasy, friendship, guns, humor, murder, mystery, police, revolution, society, Terry Pratchett

Review 180: The Last Colony and Zoe’s Tale

The Last Colony and Zoë’s Tale by John Scalzi

In Old Man’s War, John Scalzi brought us a new future, vast in scope, amazingly advanced and yet horribly familiar at the same time. Humans have spread out through space, snatching up habitable planets as fast as they can and setting up new colonies to thrive or perish. Back on Earth, most of the population is fed just enough information about the greater universe to ensure a steady supply of colonists and soldiers, but not enough to make them aware of all the cool stuff they’re missing.

Unfortunately, we are not the only ones out there who want this real estate. Dozens of alien species are out there, and most of them want the same worlds that we do. We – and they – will fight tooth and nail to get and keep the precious few worlds that will support life. Existence out in space is much like existence on Earth – a constant struggle for scarce resources, and the species who is best adapted to get and keep planets will be the one that, for lack of a better word, wins.

To keep human colonists alive, the Colonial Union has created the Colonial Defense Force. These soldiers, taken from senior citizens of Earth, are given new, superhuman bodies, terrifyingly effective weapons, and just enough training to make sure they can defeat the horrifying things that they are sure to face. John Perry, a widower from Earth, joins the CDF and becomes one of the few Earthlings to learn about the wider universe into which humanity has spread. Sarcastic and quick-witted, Perry learns a lot more than he bargained for – among other things, that his dead wife’s DNA had been used to make the Special Forces soldier called Jane Sagan.

In The Ghost Brigades, we follow Sagan through the shadowy and violent world of the Special Forces. Where the regular CDF soldiers have bodies that would make them superheroes on Earth, the special forces are on a whole other level. Grown from the DNA of people who did not survive to become CDF soldiers, the special forces are where the newest and most interesting genetic modifications are tried out. Better vision, faster reflexes, a nearly telepathic connection with their squadmates, and even in some cases whole new body plans are all options for the Special Forces soldier. They are single-minded, deadly, and proud, knowing their purpose in the universe almost from the moment of their “birth.” What they lack, however, is the years of living that ordinary humans have and all that comes with that. This makes the Special Forces even more separate from the rest of the CDF – human, but not quite, yet essential to the survival of humanity.

Jane Sagan is one of the people trying to find Charles Boutin, a brilliant scientist who has vanished, taking a dangerous amount of information on the CDF’s mind transference process with him. Their worst fear – that Boutin will try to sell that technology to their enemies – isn’t even close to how bad the truth is. Boutin hates the Colonial Union with a passion and devises a plan that will make all human colonies everywhere completely vulnerable to attack. When he dies, the only thing Jane and her squad can do is escape, but not before saving Boutin’s young daughter, Zoë, from the terrifying Obin. More on them later, though.

It’s… It’s a space thing.

Their days of adventuring over, Perry and Sagan marry, creating a partnership that sounds impossible, if you stop to think about it for too long – a man well into his 80s, with the body of a 30-year-old, marrying a woman cloned from the DNA of his former wife, and who is technically still too young to get a driver’s license. They love each other, though, and are willing to bring Zoë into their family. Following their discharge from the CDF, they got new, normal bodies and accepted a position on the oddly-named colony world of Huckleberry. In the town of New Goa, John is the ombudsman, which means having to deal with all the petty problems that come with a small town, and Jane is the constable. They live with Zoë and her two Obin bodyguards in what could certainly be considered a good life.

So you know that won’t last.

They are tapped to lead a new colony – a new type of colony, actually. Whereas previous colonists had all come from Earth, the new colony of Roanoke will be founded by representatives from ten of the oldest human colonies. It’s a second generation colonization, which would be a fantastic milestone if it weren’t for one tiny little detail: the Conclave.

Having been willing to fight pretty much everyone in their area of space, the Colonial Union hasn’t made many friends. In fact, they have damn few. Their enemies, sensing a common threat, have banded together into an organization called The Conclave, which is working to end interplanetary war through a representative government of sorts. One of their first acts was to forbid colonization by any non-Conclave members. Unauthorized colonies that resist the Conclave are vaporized.

