Monday, December 15, 2008

Ry Recommends

As per my beautiful girlfriend's suggestion in my post, A Year of Reading, I've decided to review, well more recommend, ten of my favorite books. So quite honestly the Dune series is probably one of the favorite things I read this past year, in my entire life actually, but seeing as I already wrote about back in July , I'll refrain from putting it in my list. I've also decided to only put them in alphabetical order because I can't put one over the other, it's too hard!
  • Anthem by Ayn Rand ~ This is a must read for anyone even slightly interested in dystopian fiction. It totally compares to Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four and Huxley's Brave New World, and actually does something different with the genre. I'm not sure when or even how it happened, but I became utterly enthralled with the whole dystopian scene, I re-read Orwell and Huxley, picked up the "grandfather of dystopian novels" We by Yevgeny Zamyatin, Atwood, and this literary crack eventually led me to which I talk about later on here. One of the great things about Anthem is the fact Rand hadn't yet fully developed her philosophy, which she stuffs into her later novels. The other fantastic aspect to her novel here is the style. Rand writes a book in essentially first person, but in a world where first person doesn't exist. It's crazy intense and honestly must have been amazingly difficult to accomplish, yet she does it with ease. I'm not going to try and summarize Anthem because it would be far too easy to spoil various aspects, I'll just say that if you liked Orwell and Huxley read Rand!

  • Choke by Chuck Palahniuk ~ Vile, wretched, disgusting, disturbing, classic Chuck! I picked up Choke I was still in a way a Palahniuk virgin -I had only read Fight Club at the time- which, as anyone who's read Palahniuk knows, is considerably "lighter" compared to his usual style. Chuck breaks all the rules on what "fiction" should be, this isn't Jane Austin or Steinbeck, he crosses every line there is, sex, morals, God, suicide, abortion, you name it and Chuck will open your eyes. This being said, he does it with a certain taste, as much taste as you can have, anyway, when your main character is a sociopathic con artist who just happens to be addicted to sex. Definitely a fun read, though, and especially refreshing for anyone who's used to the main stream book scene. Not for the squeamish, religious, morally sound, easily offended person. Once you go Chuck, you never go back.

  • Elantris by Brandon Sanderson ~ This was Sanderson's debut novel and also the novel that won over Robert Jordan's widow enough to choose him to write the final book in the Wheel of Time series. I've always been surprised when an author can actually pull off writing a fantasy book in only one book, but Sanderson does just that, and he does it well. was a very well written book and definitely gave a unique view on fantasy, one which, I for one, enjoyed immensely. Though, since it was Sandersons first book, it is a bit unpolished, which doesn't really take away from the story much, just something to note if you're a neurotic reader and can't stand even minor mistakes. Sanderson has an acclaimed series out now which I'll probably pick up when I have more time, but if you're looking for a nice light fantasy check out Elantris.

  • The J-Curve by Ian Bremmer ~ This was the first political science book I've ever read, and although there were several non-fiction books I enjoyed more--such as by MalcolmGladwell-- but Bremmers book was by far the most insightful. As I've said here, I have this weird obsession with dystopian societies and while reading The J-Curve I realized a few things. First of which is that North Korea is just a stones throw away from being a classic Orwellian society, the reason it isn't, though, is the very premise of Bremmers book. The more closed a society is, the harder it is for said society to stay stable, so the only way for closed societies to stay stable is to become more and more closed. This is exactly why the U.S. foreign policy is so wrong, by putting these sanctions on countries like Cuba and North Korea, we enable them to stay even more authoritarian and keep these dictators in power. We need to help these countries move to global openness, democracy will by its nature throw these dictators out of power. If only the people running our foreign policy would read this book, but maybe someone who goes into foreign policy will read this and keep it in mind and someday change the world! (Ha as if I'm that influential)

  • Lamb by Christopher Moore ~ Generally I haven't read a whole lot of comedy books, but Lamb was recommended to me by a friend so I thought I'd give it a shot. Strictly speaking, I suppose, it isn't really a comedy book, it's really a fiction with a good flare of comedy and satire. That being said, Moore is a fantastic author, his style is clean and strong, his descriptions are amazing, and he can write satire with the best of them. Basically Lamb is about Christs childhood all the way up to his crucifixion, and even though I'm not the most religiously educated person, this was hilarious! It's written by Christ's best friend Biff, who is resurrected by a ditsy angel to tell his story. Whether you're religious or not Lamb is a lighthearted good read, and will give anyone a good laugh. The hardcover is even printed as a Bible look-alike, all the way down to the little strip of ribbon used to mark your page!

  • Next by Michael Crichton ~ First let me start out by saying that Crichton was by far one of the best authors of our generation, and when he died on November 5h, 2008 we were all deeply dismayed. He will be missed. Next is a techno-thriller set in what could be the very near future--as the majority of his novels are--and follows several bioengineering plot lines. At first they all seem to be independent, but Crichton, as usual, ties up all the strings in the end magnificently. Though this isn't quite the genius that was Jurassic Park it is a fantastic look at the future of bioengineering and the possible ramifications of messing around with DNA. Anyone interested in science with a flair of mystery/thriller should check out Next, especially those interested in biology.

  • Night Angel Trilogy by Brent Weeks ~ After you've read 6+ fantasy books you began to see a pattern. Indeed many themes reoccur in fantasy, young innocent character has secret power, found by a 'mentor' type and told to save the world from certain doom, goes on hero's quest to save world, gains companions to help share the load, fights evil with newly discovered powers, saves the day. It's actually really disappointing after awhile, you end up looking for books that do this the best. I picked up Brent Weeks first book on a whim, and too my delight, he did something I've never seen with a fantasy. That being he made it super dark, the main character not only in conflict with "evil" but part of the evil. This is one of my favorite new authors, he did something new and refreshing, and dark with a now overpopulated genre. Not only that he made a character you love to hate, as well as a whole cast of unique companions. This is by far a must read for anyone looking for something new in the fantasy world.

  • Requiem for a Dream by Hubert Selby Jr. ~ I had seen the movie with Jared Leto a couple times before I read the book, but nothing could prepare me for just how intense the book was. I know better than anyone that books are far better than the movies based off them, but holy hell. This was like the difference between an amoeba and a human brain! Selby goes into some of the darkest aspects of humans nature; from addiction to obsession, and he does it in such a way you feel the characters pain. It's brilliant, but terribly depressing. By far one of the most depressing books I've ever read, up there with A Child Called It--which more than anything is depressing because it's a true story-- yet the same can probably be said about Requiem. Sure not the same characters or the exact same experiences but the human tragedy is all too real. Dark, depressing, morbid, graphic, but something I think that everyone should read if for nothing more to open their eyes to what can happen and most likely does happen in our country.

