Category Archives: books

Book and aircraft

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As promised – not much original content – snapshots and linkage, mainly…

Reid wrote a great post on the Antonov An-124 over at Querencia and Pluvialis responded with a funny Simpson’s clip and word of a potential killer An-225 picture. We get an An-124 stopping by occasionally down the way at Pease, but I’ve never seen one in the sky. I have seen C-5s flying in and out and Pluve’s Douglas Adams quote is exactly right. A clip of a Newington, NH landing and a picture of Maine’s answer to the Spruce Moose – a DC-3 floatplane (largest floatplane ever, I believe) are my feeble contributions.

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I saw The World Without Us on Kevin Kelly’s Cool Tools page yesterday and fell over it again today on kfmonkey (Rogers also saw the Cool Tools link). It looks interesting – a post-crash companion to 1491, perhaps?

Free books…

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…are good, even if the reason they are free for the taking is bittersweet. H (the previous owner) is retiring to his ranch outside of Cody, WY – was culling his library to prepare for the move – and put quite a few books out for vultures like me. H was the person who pointed me at Ivan Doig many years ago – that, in and of itself, is a debt I doubt I’ll be able to repay.

Marlowe day!

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May 30, 1593 is either the day that Christopher Marlowe was killed by Ingram Frizer after arguing over who’d pick up the tab or the day he faked his death and was spirited off to the continent. I’m not a big one for conspiracy theories; they seem to me to have a lot in common with ‘not a sparrow falls’ religions – the desire for some kind of purpose underlying the random horrible (and wonderful) things that happen. That being said, you have to admit that the Marlovian’s theory is quite the rippin’ tale. Whether you like the theory or not, the connection to Francis Walsingham looks quite likely and from there it’s just one more hop to the preeminent cryptographer of the day, Thomas Phelippes. Rakehells, spies and code breakers – sounds like a reason to celebrate the day to me!

Saturday AM cleanup

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Loose ends…

I’m having some fun with twitter – a microblogging tool (or a social networking tool, or a moblogging tool, or…). There’s it’s ‘as intended’ use, which is pretty darn cool; you can issue 140 character (maximum) status updates from a cell phone, IM client or the web. I love food updates and stray thoughts- good stuff. There are also people thinking about what else they can do with twitter – I’m following Zombie Attack – dispatches from the front line of the zombie wars.

Random synapse fires sympathetically – word of the day: zimboe.

Priority for the day: get this book.

Lastly, and yet again, hurray for Kathy and Red Eye R&B. (Hurray also for three day weekends and sunny Saturdays.)

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Update – A run to the bookstore yielded a copy of The Deep. Wow. Hooray for Beebe and Piccard for getting us started.

On the zombie front – Zombie Mob 2007 attacks the Apple Store in SF.

i can has brayn?

More dog/wolf

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More good comment on the dog/wolf post – I may have to look at adding a ‘greatest hits’ category to the Blogroll/Booklist/etc. series on the right…

As I was dashing off a reply to the latest comments, it occurred to me that I had read a pretty good fictional account of prehistoric wolf cub raising. I think it was in Elizabeth Marshall Thomas’ Reindeer Moon, but it could have been in The Animal Wife. I’m on the road right now – I’ll check when I get home and post an update. Both books are highly recommended – stories of prehistoric life written by someone who lived with hunter-gatherers. IIRC there was a major omission from both books, though – no giant hyenas! I have been very close to Siberian Tigers (couple feet away w/ a chain-link fence between us, up close and personal with wolves (also in captivity) – the one critter I didn’t want to get anywhere near was a spotted hyena. They are scary animals, as far as I’m concerned. And, before you ask, no, they are plenty intimidating on their own – I don’t think I need to invoke any Jungian race-memory or suchlike.

Update – the wolf passage was in Reindeer Moon.

Sterling to Milles to Hedin

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Yes, six degrees of separation and all, but this stuff continues to be scary. I was checking Bruce Sterling’s blog this morning; there’s an entry where he mentions that ‘I’m staying at Cranbrook — in this guy’s house‘. ‘This guy’ is Carl Milles, a sculptor I was unfamiliar with but whose work (in 2D and on a computer screen, unfortunately) I like. So, I’m reading the wikipedia entry on Mr. Milles when another name jumps out at me – one of Milles’ sculptures is ‘Sven Hedin on a Camel’. Hedin traveled though Asia and the Mideast; I was reading The Silk Road, Trade, Travel, War And Faith over coffee this morning. Here’s a bit of an image dump inspired by all this.

One of Milles’ sculptures, with work by an artist I was already familiar with (I’m not completely ignorant!) – Dale Chihuly:

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Europa and the Bull (aurochs!):

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Hedin on a camel (sorta courtesy of the RGS – thus the watermark):

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Hedin w/ camel in front of yurt (I’m going somewhere with this, I promise):

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Interior of a present day yurt – one way I’m thinking about doing up the interior of the Airstream (when I get it):

The Cold War on a Discworld

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Yesterday Charlie Stross did a web release of his novella Missile Gap. It’s well worth a read – Yuri Gargarin, transcendent intelligences and an ekranoplan! Hopefully, it won’t be giving too much away to mention that I’ve had a ‘social insects’ post rattling around in draft form for a month or so – motivated by the sudden hive collapse that’s been affecting honeybees recently.

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Update – when pondering discworlds, remember – it’s turtles all the way down!

Bookshelf

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Courtesy of Stephen Bodio, a falconer’s (among many other things) bookshelf:

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(As is often the case here, click the picture for a larger version)

Extra credit for identifying the green book and the gold book that are next to each other in the center of the shot (the two that are duplicated in my library). I’m having a lot of fun with this theme – expect another shelf of mine soon…

Library

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‘Bookshelf’ as a title for the post wouldn’t cover it. Books, bones, blankets and more from Steve and Libby’s home in New Mexico:

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Notice the thimble in the upper right (at least that’s what they’re called up here – would not be surprised to find there’s a great Spanish word that would be more appropriate in this case).

Another great bookshelf shot can be found here (click it, dammit). A range of interests? Yes!

If other folks have posted book-shots, I’d love to know – leave a comment or something. Technorati is only so-so at tracking links to a low traffic blog like mine…

Later – to clarify, picture credit belongs to Steve – he emailed the picture to me for posting here. Though I wouldn’t mind spending some time in the southwest (understatement!), the last time I was there (assuming that hill country Texas and front-range Colorado don’t count) was a looooong time ago.