Humanity, always the contrarians, wants to flout the Conclave’s rule and undermine its presumed authority. Thus begins an intricate web of deception and misinformation and scheming that all centers around the colonists at Roanoke, who know nothing of what’s going on over their heads. There are a few clues, though, and when John starts pulling at loose threads, a whole tapestry of intrigue is revealed to him. Roanoke may be vital to the survival of humans in space, but that doesn’t mean that the colony itself has to survive.

The reason I’m putting these two books together is because they’re really one book. The Last Colony is a fantastic read, where every time the plot turns it’s like a punch in the gut. The tension never really lets up, and every time we think things are going to get better, that’s the cue for them to get a whole lot worse.

Taking narrative shortcuts makes the Baby Jesus cry, Johnny!!

After finishing the book, however, Scalzi got a light wrist-slapping by his readers for taking a few shortcuts. One is that an indigenous, intelligent life form is discovered on Roanoke, which cause the deaths of several colonists… and then they vanish, never to be seen again. From the description, they sounded pretty cool, and I was disappointed that Scalzi had just let them kind of drift away so quietly. The other problem was with Zoë – Perry comes up with an interesting end-run around the Colonial Union, one which involves Zoë pulling rank with the Obin, who revere her as the daughter of the man who gave them consciousness. She gets sent off with her Obin bodyguards, partly to get help and also to get her out of harm’s way, and returns twenty pages later with a piece of alien technology that just happens to be exactly what they need to win the final, climactic confrontation against the Conclave. The author knew he couldn’t put all that into the book without producing something of doorstop proportions, so he “did a little hand waving and hoped [he] wouldn’t get caught.”

This is what you get for cultivating an intelligent readership, Scalzi.

The other reason for writing Zoë’s Tale, of course, was that Zoë was a really interesting character. The daughter of a man who would have betrayed humanity, and at the same time brought consciousness to the Obin – a species that had been uplifted long ago to have intelligence without consciousness. The Obin revere Zoë, and would do anything to protect her. Under these circumstances you might think that she would grow up kind of weird, but she actually ends up pretty cool. We get to see her in action a few times during The Last Colony, and those few times are more than enough to make you want to read a whole book about her.

That book, then, is Zoë’s Tale, a re-telling of the events of The Last Colony from the perspective of the most important teenage girl in the known universe.

This is what I imagine being a teenage girl is like. How’d I do?

It’s hard enough being a teenage girl here and now (or so I’m told), so imagine how much harder it must be when your father is one of the greatest traitors to humanity; when your adoptive parents are ex-soldiers, and your mother is technically younger than you are; when an entire species depends on you as a model of what it means to be a conscious, self-aware being; and when you suddenly have to leave your home to start a new colony on a world that no one has ever heard of.

That would be enough to mess anyone up.

Fortunately, Zoë is a tough girl. She’s bright, resilient and sarcastic. She enjoys a deep inner life, knows how to taunt boys, and keeps her head in a crisis. In short, the kind of teenage daughter we would all want to have, if we wanted to have teenage daughters. She and her friends do what teenagers do best: push the boundaries of their new home, have fights, fall in love, and feel big feelings about everything. Through her, we learn a lot more about the indigenous life forms of Roanoke, and we find out much more about the universe at large when she is sent to find a way to save her family and friends.

While Zoë’s Tale was very enjoyable, I find it hard to evaluate fairly. I love Zoë, and her friends are great characters as well. Scalzi does a fantastic job at writing the intricate webs of angst that make up our teenage years, fraught with emotional land mines and exciting new feelings. Her relationship with her boyfriend Enzo is very well handled, as is the ever-shifting dynamic of friendship between her and the other teens of the colony. There are some beautiful, raw moments of emotion in the book that made me – the man whose heart was long ago replaced by a spinning, cold lump of stone – stop for a moment and say, “Wow.”

What I can’t fairly say is whether or not Zoë’s Tale works as a stand-alone book. As I read it, I was constantly filling in gaps from my knowledge of The Last Colony, which made everything make sense. If I had my way, I would wipe my memory of both books and then read them again in reverse order to see if they still worked. Perhaps one day, if Scalzi has a lot of free time, he will integrate the two into a larger single volume. I wouldn’t envy him that work, but I think the resulting book would be a brilliant read.