  • Revelation Space Trilogy by Alastair Reynolds ~Let me be clear here, the books I'm talking about are indeed Reynolds Trilogy (Revelation Space, Redemption Ark, and Absolution Gap), but also Chasm City which is part of the same universe. In any case, I picked up the first book just out of curiosity because I didn't really know what a Space Opera was. I was seriously glad I did. The crazy part is the fact that this is Reynolds first set of books! I have recently become fairly obsessive about colonization recently, and this trilogy is what colonization could do for the human race some day! Granted it's rather far fetched, but oh man how amazing would something like this be? Reynolds isn't the run of the mill sci-fi author, he writes what is called hard sci-fi, which basically everything in his books is possible. Indeed, Reynolds has a PhD in Astronomy and worked for the European Space Agency through last year, so it's certainly closer to being real than, say, The Matrix. Reynolds also writes in a fairly dark manner, especially when you think that his scenarios could very well be true.
  • Snow Crash by Neal Stevenson ~ This was the first cyberpunk I've ever read and good god it was amazing! Cyberpunk is a branch of Sci-Fi that combines "high tech with low life", (thanks wiki), which means hackers in almost dystopian futures. The story follows a hacker named Hiro Protagonist, I know real clever Stevenson, who is also a Japanese martial arts enthusiast. This is probably one of the other reasons I enjoyed Snow Crash so much, I have a strange obsession with Japanese history especially martial arts if you don't know me, Stevenson combines a fantastic dark, humorous, fun future with great fight scenes. Much of the book takes place in something called The Metaverse , which is essentially the Internet at it's most intense; think Matrix minus the killer machines. I really can't do Stevenson justice in his plotting because he masterfully combines several stories, that in the end somehow all wrap up in the end. Basically Hiro and his street punk friend Y.T. discover a drug called Snow Crash that not only kills your computer, but completely screws up hackers minds. That's the other thing I loved about this book, Stevenson is one of those authors that knows what he's talking about and does his research if he doesn't. Even though Snow Crash came out in '92 many of the psychological, anthropological, linguistical, and even technological ideas are still relevant and insightful today. I'd recommend Snow Crash to anyone interested in technology, sci-fi, even dystopian-esque books, really I think everyone should read it or at least give it a shot!
Wow I totally got carried away with this. I first intended this to be a couple sentences, maybe a couple days worth of work, but no.. I started this on the 6th! Okay part of the slowness is the fact that I'm lazy and wasn't doing many a day. Either way, I hope that someone finds joy in one of the books I've suggested. Maybe I'll do this again soon, well not soon, but at some point haha.

Saturday, December 6, 2008

Some Art

So I'm rather bored and I figured I'd share some of my art. It isn't too good, nor is it very recent, but feel free to comment and criticize if you wish. I'm not gonna post all of it just cause I have a lot but I'll certainly post some of my favorites.

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I don't even remember how I made this, but it's one of my favorites.

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I made this one in CG class back in high school about primary colors.

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I took this in Paris, obviously. Click for full size!

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There's tons more, but these were the ones on my deviantART. I especially like Eye of the Tiger, Eye of Agony, Handy, Ice Steps, and The Tower. Well I like a lot of my silly "art", in any case I hope you like it too! Stupid photobucket screwed the size of the picture sizes up, click on 'em for the full view.

Thursday, November 27, 2008

Vocabulary

First off I'd like to wish everyone a Happy Thanksgiving, let the food be good, and the naps even better. As for you shoppers out there, get a good night's sleep and beware the crowds! I've only been out shopping once on Black Friday and it was pretty intense I'm not gonna lie. There's some damn good deals out there though, I might hit the stores so I can get a special someone a special something :)

Anyway, as all two readers out there have noticed, I have a wretched vocabulary. I also can't spell nor use grammar nearly the way I should. Alas I'm not terribly interested in the latter, Fire Fox and Word take care of spelling, and friends and teachers point out my grammar plenty. So that leaves me with my 3rd grade vocabulary. Now I know there's plenty of harebrained techniques out there, learn a new word every day and use it in as many sentences as you can, which probably work, but I'm lazy. A customer at my work came in a couple months ago looking for a nice hardbound dictionary. No joke some of those dictionaries are really nice, and I was stunned to find that he was going to highlight words he didn't know. He was about 60, a really nice, one of those cool old guys that I wanna be when I'm old. He explained that as he reads whenever he comes across a word he doesn't know he'll look it up and highlight it. I didn't really think much of it at the time, kinda a neat idea I'll admit, but nothing that captured my attention for long. I guess it stuck though, I've been almost compelled to buy a dictionary since I spoke with that guy. I thought it was just a novel idea seeing as I wanna write better, but it seems his little technique rooted itself into my subconscious and finally wormed it's way out. Naturally because I'm so cheap I never got around to buying a full price dictionary-- they're freaking expensive-- but on Sunday I found a Oxford Pocket American Dictionary of Current English for a steal of $2.99. Well really with my 33% discount it came to around $2.13 with tax :P. It took til just today, I dunno why now, to realize that old man was the reason I got the dictionary.

Granted I read a whole hell of a lot--clicky-- and I'm sure that there's plenty of words I don't know as well as I should. So I'm gonna try this highlighting thing out and maybe go through the dictionary like, what? At the end of every month? I'll work the kinks out I suppose. One thing I know I'll have trouble with is admitting I don't know a word and then sucking it up and looking it up. I've been trying it, its hard! I don't think people realize just how much they don't know until something like this, and indeed I know a lot of words through context but that isn't quite the same. Some authors I've been reading recently are rather clever with their word choice, I wouldn't have even known! I'm toying with the idea of even typing up the words and the definitions here in my blog, but I'm not so sure about it. The people I know for a fact that read my blog are all way smarter than I am and I'm not so sure I'm willing to show how utterly retarded I really am. Though, I know none of them will openly say how dumb I am, I know they'll think it! Maybe I'll type it up in word and when I feel a bit more confident post it here? We'll see haha. Now that I'm doing this I think it may actually help with spelling a little, maybe? I really don't know, but I'm optimistic.

Speaking of Word, I know a couple of my friends use Blogger and I had a question. Recently I have been writing some of my blog posts up in Word first and when I tried to post it Blogger freaked out. Apparently, Word 2007 has some weird HTML that copies over here and screws up Blogger. Has anyone else experienced this? I should probably just ask the Blogger people, but yeah.

Wednesday, November 19, 2008

A Year of Reading

Since I began working at Borders I've kept a log of all the books I've read. Mind you, this log is only from November 19th 2007-- I've read probably triple if not more books in the course of my life-- so it’s rather short. Hopefully I'll keep this log up to date for the rest of my life, then when I'm 40 I'll be able to be like whoa! It'll also help with the nasty problem of not knowing if I've read a book or not. I've found this extremely irritating of late, I'll pick up a book, think it looks pretty good, buy it, only to get like a chapter in and realize I've read it. It’s not a huge hassle but when I'm the reading zone its shitty to go back and find another book. Anyway here it is, I figured posting it a year from when I started would be kinda neat.

  • A War of Gifts by Orson Scott Card
  • Choke by Chuck Palahniuk
  • Lullaby by Chuck Palahniuk
  • Survivor by Chuck Palahniuk
  • Next by Michael Crichton
  • Monster by Frank Peretti
  • Empire by Orson Scott Card
  • Paranoia by Joseph Finder
  • Harsh Cry of the Heron by Lian Heor
  • Stiff by Mary Roach
  • Anthem by Ayn Rand
  • Brimstone by Douglas Preston & Lincoln Child
  • Dance of Death by Douglas Preston & Lincoln Child
  • Book of the Dead by Douglas Preston & Lincoln Child
  • Dune by Frank Herbert
  • Wheel of Darkness by Douglas Preston & Lincoln Child
  • Dune Messiah by Frank Herbert
  • Children of Dune by Frank Herbert
  • God Emperor of Dune by Frank Herbert
  • Into the Wild by Jon Krakauer
  • A Child Called It by Dave Pelzer
  • Heretics of Dune by Frank Herbert
  • The Handmaids Tale by Margaret Atwood
  • Chapterhouse: Dune by Frank Herbert
  • Salem’s Lot by Stephen King
  • Snow Crash by Neal Stephenson
  • Robota by Orson Scott Card
  • Elantris by Brandon Sanderson
  • Rant by Chuck Palahniuk
  • Revelation Space by Alastair Reynolds
  • The Stranger by Albert Camus
  • Innocent Mage by Karen Miller
  • Lamb by Christopher Moore
  • Awakened Mage by Karen Miller
  • Player Piano by Kurt Vonnegut
  • We by Yevgeny Zamyatin
  • Requiem for a Dream by Hubert Selby Jr.
  • The Time Machine by H.G. Wells
  • Feed by M.T. Anderson
  • Redemption Ark by Alastair Reynolds
  • Click by Bill Tancer
  • Final Theory by Mark Alpert
  • The J-Curve by Ian Bremmer
  • The Sword by Deborah Chester
  • The Tipping Point by Malcolm Gladwell
  • The Ring by Deborah Chester
  • The Chalice by Deborah Chester
  • Absolution Gap by Alastair Reynolds
  • The Way of Shadows by Brent Weeks
  • Sway by Rom Brafman
  • Chasm City by Alastair Reynolds
  • Shadows Edge by Brent Weeks
  • Daughter of the Empire by Raymond E. Feist
  • Servant of the Empire by Raymond E. Feist
  • Ender in Exile by Orson Scott Card

