This blog is done.

Thanks for reading.

Letter to a Christian Nation by Sam Harris

Very short, small book. Easy and quick to read. Very good. Not recommended if you are religious and don't want to feel insulted.

"Moonshine voting" from blackbox voting

Best invention of the year

Yup - ice cream with no lactose. Ok, so maybe it wasn't invented this year, not sure. But I just discovered it.

"If I want to see uncaring money making machines with cute names I go to a strip club."

Dinah Sings Bessie Smith

Glen Greenwald on the latest claims about Iraq

Nice video recounting how our leaders keep telling us things are going great in Iraq. Every year they tell us the same thing, and the occupation and killing just continue.

"A Cabinet of Wonders" by Renee Dodd

Not bad. The main problem with the book is that Geek Love owns the "carnival freak" genre. So read Geek Love by Katherine Dunn before reading this book. Than read this book

For the Relief of Unbearable Urges by Nathan Englander

Pinchas had a question for Zunser. "All your work treats fate as if it were a mosquito to be shooed away. All your characters struggle for survival and yet you play the victum. You had to have known they would come."
"You have a point," Zunser said, "a fair question. And I answer it with another: Why should I always be the one to survive? I watched Europe's Jews go up the chimneys. I buried a wife and a child. I do believe one can elude the fates. But why assume the goal is to live?" Zunser slid the mangled hand onto his stomach. "How many more tragedies do I want to survive? Let someone take witness of mine."

Blackwater by Jeremy Scahill

This one I also didn't finish. The subject is really interesting, how our military is becoming privatized, but the writing wasn't working for me. The author is a reporter and I guess he needs more practice writing books.

[Update] This turns out to very topical. This week Blackwater was told to stop all operations by the Iraq government after some of their employees killed a bunch of civilians in a gun fight.

God Is Not Great by Christopher Hitchens

Ok, I admit it. I didn't finish this. The idea of reading it was more interesting than the actual reading. Someone going on about how the "holy" books were written hundreds of years after the fact with little hope of conveying what actually happened, didn't do much for me as I don't care about those books in the first place. I agreed with everything the book says before I read it. It did have some nice examples of how silly things are required to be accepted as serious because someone says it is part of their religion.

Thinking Ape Blues knows Aquino

Click for larger image.

Army soldier from Tommy's Rock killed in Iraq

"The United States Army yesterday confirmed the death of Sgt. Joan Duran of Roxbury. The 24-year-old paratrooper with the 82nd Airborne was killed Friday in Iraq."

Story in the Boston Globe.

Story in Boston Now.