One of the things I like about the work of John Scalzi is that I can always recommend him without reservation, so I’m doing that now. If you like good science fiction, an engaging plot and wonderful characters, pick up The Last Colony and Zoë’s Tale. You won’t regret it.

“Being from Earth in this universe is like being a small-town kid who gets on the bus, goes to the big city and spends his entire afternoon gawking at all the tall buildings. Then he gets mugged for the crime of marveling at this strange new world, which has such things in it, because the things in it don’t have much time or sympathy for the new kid in town, and they’re happy to kill him for what he’s got in his suitcase.”
– John Scalzi, The Last Colony

“You and I are so totally going to be best friends.”
“Are we? I don’t know. What are the hours?”
“The hours are terrible. And the pay is even worse.”
“Will I be treated horribly?”
“You will cry yourself to sleep on a nightly basis.”
“Fed crusts?”
“Of course not. We feed the crusts to the dogs.”
“Oh, very nice. Okay, you pass. We can be best friends.”
“Good. Another life decision taken care of.”
“Yes. Now, come on. No point wasting all this attitude on ourselves. Let’s go find something to point and laugh at.”
– Zoë and Gretchen, Zoë’s Tale

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Filed under aliens, colonization, coming of age, family, humor, John Scalzi, revolution, science fiction, teenagers, war, young adult

Review 167: A People’s History of the United States

A People’s History of the United States by Howard Zinn

History is, in its way, a fiction.

While it is made up of facts, things that are verifiable or at least reliably accepted as being what really happened, our understanding of history rests on a certain assumption that doesn’t always hold up – that what we are reading or hearing is The Truth. It’s how we learn about history when we’re kids – that this happened and that happened, and that’s all we really need to know.

The problem, however, is that what we got in our history books wasn’t the entire story. Oh, it was true, for a given value of “true,” but the historian who wrote the book did so with a specific narrative in mind, one that fit his or her perception of the past and which – more importantly – would sell textbooks to hundreds of schools across the country. The history that we get from those books is designed to appeal to the sensibilities of a populace that is already inclined to think well of its nation, and rarely deviates from the theme. While they do try to note the excesses, injustices and impropriety of the past, they tend to bury it in the glorious achievements of governments and industry.

Unfortunately, doing so means that there’s a lot of history that gets left on the cutting room floor. Incidents, people, whole populations get brushed aside because either there’s not enough room for them or because telling their story in detail ruins the mood that the historian is trying to set – usually one of bright optimism for a good and just nation.

There is nothing inherently wrong with this approach, either. An historian cannot practically include all of the historical viewpoints, good and bad, into a book meant to be used for only 180 days out of the year. So out of expedience, if not a conscious desire to tell an uplifting tale, they write books that look upon our past as favorably as possible, while including just enough criticism of our failures to fend off any serious accusations of bias.

As Zinn tells us, though, there’s no such thing as an historian without bias. Every historian has a story to tell, and Zinn has decided that he doesn’t want to tell the one we’re all used to hearing.

He starts in much the same place as most American history books – with the coming of Christopher Columbus to the New World. Immediately he reminds us that Columbus’ mission was not one of exploration but of commerce, and that the first question he asked the natives of what he would label Hispanola was, “Where is your gold?”

It all went downhill from there.

Reading this book, it would be very easy to get depressed. I can see how those who were brought up with a healthy dose of American Exceptionalism (the idea that the United States obeys different rules from the rest of the world and, more importantly, cannot do wrong) would really dislike this book. It is page after page of lies, misdeeds, cruelty, greed and deception. It is the story of a nation built not on the principle that all men are created equal, but that all men must be leashed to the yoke of the capitalist overclass. It’s a tale of genocide and oppression, of revolts both peaceful and violent, and it never lets up for a moment.

To his credit, Zinn tells us right up front that he’s going to take the side of the oppressed, the dispossessed and the put-down, and there’s no way you can tell that story without it being really depressing. It’s pretty clear pretty quickly, though, where his sympathies lie:

My viewpoint, in telling the history of the United States, is different: that we must not accept the memory of states as our own. Nations are not communities and never have been. The history of any country, presented as the history of a family, conceals fierce conflicts of interest (sometimes exploding, most often repressed) between conquerors and conquered, masters and slaves, capitalists and workers, dominators and dominated in race and sex. And in such a world of conflict, a world of victims and executioners, it is the job of thinking people, as Albert Camus suggested, not to be on the side of the executioners.