Total: 55

Note: The books in bold I own, the non-bolded books I read at work or borrowed from a friend. In my personal list I have each of the books rated from 1 to 10 but I decided to hold off on that simply because I'm probably pretty biased. Plus how can you rate a Fantasy against a Mystery or a Fiction?

Here in America reading has become one of those things that everyone wants to do but is "too busy" to do. Back in 2007 the Associated Press did a poll concerning just that, what they found is honestly saddening to me.
"One in four adults read no books at all in the past year, according to an Associated Press-Ipsos poll released Tuesday [August 21, 2007]" This quote was taken from a Washington Post article that was written on the day the Ipsos poll was released. I don't know the details of the poll exactly but even if its somewhat true this country is in trouble. I did a little snooping around recently after I found the aforementioned article and found a somewhat 'better' set of figures. These numbers came from the Harris Poll:

TABLE 1

BOOKS READ PER YEAR

"How many books do you typically read in the average year?"

Base: All adults


Total

Generation

Gender

Political Party

Echo Boomers (18-31)

Gen X (32-43)

Baby Boomers (44-62)

Matures (63+)

Men

Women

Rep.

Dem.

Ind.

%

%

%

%

%

%

%

%

%

%

None

9

6

7

9

12

11

7

10

8

7

1-3

23

28

24

23

15

27

18

23

24

18

4-6

19

18

22

20

15

22

17

22

17

20

7-10

13

12

11

14

11

11

14

13

15

11

More than 10

37

36

36

33

47

29

44

33

35

44


Note: Percentages may not add to 100% due to rounding.

As you can see roughly 1/3 of Americans read more than 10 books a year, which is good. It’s hard to say which of the two polls is more accurate and indeed from what I found both seem fairly legit. In any case, I'd say that we should be reading more. Granted my opinion is a bit biased seeing as I've read 55 books this year but even still. 10 books aren’t really that many if you think of the amount of time Americans sit in front of the tv or even the computer. Sure some people really don't enjoy reading at all and sure many find a movie or a reality tv show more entertaining than their imagination.. still.. the human mind is a great thing. When I read it feels like I'm watching a movie with actors that put real people to shame, with views and imagery that an HD tv can only dream of making. If you think about it television and movies are just dumbed down books, and if ANYONE thinks there's a movie based on a book that’s better than said book they have a poor imagination indeed. Why would you settle for someone else's imagination? What you can do with your mind is so wonderful that it’s sad to think some people go their lives without reading. Authors not only give you all the tools to create a world in your head but they can also give you meaning. What are you gonna learn about the world by watching American Idol? Pick up 1984, A Red Sky at Morning, Dante's Inferno, East of Eden, or any other number of classics out there and you'll discover not only a fantastic story but symbolism, satire, and a touch of politics. All of which with such intensity that there's no way a tv show or even a 2 hour movie could put it all in. Hell, if you're not into the "dry" classic stuff they forced you to read in high school pick up Alastair Reynolds or Neal Stevenson and you'll learn something.

Well I suppose I'll stop preaching now, I hope this possibly interested some of you into reading or at least picking up one of the books I've mentioned. If not, well, all the power to you it’s your life after all. If there are any questions about the books above or any sort of recommendations I can make, feel free to hit me up.

Thursday, November 13, 2008

Who Am I?

This is a question that’s been haunting humans since the dawn of time. How it has been answered has varied over the years and though I am far from well educated in what people have said I have some ideas of my own. Perhaps they can’t even be called ideas so much as a response to a certain viewpoint I’ve encountered. Really I don’t know what the “I” is or even how I would respond if someone asked “who are you?”. Perhaps there is no answer, but I think there are things that dictate just who we are.

The psychological idea of “roles” has always seemed natural to me, even before I knew the term “roles” or what the idea behind it was. I guess I always had this sort of thought in my head. I am a son, a friend, a lover, a student, a worker, a stranger, a boy, a citizen--both of the world and my country -- a human, and a million other things that I can’t name right this moment. The thing I’m responding to I’ve encountered twice so far, it’s the thought that says “There are no roles. I’m the exact same person to everyone, everywhere.” Now I can almost understand not wanting to admit your personality is dictated by those around you, but this form of egotism is ridiculous to me. I realize that many of the roles that we live each day are almost one in the same, but even yet there are enough differences between any two that it’s impossible to say you’re the same person around everyone. For example, you chat and laugh and joke around with your friends, sure you can do all those things with your parents, but it’s significantly different. You won’t go telling your mom about the crazy sex you had with your girlfriend last night or your dad about how much you drank the previous night. Even the way you act around people changes depending on the role you’re in. It’s a happy little thought that you control how you act in any circumstances, but to those egotists out there, you don’t control your actions nearly as much as you so pompously think. The very nature of roles are so deeply ingrained in our heads that it’s just not something you can control. Sure you can have a certain degree of freedom in your actions, you can whisper sweet nothings into your friend’s ears if you wish, but you’ll be criticized for it. Now from what I understand of egotism, albeit not much, they take great offence to the above example. “You’re actions should be done for you and no one else” is the main idea I gather. I agree, what you do should be entirely on your own personal set of morals, but as much as you despise it the fact is humans are social creatures.

The worst form of punishment, no not death, but the form of punishment that will break anyone no matter their philosophy, their nationality, their race, their age, nor their gender is isolation. The human brain has evolved in such a way that it thrives on interaction; it works its best being presented with new ideas, new viewpoints, and new people. The very act of speaking to another human being stimulates the brain in many ways. To think that any human can be so self assured, so self centered, to bypass millions of years of evolutionary hardwiring is idiotic. Granted, there are social hermits out there, people that despise all form of interaction, but sadly for those egotists, it’s not them. I’ll even be generous and say that even if you’re the exception and treat everyone the exact same way in every situation you wouldn’t be looked on with any bit of admiration. Like it or not, even if you’re so all mighty and great, the rest of us aren’t. Being a functioning member of society means you have a certain set of obligations to people, those obligations dictate how you should act in certain instances. So if you go telling your parents how hard you fucked some girl last night, or tell your boss to go screw off like you would one of your friends, you’re going to be an outcast. Sure you’ll be self righteous and almighty knowing that you broke social code, but what will your life be like? A year of that and what job would you have? What friends? What lovers?

Now, even if you can accomplish this feat and keep any sort of social contact outside of yourself, you’re going to be one bland, wretchedly boring person. Perhaps you’ve read this far and said “I don’t tell my friends about the crazy sex I have, or any of the examples you’ve given Ryan. I’m confident in who I am and I don’t do anything to hurt anyone’s feelings.” Okay, perhaps you have accomplished this, but what kind of personality is that? Humans are meant to be different, are meant to have a will. There’s two ways the above can be accomplished. You can be a complete arrogant ass and truly say whatever you want to say to whoever you want, but keep it toned down enough that it doesn’t get you in trouble. Or you’re the most boring person in the world because if you treat a three year old the exact same way you treat your boss, your friends, and your lover, you have no personality. MacIntyre said our lives are the stories that we tell, what kind of story is going to be told that has not differences, no interactions. Part of what makes us human is all the characters we play, all slightly different, yet all wrapped up in this indivisible thing called “I”.

Who I am depends greatly on who I’m with, but yet I feel that there is indeed some deep down thing that links all of the different roles. Maybe they’re just fleeting similarities or even just something my human-ness needs in order to try and understand the world around me. Either way, to me, being the exact same person around everyone is impossible, no matter if you like it or not situation dictates who you are. Perhaps only in such a small way that you think you’re being the exact same, but really there’s something different. The vocabulary you use, the emotion you show—or don’t show for that matter—your body language, any number of things. It isn’t a bad thing, it’s a wonderful thing in my opinion. On the flip side, there is some truth to the egotistical argument. To be completely and utterly different solely based on who your with is hypocritical. To be a devout catholic in church and a horrible person on the street is just wrong. There exists, at least in my opinion, a balance of the two that make humans great.

Thursday, September 4, 2008

Non-Fiction

I've been keeping a list of books that I've read since November, to date I've read a lot. Just how much? That's classified for now, I have a list going that will be published on November 19th 2008. I know curiosity is just killing you all but as the old cliche goes "patience is a virtue". In any case, the majority of what I read falls under the Sci-fi/Fantasy realm with dashes of Mystery and Fiction. Very rarely do I read non-fiction stuff, in fact, I think there's only been one or two full books that I've read that's non-fiction just for fun. This brings me to the peculiar quandary I find myself in right now. So instead of doing my lovely philosophy homework I'm going to talk about reading.

When I started working at Borders back in November I began to realize just how much I read, I've always loved reading and, in fact, its the one thing I think I'm decent at. Actually aside from a certain person reading is about the only thing that makes me happy, I'm just lucky enough to have someone and not just my silly little books. So I started at Borders and naturally because its a bookstore my reading levels jumped! I now have access to millions more books and it definitely showed in my list. Perhaps I've always read a lot of books but it seemed to me that because I had more access to books suddenly I was reading even more, just how much will be shown come November. As I expected sci-fi/fantasy are the majority of my reads but I was surprised to see a few non-fictions creeping into my list. I'm thinking that because I'm now exposed to so many more non-fiction books I've slowly stopped thinking of them as super boring and lame and gradually began picking them up. I'm not sure where my bias came from exactly, but its been enough to keep me from reading a lot of excellent reads. Not only that, though, but I've actually learned a lot from the non-fictions I've read. Yeah, yeah, I'm sure everyone out there is thinking "no freaking duh Ry, they're based on reality" but come on my experience up til November was with text books.

In any case, I updated "what I'm reading" thing on a forum I participate on and to my surprise I'm reading not just one but two non-fiction books right now. This past year I've read non-fiction but its always been accompanied by a fiction of some sort. Now not only am I reading two, but they're fairly out of character for me. One of them is a fairly intense political book, alas not about either of our dear candidates or our current political situation cause those are all slander right now, and the other is a business-ish book. Indeed a mere two books ago I read another non-fiction book! This probably is rather boring to anyone that bothers to read this, but its rather fascinating to me. As a side note I just re-read this and good freaking god I'm not writing well at all! Oh well, this is far less formal than my usual stuff and because its not super controversial I don't have my usual flame. Another possible reason that I've come up with is rather weak: I've matured! Wow, it looks a whole hell of a lot worse in writing! I'm not gonna lie, I still love fantasy and space and not real stuff, but finally at almost twenty years old I can appreciate 'adult' things. Part of that is my own curiosity, I want to know more about the world around us. Once again I sound like an ass saying shit like that but oh well. There's actually a lot of really interesting stuff out there, you just gotta be able to find it I guess. It took me working at a bookstore to find some, but hell I know so many people that only read non-fiction which absolutely boggles my mind. I don't know about everyone else but one of the reasons I love to read is to escape and relax and give my head a break from the stresses of every day life non-fiction is a workout for the mind. It's nice every once and a while, but seriously? All the time? Nu-uh!

While I still don't think that non-fiction is worth more than the occasional read, it's nice to know there's some well written stuff out there. As for my reading list, like I said that'll be posted 12:01am November, 19th 2008 (thank you blogger for scheduled posting) if you're interested it should be kinda neat to see. Well Descartes calls.

Wednesday, September 3, 2008

First Impressions of Chrome

So I downloaded Google Chrome as soon as I heard about it and after two days of messing around with it I have a couple thoughts I figured I'd share.

First off its a very pretty browser, I must say, neat layout and such. It'll take some time to get used to the tabs being at the very top of the page but I think I like it more than where the tabs are in FireFox. It was really nice to install it and have it import all my info, bookmarks, search history, and such, to Chrome and damn it's fast. I figured that it was just my computer that was rather slow on the net, or even my net connection but the first time I loaded up Chrome it was noticeably faster than both IE 7 and FF 3.0.1. It lags a bit, as is expected, when loading a new page, but when it gets the cookies its loads the pages lightning fast. I've also noticed that it doesn't use as much CPU as either IE or FF which, from what little I know, is really good. I haven't really run any other applications in the background other than aim so I haven't seen a noticeable difference in app speed as some people have. Also combining the search bar and the web-address bar is absolutely brilliant, even more so you can customize which search engine you want to use. I set it up for Wiki because I use it to reference a lot but there's tons of options which show that google isn't too much of a whore XD. Even with all its positives there's some annoyances I have with it.

First let me say this: I'm a complete FireFox whore. I admit it. I love the add-ons, themes, and all the customization FF provides. I have 4 different themes I switch out depending on my mood, addons like WeatherFox, FoxyTunes, YahooMailNotifier just make my life easier. If I only used those things though I wouldn't have such a problem with Chrome. I've been using FF now for 3 or 4 years and for pretty much the entire time I've had AdBlockPlus installed. I guess I didn't realize just how, hmm, pampered I am. I seriously cannot stand ads on pages anymore, it honestly bothers me! Just recently I installed NoScript as well, which got rid of some of the other annoying crap that AdBlock misses. Seriously though, I can't even check my email on Chrome because yahoo is an ad whore, some of my favorite sites have god awful ads that until I opened them in Chrome I didn't even know existed. It's quite depressing I must say. Perhaps I can reacquaint myself with the annoying ads IE users face every time they open the net but it'll be hard. I did some finger work (har har) and found out that most likely google will roll out add-ons in the future but not for a little while, seeing as they need to make a mac and linux Chrome. The other major issue I have with chrome is the scrolling. On my laptop there's a little scroll bar on the touch pad that you can go up and down with but Chrome only lets you go down. You don't realize just how much you use something until you can no longer use it. Honestly, I scroll on like every page and its infuriating going too far down but not being able to go up without actually clicking the bar thing. I can wait but Chrome will have to deal with not being my default browser for a while. I'm sure I'll use it more and more but yeah.. those will keep it from being my first choice for a while. I'm sure they'll fix the scroll problem soon enough and they'll add the extensions eventually til then I'll only play with it now and then. Maybe I'll post from here on it since blogger is clean of annoying adds and I like the speed for the blog.

If you use IE switch. Just do it, you'll only gain from doing it. If you use FireFox heavily give Chrome some time. Its definitely worth downloading and checking out though.