Hey, even executioners got problems, buddy...

His portrayal of the underclass, rebellious or not, is one of suffering nobility, and the System as a deliberately malevolent entity. Any good that it does is simply whatever was necessary to maintain its power, and the above quote speaks to that. The parallel structure that he uses effectively groups all of the upper class into the “persecutor” role, and the lower class into the “victims.” And while there is some truth to that – human history, after all, is a long story of rich and powerful elites governing poor and powerless people – it is painting with too broad a brush, in my opinion. He seems to work from the premise that all those with power are bad, and so those without must therefore be good.

As much as I wish that admitting bias was an excuse for it, it isn’t. It does a disservice to all involved to flatten your view of the American class system into a two-dimensional shadow play. Not all of the populist agitators were good and noble people, nor were all politicians cunning manipulators. Just keep that in mind as you read.

It’s a sobering read, though, to say the least. The best simile I could come up with is that it’s like watching your parents have sex. It’s something that you always suspected went on, but you could have gone your whole life without being presented with the reality of it. So it is no surprise that, after reading this book, some people become absolutely insufferable, cynical and disillusioned.

If you’ve already gone through that stage of your political thinking, however, you find something else in this book – hope. It’s something you have to dig for, but it is there, buried in the larger narrative that Zinn is telling us.

Not sure he saw this coming...

Given the amount of detail he goes into, it’s very easy to lose sight of the larger picture at work. Zinn details slave rebellions, gives stories of workers pushed to the extremes of human existence, soldiers thrown away for nothing, and entire segments of the population ignored or actively persecuted. But alongside these horror stories come tales of resistance. Whether it’s the quiet contemplation by a poor white farmer over whether he might have more in common with his black neighbors than his white landlords, riots of prisoners and guards against a corrupt prison system, or the militant, city-wide shutdowns organized by the Wobblies, the people can only be pushed so far. And while the Powers That Be are very good at figuring out how to distract, scare or defy the people, they eventually do make changes for the better, and everyone benefits a little bit.

Inasmuch as this book is a chronicle of America’s misdeeds over the last few centuries, it is also a tale of Americans’ triumphs. It is a tribute to the will of the people who, no matter how difficult it may have been, decided to stand up and demand respect from the men who held the reins of power. It is a testament to the women who wanted equality, the socialists who wanted a better world, the workers who wanted safe jobs at living wages, the blacks who wanted to be full citizens, and the Indians who wanted the wrongs of the past redressed.

Not everybody has gotten what they wanted – America is still very much a work in progress, and there is bound to be some backsliding as we go. What Zinn shows in this book is that no matter how bad the American government can be or how greedy American business might become, the American people want what’s best for themselves and, when the time comes, will stand up and shout for it. Given enough time, and enough courage, The United States will continue to be a better and better nation, and perhaps someday – someday – it will finally fulfill our expectations for it.

“Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will….”
– Frederick Douglass, 1857

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Filed under american history, criticism, culture, history, Howard Zinn, nonfiction, revolution, society, The United States


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Rick Ross’ ex boo, Shateria, & new boo wear same dress to his Birthday Bash

Now, if this ain’t plain ol’ messy, I don’t know what is!

Rick Ross celebrated his birthday last night in ATL with some A-list celebrities. We know the “FerrariFatboy” does everything on a grand scale; however, last night it got messy, really messy.

His ex boo, Shateria, came with him as his date wearing a beautiful Balmain gown. The real LOL came about when his new boo, Court, posted pictures in the SAME DRESS. Ross’ newly ex-fiance, Lira, thought it was real funny! Is Rick Ross this much of a ladies man? I did not know.  The real question is was this done on purpose? Did “the Boss” buy these ladies the same dress knowing they were both coming to the party?