Tuesday, September 2, 2008

Questions of Colonization

I've been toying around with the idea of colonization for a while now and I think its high time for me to focus my thoughts and actually write something down. Granted I'm a mere second semester freshmen in a non-science major but someone needs to be thinking of it. The most likely reason, I think, that I'm so curious about space is from all my sci-fi reading. Yeah, yeah I know that many, if not all, of the ideas, designs, theories, and so forth are fantasy but that doesn't mean there's a real way to achieve some of this. Recently I've gotten into an author name Alastair Reynolds who writes something called hard science fiction which stresses scientific accuracy. Though Reynolds world is much more advanced and, like most sci-fi, set in the distant future he has some interesting views of how space is colonized. One of the planets in his books is a recently colonized planet which may shed some ideas on how we may be able to make that jump. One of his ideas is terraforming, which, by definition, is the modification of another celestial body to make it similar to earth. Its still hypothetical, of course, but in my opinion its definitely feasible.

Mainly this post is meant to organize some of my thoughts and help me critically look at the whole concept of colonization. I'm no expert but I know I'm not the only person out there that has questions about this sort of thing so by asking I have a basis to start my search. Obviously wikipedia is one of my favorite things to use but I'd like to expand from there and if I have narrower more specific questions that will help me look at more "credible" sites like NASA and such. Mars is going to be my focus but I realize that the more probable place to start out is our very own moon, seeing as I don't know shit about vacuums or gravity or any of the main problems with the moon I'm just gonna avoid it for now.

How much time and fuel would it take to transport a manned ship to Mars?

Do we have the technology to even make a manned trip to Mars?

Is a closed ecosystem a possibility on Mars?

How many people, if any, would it take to maintain a closed ecosystem on Mars?

How much water would be needed to create a closed ecosystem on Mars?

What kind of engineering problems are associated with creating domes?

How violent are the storms on Mars?

What kind of materials would be needed to create a dome capable of withstanding dust storms on Mars?

What is the soil made up of on Mars?

How much less sunlight does Mars receive than Earth?

What is the temperature on Mars?
Around the equator during the summer Mars can reach 20 degrees Celsius (70 degrees F)

Does Mars have an atmosphere?
"Mars has a very thin atmosphere composed mostly of the tiny amount of remaining carbon dioxide (95.3%) plus nitrogen (2.7%), argon (1.6%) and traces of oxygen (0.15%) and water (0.03%). The average pressure on the surface of Mars is only about 7 millibars (less than 1% of Earth's)..." (NinePlanets.org) 1013 millibars is 1 atmosphere so 7 millibars is roughly 0.006908463 atm. The altitude that one would experience such a low pressure is 159,013 ft. or 30 miles up, if you go that far up you'll enter the Mesosphere (ace).

What does low pressure do to the human body?

Is it possible to depressurize slowly and safely?

Is it possible to increase the pressure of a planet?
Essentially what needs to be done here is injecting large amounts of gases into the atmosphere. This will serve a duel role of both increasing the surface temperature on Mars as well as the pressure. This is one of the many goals of terraforming.

What is the gravity on Mars?
Mars has approximately .38 the gravity of Earth (NASA) Essentially I weighing 130 pounds would be 49.4 pounds there. This is a whole lot less than I thought, and reading the article sited above gave some interesting questions I didn't have before. I'm gonna keep a close eye on the Mars Mice since they'll be able to answer questions I won't even be able to look into myself.

Would a human be able to function normally on Mars?

What is the escape velocity for Oxygen on Mars?

Does Mars even have the gravity to even hold onto Oxygen?

Some of these are very simple to find with google but I just want to put them down on paper, well in writing rather, to organize my thoughts. I'll edit this post as I find answers to some of these, others which are more speculative I'll just write up another post and link to it here. One thing I've learned from my academic career is the more questions you answer the more emerge, I'll most likely add to this list as I learn things but the point is not to find a solid answer but to critically look into such a feat. It will be years before we will even visit Mars but who's to say we can't start working on colonization now? Stephen Hawking recently stated "The human race has existed as a separate species for about two million years, If the human race is to continue for another million years, we will have to boldly go where no one has gone before." He says that its possible to have a base on the moon in the next couple decades and a get to Mars by the middle of century (AIP). It's really great that we're just now trying to fix the climate but the climate isn't the only problem facing the future of humanity. Even if we completely clear up our massive carbon footprint there still remains the fact that we only have so much room, our population is growing exponentially. Nothing short of totalitarian rules on reproduction can we avoid outgrowing Earth in the next couple centuries, and still, eventually we'll grow out of it anyway. Of course, that is, if we don't all end up killing each other off. Nature may even do us that little favor by unleashing even more intense disasters and viruses . There's all sorts of horrible things that can happen that will kill off a couple billion people, but isn't that all the more reason we should spread out and increase our chances that much more? Lets face it, sooner or later some renegade asteroid will come along and not just prune our population but completely annihilate our species. Hop to it people, this is our future at stake.

Friday, August 22, 2008

Thoughts from a Bookstore Part 1: Politics

2008 is undoubtedly a year cram full of politics, so it’s no surprise that there have been a surplus of political books and consequently political “activists” around. Indeed with the general elections right around the corner and the primaries now past it’s expected to see less politics and more bashing going on. What I didn’t expect was the sheer stupidity of people when they go practically blind with political pride. Sure, I’ve heard rumors of some of the antics that go on but usually those are few and far between and generally only come from extreme right or left people. Well I was wrong thinking it only came from extreme supporters, alas it seems that this being an election year many, many usually moderate supporters become rabid fiends. Since starting at Borders a little under a year ago I’ve gotten a taste of the lengths people will take for their candidates. And that taste was quite bitter.

There seems to be two types of political junkies out there. The first being the insanely loyal all year round supporters and the second spring up in two waves; during primary time and then leading up to the general elections in November, especially around convention time. Within the two groups there’s a sliding scale of just how extreme the average Joe can turn. I almost hesitate to use the word “radical” here but considering the actions, it’s by far the most fitting word. At first, I didn’t see much of a difference between conservatives (meaning republicans) and liberals (meaning democrats) but it was quickly clear as to who was the more radical of the two. There is, most likely, a margin of error in my conclusions considering the vicious primary battle between Obama and Clinton but here are some of my observations on the strange world of ‘campaigning’ in a bookstore.

Thinking back on it now, my first experience with the two groups mentioned above was from the year round supporters. I was back in our calendar section, this being December ish, and I noticed that a couple of our calendars were turned over. At Borders we carry a large selection of calendars from nature to dogs to movies and seeing as 2007 was the eve of the general election year we had a bunch of candidate calendars. We had practically all the big runners, McCain, Obama, Hillary, and then their ‘smaller’ competitors, Giuliani, Romney, and Huckabee. All of them were made by the same company, I believe, seeing as they were all titled “Countdown to Victory”. Which, now, seems kind of funny, I mean what on earth are you going to do with a Giuliani or Romney calendar now. Sure, maybe back in December it seemed plausible that one of them could win the nomination but now? I’m sure these people feel really proud when they have a guest over and there hanging in the foyer is a “Rudy Giuliani Countdown to Victory” calendar. It’s the same with the bumper stickers; I can understand sporting your candidate’s sticker when it’s the presidential sticker but before the primaries are even over? No, no, that just makes for snickers along the highway. In any case, there I was with these, seemingly randomly selected calendars turned over. Oh how I was wrong. It seemed someone decided to not only turn over the Obama and Hillary calendars but to actually put Giuliani calendars over them after that. This boggled my mind to be perfectly honest. I asked around and found out rather quickly that our store, and I’m assuming most bookstores, are continually proved to be a battleground for political junkies. I guess it makes sense in a way, I mean these people aren’t about to actually go out there and debate or protest or do anything to actually change the political standing so instead they must lower themselves to flipping calendars and books too. This, I soon found out, was the first group striking. They do it all year long, usually attacking the politics section, flipping and rearranging the books they don’t like. Not only that, though, these amateur political activists take it upon themselves to voice their absolute fury to none other than the employees. I don’t know how many times I’ve been pulled aside by one of these people, it doesn’t matter if their liberals or conservatives either, they all have relatively the same thing to say: “I’m offended that you’re displaying this *insert liberal or conservative* trash! What? Do these slanderous authors pay you to put up their slander? I demand you remove it from display and put *insert liberal or conservative title* up instead.” Luckily, after many conversations like this I’ve managed to control the urge to burst out laughing and explain rationally why we have what we have up. We’ve been called a liberal store and a conservative store and, indeed, many of these activists say they’ll never shop with us again, only to be seen a few weeks later harassing another member of the staff or flipping more books. The only plus side about these year round junkies is the fact that there aren’t many of them, and most of their political attacks come few and far between, but the other group is a whole other story.

Right off the bat in January we began to see the first hinting of the wave that was to come. I noticed more and more books being flipped and more people deciding to voice their opinion and, at first, I thought it was just that the new year empowering the political amateurs. Certainly the first group is part of the waves that crash into our store around primary time but they go from amateurs to rabid junkies. Most of the time we don’t even get a chance to flip the books back around before someone from the other camp is there making their candidates stick out and hiding the opposing. I’ve always wondered what would happen if one were to catch their rival in the act of ‘defacing’ their books, would a fight ensue? Probably not. From what I’ve seen these junkies only have the courage to speak their mind to a worker who, under the decree of “the customer is always right”, can’t voice their opinion at all. I respect that everyone has the right to their opinion, this blog wouldn’t be here if we couldn’t voice our opinion, but sometimes people should keep their mouth shut if they don’t know what they’re talking about. One example sticks out in my mind. Obama Nation by Jerome R Corsi, note the childish play on words, came out and, naturally, it was causing quite the stir. I had someone come up to the desk and ask to see the book. I first thought she was another happy conservative wanting to purchase the book, but then I noticed the Obama button she was sporting. I thought this could go two ways, a.) I’m about to get chewed out for selling this book and having it on display or b.) she doesn’t know quite what it’s about. Sadly, both were correct. She was quite excited to get the book going out of her way to mention to me how handsome Obama was, but then as she read the inside of the dust jacket her face first fell then tightened in anger. I noticed this and tried my best to make a getaway, no such luck. I won’t go into exactly what she said about the author, the publisher, and Borders in general but it wasn’t fun. I’ve had to go and flip the books around again, sometimes multiple times, each day. Not only Obama though, the liberals fight just as dirty they hide McCains book or cover it with Hillarys books but the thing I find most entertaining about the primary junkies is the liberals. It’s possible that conservatives are the cause of a lot of the Obama/Hillary defacing but the majority, during the primaries, were Obama vs. Hillary or vice versa. If the Dems don’t think that their party is split all they need to do is go into any bookstore across the country. Hillary books covering Obama books, Obama books hiding the Hillary books, it’s outrageous. I’m just glad that the primaries are over, now at least, all I have to do is worry about McCain and Obama rather than dems vs. dems then again it could turn into something worse with November rapidly approaching.

To this day I don’t understand what flipping a book over accomplishes. Sure, it might cause 3 or 4 people to not see the book but when it comes to politics I seriously don’t think there’s much of a correlation between the books people see and the books people don’t see. Most people when they shop for a politics book they already know what they’re looking for, they’ve seen or heard of the book on the radio and even when books like Obama Nation are on display not very many people stop and take a look at it. America seems to be fed up with politics so it isn’t a surprise to me when someone passes up a political book for a fantasy or romance. It doesn’t help that 75% of political books are pure slander either. One last observation before I call this quits. From my, albeit somewhat limited, experience the majority of conservative activists that get the courage to speak their opinion also have it in them to try and save our souls from the wrath of god. These religious nuts are part 2 in Thoughts from a Bookstore.

Tuesday, August 19, 2008

New External Hard Drive


For a while now I've been in the market for an external hard drive. There are two main reasons that brought this idle thought of wanting one into actually going the extra mile and buying one. The first is my terminally ill Dell desktop in the other room, she's been through good times and bad with me but it finally seems that her old age is catching up to her. Ever since my trip she's been going super slow and freaking out at the most basic of functions which has really scared me because all of my music is homed. Granted its not a large amount of music, certainly not compared to most computer nerds of the day, but its music I've had since the late '90s and its very near and dear to me especially since I don't have a lot of the cds I once had.

The other main motivator for my somewhat large purchase is the recent death of my good friends computer. His was about the same age as my old Dell but he's actually taken care of it, and to be honest used it much more than I had. Hearing of all the data he lost freaked me out just enough to want to save my meager amount of data as well. I did a bit of research, checking out Newegg.com and various other tech sites to try and find something decent and it seems I have. Granted I'm not too technologically savvy, especially in the actual computer parts area, but I think the Western Digital My Book is perfect for me. I was at first going to get a 250 gig My Passport from Newegg for $99 but a rather unplanned visit to Best Buy turned into a money saver. Its rather strange that I found such a good deal at a normal store, most of the time the best deals are to be found online. Today was, perhaps, just a fluke but I'm not going to complain about getting a 500 gig My Book for $99, twice as big and from what I've heard the My Books are better than the My Passports. Sure its not a Terabyte, but honestly, I think 500 gigs is more than enough for my word docs, music, and pictures. And if I do end up needing more they're easy to sync together so it wouldn't be much of a hassle to work out.

Well this is kinda a change from my usual blog posts, but I figure I need to write more in general so I'll write whatever comes to mind. After all the more you write, the more experience you get, and experience is what separates a great writer with a run of the mill Joe such as myself.

Saturday, August 16, 2008

Poetry

Whether it be stories, rants, letters or essays I've always enjoyed writing but never have I ever gotten the hang of poetry. For a while back in middle school I tried to enjoy reading poetry, reading Frost and other such 'pop' poets but writing poetry is a skill I've never gotten. I always dread poetry sections in my English classes because I'm so self conscious of my lack of skill and indeed my lack of understanding the deeper meaning behind most poetry. For lack of a better word poetry is my crux, even yet I've tried it once or twice. The one and only poem I've ever written that I didn't hate is far from good and in fact it didn't even get an A in the class I wrote it for. Well there isn't much history behind it, I was a sophomore and we were doing a poetry section in my English class. To my dismay, our teacher assigned us a poem for the weekend. Oh how I slaved over these nine lines. Love it or hate it I figured I'd share it here cause, well, I think every writer should try their hand at something they find difficult here's mine. I may try again in the near future but even if I do no guarantees it'll show up here. So here it is, Longing Love.

I long to hear your lovely voice
Drifting through the summer air,
Touching your cheek I am fulfilled
But without your love I am lost.
When I look into your eyes the world melts away
Leaving an ocean of love that envelops me.
If I ever lost you
It would be like someone shot a hole through my soul
Just living without you would be like living without love: pointless.

Tuesday, July 8, 2008

Untitled

So this is a little story I started in a composition notebook, I’ve been working on it off and on for the past week or so. Alas I came to a realization yesterday, though I’m not sure how to express my sudden burst of insight in words its there. I’ve decided to post the ‘story’ here cause it helped me, for whatever reason, and I’m actually curious as to what others think of it. Its not very long at all, in fact its probably not a page long typed up, but it was enjoyable to write and someday I’d like to be able to write well in this super descriptive style. Enjoy…?

~~~~~

A Beam of mid-morning light crept into the room like an unwelcome guest. It hesitated, as if having second thoughts, on the dusty window sill before dancing across the floor. The ray of light illuminated the cluttered room, revealing a minefield of hardware, tools, and various parts that were scattered across the floor before moving on. Next to the crammed desk, the light glittered over a small pool of spilt oil as it made its way to the cot-like bed. The occupant groaned, as the light flashed across his eye lids, before covering his face with a tan arm. Finally, after several more failed attempts to banish the intruder, the young man sat up with a sigh, stretched, and looked at his watch: 9:00 am. Stumbling out of bed, he made his way to the bathroom. He was very careful not to cut himself, after all, it wouldn’t have been the first time he’d sliced open his foot on a stray part. “God, I gotta pick this dump up.” He thought with a backward glance from the door.

In the bathroom he splashed icy water on his face before looking into the mirror. “Markus what the hell are you doing with yourself?” he muttered with a shake of his head. Markus’s normally bright green eyes were bloodshot with deep bags under them, the result of weeks worth of late nights. His face, though a bit pale, was handsome with high cheekbones that slopped down into a sharp, but strong, jaw. His smile was said to take the breath away from any women yet simultaneously give even the biggest man chills. His perpetually messy jet black hair only added to his look. As Markus’s eyes slid downward studying his shirtless torso, he had almost a look of pride. He was well toned, the muscles on his chest, abs, and arms clearly defined but far from bulky unlike the ‘roidheads that seemed to dominate the inner city. His hand absently glided over the ragged scar adorning his chest like a badge of honor. The scar itself started at the top of his left shoulder, angled down his chest, before finally stopping at a nasty looking gash just below his ribcage. Though it certainly wasn’t his only scar, it was easily the one he was most proud of.

Markus remembered the day clearly; it was early autumn and what few trees remained in the city were starting to turn orange and yellow. The air was crisp and clean, the road smooth under his skates. Him and his friends had gotten bored and decided to head down to the Zone, which was the place to go if you were in the mood for some action. The city was laid out in a circle and, consequently, divided up like a pie chart between the various gangs. The Zone was the dead center of the city, a war zone basically—hence the name—where the turf was never actually controlled for longer than a couple hours. When Markus and his crew started tearing up the concrete heaven that was the Zone, they were immediately confronted by the Thrashers. The bitterness between skateboarders and bladers had gone on since the two became legit street ‘sports’, that bitterness wasn’t lost on the Thrashers who were the quintessential ‘old school’ skaters of the area.

~~~~~

Like I said, I kinda lost hope in this. Not so much that I don't like where its going but I'm not sure how to go on. I also realized in writing this that I'm missing something in my technique that I'd like to get down before I try and write something like this. Hell who knows maybe I'll work on it more but I'm gonna set it aside while I compose my thoughts and work on a couple other projects.

Ethonal

The world is dying. There’s no two ways about it. With our fossil fuel consumption exponentially increasing, the earth is slowly paying for it. Even though global warming is now commonly accepted, our politicians still show how little they actually care. Instead of actually doing any research they find the quickest, easiest, and the stupidest solution. What I’m talking about is biofuel, more specifically ethanol. It’s supposed to be our way out of the death hold oil has on the U.S. even though research shows it is far from that. Even yet all the presidential candidates have thrown their support to biofuels only for votes. Ethanol is not the resource our planet needs.

First, a let’s take a look at what biofuel is: biofuel is a form of fuel produced from organic matter such as corn, sugar, switchgrass and other plant life (Grunwald 40-42). One such fuel is E85, which is made from 85 percent of corn-based ethanol and gasoline. Biofuels, such as E85, can be used to fuel cars, thus reducing oil use and lowering carbon emissions, right? Well, not really. Michael Grunwald recently wrote an article in Time called “The Clean Energy Scam” which points out the negative aspects to biofuels: “The basic problem with most biofuels is amazingly simple … using land to grow fuel leads to the destruction of forests, wetlands and grasslands that store enormous amounts of carbon” (42). Not only is this a huge threat to the environment, it’s a huge threat to the thousands of species that live in these various environments, that’s not all either. Using corn for fuel instead of food has bumped the global price into record highs. Grunwald puts it bluntly, “The grain it takes to fill up an SUV tank with ethanol could feed a person

for a year” (42). Those are just some of the problems our “savior” from oil has. There are many others, most of which are just ignored by our politicians.

Politics is quite the interesting subject, indeed quite the popularity contest. It amazes me that, given the research done on ethanol, all three of the major political candidates support biofuels with such vigor. Democrat Barack Obama states in his book The Audacity of Hope, “The bottom line is that fuel-efficient cars and alternative fuels like E85, a fuel formulated with 85 percent ethanol, represent the future of the auto industry” (170). I wonder what Obama would say if he knew that “the future of the auto industry” would leave hundreds of thousands starving. It seems that no one told Mr. Obama about the environmental impacts nor the humanitarian implications of ethanol because he not only supports ethanol, he makes us pay for it; “We provided tax credits to gas stations for installing E85 fuel pumps” (Obama 326). Barack isn’t the only politician to disregard research on biofuels; both Hillary Clinton and John McCain praise the “virtues” of ethanol. Perhaps the biggest supporter of ethanol, though, is Congress. Grunwald states “Members of Congress love biofuels too, not only because so many dream of future Iowa caucuses but also because so few want to offend the farm lobby, the most powerful force behind biofuels on Capitol Hill” (44). Quite frankly, such utter disregard for the planet and humanity by the people that run our country is heinous.

To think I have to point out alternative fuels for the alternative fuel our nation is embracing, is sad. There are many truly renewable resources to consider, indeed many of which are quite obvious. There’s been a lot of talk recently about creating nuclear fusion to fix our energy woes; it’s a great idea and all, but it’s a waste of money at this point. Fusion has already been discovered. What’s 1,000,000 times bigger than earth and creates enough fusion to light the world for, well, forever? The sun! I’m glad I’m not the only one to see this wonderful star as a resource. In Al Gores book, An Inconvenient Truth, he asserts just how powerful the sun is, “On a bright sunny day the sun shines approximately 1,000 watts per square yard” (166). Now think, the sun shines roughly 300 days a year here in New Mexico; New Mexico is also the 5th largest state, that’s a lot of power. Another clear solution to the world energy crisis is wind energy. In The Rough Guide to Climate Change the author, Robert Henson, shows just how powerful wind energy can be, “It’s been estimated that the U.S. could generate up to 11 trillion kilowatt hours of wind power per year, about three times the total from all U.S. power plants” (316). To address Obama’s automotive future I think it would be wiser to invest our tax dollars in hydrogen fuel cells. There are no carbon emissions and the only waste material is vaporized water (Henson 324). Those tax credits being wasted on ethanol pumps could be going to new technologies that make the production and storage of hydrogen cells easier and more productive.

In conclusion, ethanol is far from Earth’s green alternative and it’s, in reality, far from green. In the end, our government only cares about two things: Who has the money, and how to get easy votes. We should not give up hope. There are plenty of truly renewable resources out there that are readily available. Combine solar and wind energy with hydrogen fuel cells and it then becomes possible to overthrow the oil tyrants. Though we may feel powerless, every one of us can make a difference. Invest in some

solar panels, which will increase the overall value of your home, or just give your local energy provider a call about ways to go green.



Works Cited

Gore, Al. An Inconvenient Truth. New York: Viking: 2006.

Grunwald, Michael. “The Clean Energy Sam.” Time Apr. 2008: 40-45.

Henson, Robert. The Rough Guide to Climate Change. New York: Rough Guides: 2008.

Obama, Barack. The Audacity of Hope. New York: Three Rivers Press: 2006.



So I wrote this research paper for my English 101 class. Its not too bad but its certainly not very good either. I did it over like 3 days tops and quite frankly its suppose to be argumentative but.... I don't really care too much about the topic so its kinda half assed. I should get it back on Tuesday so we'll see what I get on it. It is kinda interesting how our politicians jump on the easiest and quickest 'solution' without doing any research. Oh well.. maybe they'll figure it out at some point.


Thoughts on Dune

This was created April of 08 right after I finished the fantastic Dune series.

Well I just finished the final book in the Dune series by Frank Herbert and without a fathom of a doubt its one of the best series of books I have ever read. That's not such a simple statement either. I've read a lot and I'm quite proud to admit that I'm a book worm. I've read many of the classics, from 1984 to Zorro and everything in between, as well as more modern, 'easy' books. By easy I mean books of no true 'literary value', you're not going to be able to open up a Dean Koontz book and extract deep symbolism nor are you going to find much satire hidden in the pages of Dan Brown. Some people scoff at the idea of such books and are rather prejudiced of them, so what if they don't amount up to Steinbecks The Grapes of Wrath? That doesn't make them worthless. I believe a book is written for the entertainment and enjoyment of the reader. Simply put MILLIONS of people enjoy these so called 'worthless' books and indeed The New York Times is rather good at finding these books and getting them out there. If you ask the average person if they enjoyed The Old Man and the Sea they'd look at you and say "didn't we read that in high school? God I hated all the crap they made us read back then." Yet if you asked them if they liked anything by James Patterson, John Grisham, Nora Roberts, or Stephen King the majority of people would probably like if not love a certain title by one of those authors. There's nothing inherently bad about this, in my opinion these authors are doing what they love and sharing that love with everyone in the process. They give their readers a brief escape from the stress of real life and entertain them to no end. Of course there's always a line that can be crossed. When an author signs a book deal,in which they have to get a certain ridiculous number of books out per year, I tend to have a problem with that. All their books become the same, read the first chapter and the last chapter and you won't really miss a thing. I work in a book store and it saddens me to see once great authors, such as Danielle Steele, turn a blind eye on the quality of their work and just pump out release after release. More so what upsets me the most is that there's no repercussion from this, at least not in a quick timely manner. People continue to read books pumped out by these authors and thus continue to make them bestsellers because the reader knows what the author was once capable of. These writers let their readers down. For me reading is like a drug, you have that first high from a particular book by a particular author and you're hooked. It doesn't matter that that high sometimes never comes again you'll keep going and going based on this hope that the author will deliver. The relationship between an author and a reader is a powerful one, not only must the author open up and trust the reader with their innermost thoughts and ideas but in turn the reader must trust the author to fill their writing with passion and love. It's like walking on the edge of a knife and when the reader has finally had enough there's no going back. Its over.

With that being said there have been books written throughout history that have withstood the test of time with not only a story everyone can relate to but a deeper more refined world. Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings, Lewis's The Chronicles of Narnia, and more recently Rowling's Harry Potter Series. All three of these sets of books did something that most authors can only dream of doing; create a world they not only love but the masses fall in love with as well. Of course there are critics (there always is) and perhaps the three sets of books I chose will raise some heckles, especially the last, but no one can deny the success it has and continues to have. With that success the absolute joy it wrought: to be able to lose ones self in a thoroughly detailed and magical world. Now Harry Potter is probably the only one I don't feel too strongly about, its a very detailed and all, but I needed an example of a decent series thats got the popularity. She's far from a Tolkien but she serves my point. I do believe that Dune is one of those epic works that will stand the test of time.

I'm not going to summarize any of the events in the six books because, I for one, hate spoilers and even when someone is trying their best not to spoil anything we're all only human. I also don't believe I am capable of giving due justice to these books, I will bring up points and various things I felt while I read the book in later posts but for now this is really a general overview. I'll admit I was rather critical of the boast on the front cover of Dune: "Science Fiction's Supreme Masterpiece". Talk about a bold statement but twenty pages in I was hooked. This wasn't even a normal hooked for me this set of books became almost an addiction! I'd suddenly find myself at 3 in the morning not able to put them down. Frank Herbert has done what I thought was impossible: upped the bar. Before I'd compare books to say Tolkien, Orwell or Steinbeck but now I find myself comparing all three to Herbert! Sure each has its strong points, Tolkien's utter detail in creating his world, Orwells strong analyzation and warning of human nature, and Steinbeck well Steinbeck was a master of symbolism even if his work was a bit dry at times. What I found in Herberts work was all three to such a degree that it boggled my mind. He created a world I could get lost in for hours and hours, he analyzed humans, government, religion and many things in between, and he used symbolism to an extent that Steinbeck would be proud. On top of all those, and many other qualities, he made Dune into a part of my day to day life. I often times think "what would the Bene Gesserit say about that?" or I'll try and mentally look at a problem in the way a mentat might look at it. Probably the biggest day to day thing I've noticed is my use of the Litany against Fear.

The Litany Against Fear
Frank Herbert

I must not fear.
Fear is the mind-killer.
Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration.
I will face my fear.
I will permit it to pass over me and through me.
And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path.
Where the fear has gone there will be nothing.
Only I will remain.

For an author to so utterly influence me is astounding! I thought before Dune I had read some of the best books that were written. Not even just deep or symbolic ones I had favorite 'easy' books as well. I found that while reading Dune it quickly became one of my favorite books but as I read each sequel they'd take over the previous as my favorite. Many authors botch series endings, Rowling particularly. Some take the story where the readers don't want to go. Others take don't share certain details that the reader needs to know. Because of this, the ending of many stories don't alleviate the reader's craving. Frank Herbert is not one of those authors! Chapterhouse: Dune, which was the last book he wrote, happens to be the best book I have ever read. On the second through the sixth book the covers read"Book *insert number* of the magnificent Dune series." I must say, 'magnificent' is almost an understatement.

One of the things I absolutely love about Frank Herbert is his amazing ability to combine elements from almost everything. As I hinted at earlier, he has a little bit of everything: politics, government, religion, environmental issues, and to top it all off a fantastic philosophy on life. He addresses what it is to be human without being overly critical. He shows both sides of the coin that is humanity. On one side he shows just how evil a human can be but at the same time just how good we can be as well. The interesting thing I found is not that he uses both extremes, but that he shows every degree in between. He has some of the best characters I've ever had the pleasure to read. He coaxes the reader into loving a character to hating to loving again all flawlessly. So far we have thought provoking elements, a fascinating philosophy on life, and deep characters. There are so many aspects to his writing that I could go on and on about but the last I want to address is time. To be able to jump not only years but thousands of years into the future is extraordinary! Time is one of those paradoxical concepts that is really hard to understand much less write about in a coherent way. He addresses time and the changes it brings with it to such a degree I often wondered just how long he spent on his concept. In any case though, he made everything absolutely believable. His characters, his worlds, his governments, and all the scandal that goes with them. Throughout the series I could easily see this being the future of humans. And that is perhaps the greatest thing about Dune.

If all you take away from this is a desire to pick up Dune I'll have succeeded. Even if you're not a strong reader, read Dune for the story. Its fantastic. If you are a strong reader pick up Dune with an open mind and take what you can from it. There are plot lines that everyone will enjoy. A fair warning though, do not skip the book because you've seen either of the movies. They're decent sure but there is no way to fully grasp all the plots within plots of Dune. I'll leave you with one of my favorite quotes from the series:

"Deep in the human unconscious is a pervasive need for a logical universe that makes sense. But the real universe is always one step beyond logic."