Honestly, I would be highly upset, if I were Cort. You know I’m coming to your party but you’re making an entrance with another chick? Shady. Or perhaps, it’s all good. According the Skrawberry, Rick’s other boo (GEESH), “he loves them all the same,” and she’s cool with it. HA! Maybe her invite got lost in the mail with Lira’s. LMAO!


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Open laptop… start typing… get distracted… (repeat 3x).  I don’t know about other bloggers, but for me, this is what happens.  I love to blog, love to write, love to share, but actually putting it down on “paper” (or in this case into my blog) is a totally different episode.

During this morning’s edition of perusing the internet and social media (aka my morning paper), I came across a quote that said: “Your Story Will Heal Someone”.  I put my scroller finger down and thought about that.  ‘Your Story’ doesn’t always have to be something traumatic that has happened to you, sometimes it could be daily struggles that you encounter that may parallel what someone else is going through.

I have lots of stories to share and will as I continue to develop this platform, but I think that in the context of today’s blog topic, it’s more a question of how bad do you want it?  I have been wanting to blog for ages.  Started. Stopped. Started. Stopped.  But this time, I said to myself, “Self, do it. Make it happen, the time is now.  If not now, then when?”  And that has really kept me focused.  It may seem easy if you don’t know what goes on behind the scenes but believe me, between figuring out what I want to discuss (after all, this

It may seem easy if you don’t know what goes on behind the scenes but believe me, between figuring out what I want to discuss (after all, this is ‘The Misc Etc Blog’. Everything is fair game!), to what graphic I want to include, etc.  Before you know it, quite some time may have passed.

So you might be asking, why Do or Die?  That’s a ‘lil dramatic, Deej isn’t it?  Actually, I mean it in the sense that if I don’t do it, my momentum, my drive, and ultimately this brand will die.  That’s definitely not the type of reputation I want to build for myself.  So each week, I make sure that I come here and say something meaningful, funny, uplifting, introspective so that my readers know I’m here with them.  Not just when I feel like it, but always.  It’s not always about YOU.  That’s the problem with everyone.  All they can see is me, me, me. I have people behind the scenes holding me accountable.  Telling me they came on the site and haven’t seen anything new.  Or that they went to my Instagram page hoping to see a new post.  They say the thing about successful people is that no one ever sees or remembers the struggle they endured to get to the top, they just remember them being at the top (I’m paraphrasing), but either way, I’m proud of myself.

If have a thought or dream or big idea, act on it as best you can.  You never know where it will land you.  Make sure you keep at it, kick the naysayers in the throat and keep digging away.  It’s Do or Die!

If this was helpful to you in any way, please feel free to share it.   Sharing is caring!

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My Mucous

By Isa Hopkins

I am nine years old, a star student, not terribly popular, in the fourth grade, standing in front of the class to begin my report about Nebraska.  I have an odd affection for Nebraska, although I have never been there.  I’ve been coughing a lot lately, and I clear my throat to begin but the only sound I can emit is a deep bullfrog croak.

Everyone in the class bursts into laughter, long and loud, and I stand alone.

It is my freshman year of college, and I am sick.  I don’t cough as much now as I did when I was little but it still comes sometimes, and this time it happened after a miniature purple plastic inflatable bong proved an insufficient filter for my lungs.  I can feel it in my chest, a solid morass of sick, the thing that’s causing all this trouble moving up my windpipe.  When I finally cough it out into the sink it is beige like a discontinued M&M, half an inch in diameter.  It is so obscene against the porcelain that I call my friend in to come look before I rinse it away.

It takes almost thirty seconds to fully dissolve, and I stick to hookah from here on out.

I am fourteen years old, just beginning high school and attempting to craft a new and more rebellious identity for myself.  I wear overlong jeans covered in chalk-dust and combat boots and a necklace made of paper clips, and inject “fuck” and “shit” into conversation as frequently as possible.  Kurt Cobain has been dead four years but still I carry the torch for grunge.

I research carefully all the accoutrements of this new identity and strive to acquire them; I listen to the right music, watch the right movies and TV shows, draw the right kind of disturbing pictures.  I appear apathetic but really I’m trying very, very hard.  I decide to take up cigarettes, to complete the image, but every time I try it ends badly, an embarrassing and extended coughing fit.

I will never be as cool as I want to be.

It is the seventh grade; Mrs. Lewis’s class.  It’s the middle of autumn, just at the inflection point of temperature change that always alights my airways.  Most of the class is distracted, group work, and the volume is sufficient that my coughing is not widely noticed, unheeded by those across the room.

My chest is suddenly lighter, and those across the room do notice when something wet and strangely opaque lands on Brian J’s desk.  I look away hurriedly, feign innocence, but I’ve been coughing up weird shit for four years now and they know where it came from.

Chronic tracheitis, the ear/nose/throat specialist told my mother and me.  I was nine years old; the appointment was made after the Nebraska incident.  Sleep with a humidifier in the room, she said, and just cough all the phlegm out.  There’s nothing we can really do for you medically, she said, but the condition should lessen once you hit adolescence.

She was not wrong; when I was in grade school and junior high the coughing was a constant from September to April, pulmonary reprieve granted only in the sticky Midwestern summertime.  People who heard me on the phone thought I was a sixty-year-old pack-a-day smoker, and people who heard me in person thought I had the croup.  It lessened in high school, though; the coughing came in fits and starts and seemed to occur only in conjunction with logical antecedents—a cold, a cigarette.  The slide from autumn into winter was always the most prone time of year, but beyond that fraught seasonal navigation I no longer had much cause to pay close attention to what I coughed up, to note whether it was dun or neon yellow or white, stringy or solid, all that impolite body-knowledge that only sick people and doctors can appreciate.

Most people do not like to talk about it, but I can read my spit like tea leaves.

I am sixteen years old, at a frat party in Pittsburgh.  I earned my cred with the frat boys by swigging Jack Daniels from the bottle before I even got to the front door but now I am with my own friends, a circle of us standing in the backyard.  Most everyone has a red cup in hand and a pipe is passed around.  These are my summer-friends, and they have no cause to know how hard it is for me to inhale anything.

I light the pipe; it is my first time trying marijuana.  I suck longer than I need to, an immense hit, always trying to prove myself, and I manage to hold the smoke in my lungs just long enough to impress everyone before the coughing begins.

It is fourth grade again.  We have put the humidifier in my room; every night I replace the water and fall asleep to its whine.  It helps, I suppose, at least as much as the cough drops that I am constantly sucking down, but each time I go to bed I am still racked with tremors and phlegm.

My parents are already stressed over other things—my mother has leukemia, is in and out of the hospital, and my father’s employment is tenuous.  I could make my way through their delicate world quietly but for my cough, and it is my father’s voice that I hear.

“Stop coughing, goddamnit!” he shouts into the darkness.  “Let us get some goddamn sleep!”

Then: I cough.

I can’t help it.

I try to form words, to apologize, to explain, but find my throat too raw for the effort.

In another life, Isa Hopkins was an internationally successful, gender-binary-defying pop star.  In this life, she lives in Tupac’s hometown and edits the quarterly absurdist humor journal Hobo Pancakes.
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Pinoccio Project #1 – Look Ma, no wires!

Pinoccio is an Arduino-compatible, web-enabled, wireless mesh networking ecosystem.  Check out their website for more information, these little boards are awesome!!

Pinoccio Field Scout (Lego for scale)

Pinoccio Field Scout (Lego for scale)

One of the first things that amazed me about Pinoccio was its ScoutScript feature.  This lets you run live commands on your Scout without recompiling!  As an embedded engineer I’m so used to the code->compile->download->review process that being able to simply type a command on a microcontroller and see the result is amazing.  See this demo I stole from the Pinoccio homepage:

As you can see, there are a lot of things available to play with – temperature, battery charge (that’s the 94%), an RGB LED on the Scout’s PCB, and all the digital and analogue pins are right there too.

I’m a little obsessed with the temperature of things, so I’ll be doing a couple of projects on measuring various temperatures around my home.  Let’s have a look at the Pinoccio and then set it up for some data collection.

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Hello World

Computers should be easy, right?  Well, providing someone behind the scenes is doing the grunt work, they are.  Most people are unaware of the level of complexity under the surface.  As an embedded engineer I am closer to the metal than most. I’ve made a living out of turning diodes, resistors, capacitors and microcontrollers into something useful.  Nothing is terribly useful in isolation, so you invariably want to communicate with it.  That needs computer software; I do that too.  All of this takes hours.  Hours and hours and hours.  Then, once it works as intended (a stage I call barely working), it needs to be tested in a way NOT intended.  Let’s face it, the first thing somebody is going to do is type in the wrong thing, connect the wrong wire, or connect the power backwards and blow it up.  Manuals are only consulted under a cloud of blue-grey smoke (that’s the magic smoke inside the chips, it’s surprisingly expensive to put back in and this upsets most people).

Of course, in the customer’s eyes they can do no wrong.  What separates an average engineer from a good one (in my opinion) is the good one tries to break his creation as soon as he’s made it. Reliability is a cornerstone of good engineering, and a device that only works when all the stars and planets align, and people use it as the designer intended, is going to take around 5 minutes on average to fall over.

The problem with consumerism is people want things yesterday, and they want it cheap.  They will buy the gadget that has been rushed to market and released barely working and then have an experience like the xkcd comic above.  The challenge is to find the happy medium, where barely working becomes good enough and then everybody wins.  After good enough you get almost perfect and this is an excellent device that has been well-developed but took its time getting to market.  It usually costs more and this is my favourite type of device because it works brilliantly.  However, it seems most people shop primarily on price and few are willing to pay a premium for something amazing.  This is unfortunate as excellence is what drives us forwards and it is important to seek it out.  We didn’t land on the moon by being average.

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Keto Pork Rind Pizza Crust

This delicious keto pizza crust recipie is SO easy. You can have this mixed, rolled out, and baked in less than 20 minutes! A must have for those days when only pizza will do 🙂

Note: Feel free to double this recipe to make a bigger pizza, just make sure that you have a large enough cookie sheet or pizza pan to roll the dough out really thin!

What you’ll need:

 1/4 cup ground pork rinds (I used a food processor)

1/4 cup powdered parm cheese

1 egg

Italian seasoning to taste

Onion powder to taste

Pinch of Garlic salt

How to make it:

Combine   all ingredients and mix until a dough forms.

Place   on greased baking sheet. I used spray organic olive oil but you can use coconut oil etc.

Use  a mason jar to gently roll out the dough to make a large circle. Make sure you roll out the dough very thin**. If you do not the pizza will be too rich from the fat in the pork rinds. Rolling it out very thin makes for a crunchy, almost cracker like crust with an amazing flavor.

Bake   at 350° for about 12 minutes or until the crust is golden brown. Remove from oven and add desired pizza toppings. Turn oven up to broil and place pizza back into the oven until cheese is golden and bubbly.

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Scrapped Rita Concept Art for Power Rangers Movie by Matt Frank

Source: Comic Book Resources

After the movie design for Alpha 5 was revealed, there is some new concept art released to the internet of the evil space witch, Rita Repulsa.

Concept Art for the Power Rangers Movie from artists such as Greg Semkow and Alex Ruiz of the T-Rex Zord, Alpha, Zordon, and Rita have been floating around the internet, along with concept art for the movie logo for a little over a year.

Now, here’s some new Rita concept art by artist, Matt Frank, that was scrapped. While the proposed directors for Semkow and Ruiz’s concept art has not been named, Frank explained that his art was for script writer, Max Landis.

Landis (who wrote the movie, Chronicle) originally worked on the initial script for the Power Rangers Movie. Over time the script has changed and now John Gatins will be credited with the screenplay  with the story going through treatments by Matt Sazama & Burk Sharpless, and Michele Mulroney & Kieran Mulroney. Zack Stentz & Ashley Miller also worked on the movie script.

Frank explained his Rita design on Facebook (and tumblr), which he drew back in 2013:

Max Landis approached me back in 2013 to do some concept art for #PowerRangers when he was doing a script treatment. I had other obligations at the time and could only do a quick Rita, so I pulled from his concept of the “ancient evil” and made a kind of “Xeno-Rita” – enjoy!

With the design reveal of Rita Repulsa played by Elizabeth Banks, it’s evident that the movie could have moved in an entirely different direction.

Rita Concept Art by Greg Semkow:

Rita Concept Art by Matt Frank:

Elizabeth Banks as Rita Repulsa: